December 23, 2018
On Sun, 2018-12-23 at 08:08 +0000, Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: […]
> 
> This questioning of iOS is so removed from reality that it makes me question if you are qualified to comment on this matter at all. iOS is the largest consumer software platform that is still growing, as it's estimated to bring in twice the revenue of google's Play store (that doesn't count other Android app stores, but they wouldn't make up the gap):

Fair enough I have no interest in iOS at all. But you must agree that you are clearly so far removed from the reality of putting on technical conferences generally, that you are not qualified to make assertions such as "conferences are a dead form".

> You could make various arguments for why they're still having less and less conferences, as my second link above listing them does. But to argue that iOS is not doing well is so ludicrous that it suggests you don't know much about these tech markets.

Ludicrous is a good description of the entire situation in this thread. You are making assertions as though they are facts, working on the principle that if you shout long enough and loud enough, people will stop disagreeing. A classic technique.

[…]

> Yes, the proof is there: the conference is dying. You simply don't want to admit it.

This is just assertions with no  data and thus is a religious position. And I know conferences are thriving, you just do not want to admit that.

> This seems to be a religious issue for you, with your bizzare assertions above, so I'll stop engaging with you now.

No it is you that has faith in the death of conferences, I am involved in the reality of conferences being a relevant thing that people want to attend. Just because you do not want to go to conferences doesn't give you the right to try and stop others from doing so.

If you are going to stop ranting on this, I think that will make a lot of people very happy. The idea of this email list is to announce things, not debate things. Also on the debating lists the idea is to have a collaborative not combative debate about things. That includes if some people want to do something they should be allowed to do it and not be harangued from the wings. If people want to have a DConf, it is not your position to tell them they cannot.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk



December 23, 2018
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 08:08:59 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 06:54:26 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
>> Others have cited Rust and Go. I shall cite Python, Ruby, Groovy, Java, Kotlin, Clojure, Haskell, all of which have thriving programming language oriented conferences all over the world. Then there are the Linux conferences, GStreamer conferences, conference all about specific technologies rather than programming languages. And of course there is ACCU. There is much more evidence that the more or less traditional conference format serves a purpose for people, and are remaining very successful. Many of these conferences make good profits, so are commercially viable.
>
> That's all well and good, but none of this addresses the key points of whether there are less tech conferences being done and whether they make sense in this day and age. There are still people riding in horse and carriage, that doesn't mean it's still a good idea. :)

You say that like some superior technology exists to replace the conference.  Yes, DConf may benefit from tutorials, workshops, BoFs, whatever, but the value it brings to the community is very real.

>> Thus I reject the fundamental premise of your position that the conference format is dying off. It isn't. The proof is there.
>
> Yes, the proof is there: the conference is dying.

Hardly. IME there are two kinds of conferences (or maybe they form a spectrum, whatever) academic and industrial. Academic is going nowhere, research needs presenting, organisation of collaboration needs to happen. Industrial, there is project coordination, employment prospectus, business opportunities, why do you think companies sponsor conferences? They get their moneys worth out of it.

Perhaps you as an individual believe that they are not cost effective for you, fine. But consider that the foundation reimburses speakers and I personally would be very interested to hear what you have been doing with Andoird/ARM and I'm sure many others would as well, the question becomes: is it worth your time?



December 23, 2018
On 12/22/2018 10:20 PM, Joakim wrote:
> Honestly, yours are routinely the worst presentations at DConf. Your strength as a presenter is when you dig deeply into a bunch of technical detail or present some new technical paradigm, similar to Andrei. Yet, your DConf keynotes usually go the exact opposite route and go very lightly over not very much at all.

Eh, I went pretty far into the DIP 1000 material.


> 1) Ditch in-person presentations for pre-recorded talks that people watch on their own time. Getting everybody in the same room in London to silently watch talks together is a horrible waste, that only made sense before we all had high-speed internet-connected TVs and smartphones with good cameras. Do a four-day hackathon instead, ie mostly collaboration, not passive viewing.

It's very different listening to a presentation live rather than pre-recorded. There are the before and after interactions they inspire.


> 2) Rather than doing a central DConf that most cannot justify attending, do several locations, eg in the cities the core team already lives in, like Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Hong Kong, etc. This makes it cost-effective for many more people to attend, and since you'll have ditched the in-person tech talks, spend the time introducing the many more attendees to the language or have those who already know it work on the language/libraries, ie something like the current DConf hackathon.

London is the most cost-effective destination for most D team members. For distributed meetings, there have been several D meetups that do what you suggest. While fun and valuable, they're not a replacement for DConf.


> 3) Get the core team together as a separate event, either as an offline retreat or online video conference or both. I know you guys need to meet once in awhile, but it makes no sense to spend most of that in-person time at DConf staring at talks that could be viewed online later.

If you ever came to one, you might see it differently.


> While I find it questionable to say that they couldn't easily find and recruit those people online, given that D is primarly an online project where most everything and everyone is easily available online, I see no reason why any of the changes above would stop that.

There's a very clear connection between DConf and successful collaborations with industry and D developers. Why mess with success?


> It seems clear to me that you, at the very least, have not engaged with the links and ideas I've been providing about why the current DConf format is broken.

Your opinions would have more weight if (1) you've ever attended a DConf and (2) can point to successful instantiations of your theories.


> My fundamental point is that the current DConf conference format is an outdated relic, that made sense decades ago when getting everybody together in a room in Berlin was a fantastic way to get everybody connected. With the ready availability of high-speed internet and video displays to everybody who can afford to pay the registration fee and go to London, that hoary conference format needs to be rethought for the internet age.
> 
> I have no problem with anybody disagreeing with my suggestions or the reasoning behind them, but I find it flabbergasting for anyone to suggest, as Mike has above, that the old conference format still makes sense, especially given the documented evidence of it declining.

People *like* conferences. You can buy a Led Zeppelin CD or spend $$$$ to see them live and enjoy it with the crowd. Maybe you'll go backstage and meet & greet. Which would you rather do?

BTW, another point for the presentations is that we cover the air fare and hotel expenses for the presenters. Quite a lot of people have been able to attend because of this. It's our way of giving a little bit back to strong contributors.
December 23, 2018
On 12/23/2018 1:36 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
> If people want to have a DConf, it is not your position to tell them they
> cannot.

No worries, we're full steam ahead on DConf 2019. I, for one, am greatly looking forward to it and seeing everybody.

December 23, 2018
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 09:51:58 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 08:08:59 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 06:54:26 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
>>> Others have cited Rust and Go. I shall cite Python, Ruby, Groovy, Java, Kotlin, Clojure, Haskell, all of which have thriving programming language oriented conferences all over the world. Then there are the Linux conferences, GStreamer conferences, conference all about specific technologies rather than programming languages. And of course there is ACCU. There is much more evidence that the more or less traditional conference format serves a purpose for people, and are remaining very successful. Many of these conferences make good profits, so are commercially viable.
>>
>> That's all well and good, but none of this addresses the key points of whether there are less tech conferences being done and whether they make sense in this day and age. There are still people riding in horse and carriage, that doesn't mean it's still a good idea. :)
>
> You say that like some superior technology exists to replace the conference.

It does, read the first link I gave in my first post above.

> Yes, DConf may benefit from tutorials, workshops, BoFs, whatever, but the value it brings to the community is very real.

It may bring some value, but that's not the question: the question is whether we could get more value out of the alternatives, particularly at a cheaper cost? The fact that you and others keep avoiding this question suggests you know the answer.

>>> Thus I reject the fundamental premise of your position that the conference format is dying off. It isn't. The proof is there.
>>
>> Yes, the proof is there: the conference is dying.
>
> Hardly. IME there are two kinds of conferences (or maybe they form a spectrum, whatever) academic and industrial. Academic is going nowhere, research needs presenting, organisation of collaboration needs to happen.

Research conferences are irrelevant. I don't pay attention to them and the fact that the Haskell link Atila gave above says their conferences are for presenting research is one big reason why almost nobody uses that PL in industry.

> Industrial, there is project coordination, employment prospectus, business opportunities, why do you think companies sponsor conferences? They get their moneys worth out of it.

Clearly not in the iOS community, and according to a commenter in my second link above, the Javascript community in his country, as the number of tech conferences is going down a lot. It is my impression that this is true across the board for pretty much every tech community, but I presented that iOS link because he actually tallies the evidence. That is a canary in the coal mine for the conference format, that the largest burgeoning dev market on the planet has a dying conference scene.

> Perhaps you as an individual believe that they are not cost effective for you, fine.

As I keep repeating, this is not about me. I'm pointing out trends for _most_ devs, my own preferences are irrelevant.

> But consider that the foundation reimburses speakers and I personally would be very interested to hear what you have been doing with Andoird/ARM and I'm sure many others would as well, the question becomes: is it worth your time?

I don't understand what's so special about "speakers" that it couldn't simply reimburse non-speakers that the foundation wants at one of the decentralized locations instead. It seems like the talk is a made-up excuse to pay for some members of the core team to come, when the real reason is to collaborate with them. Why not dispense with that subterfuge?

I see little value in a full talk about a port to a new platform like Android, that is basically another linux distro with a different libc. It's not a matter of my time, I don't think it's worth the audience's time. I wish those organizing DConf would focus on that more.
December 23, 2018
On 12/23/2018 2:59 AM, Joakim wrote:
> I wish those organizing DConf would focus on that more.

You're free to organize D meetups and conferences as you see fit. Heck, C++ has many conferences, run by different organizations with different ideas on how to do it. Nothing wrong with that.

Even Andrei and I and some others put on our own C++ conference about 10 years ago.

December 23, 2018
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 10:59:32 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> You say that like some superior technology exists to replace the conference.
>
> It does, read the first link I gave in my first post above.

You mean the one that says "I don’t know how to fix conferences"?

>> Yes, DConf may benefit from tutorials, workshops, BoFs, whatever, but the value it brings to the community is very real.
>
> It may bring some value, but that's not the question: the question is whether we could get more value out of the alternatives, particularly at a cheaper cost? The fact that you and others keep avoiding this question suggests you know the answer.

That really depends on the objective function you mean by "more value".
"social networks, Slack groups, podcasts, and YouTube" are all well and good but they cannot compare (as in apples to oranges) to high-bandwidth low latency personal communication with all the people that have an interest (business, technical, whatever)  and technical expertise in the subject at hand.

>> Hardly. IME there are two kinds of conferences (or maybe they form a spectrum, whatever) academic and industrial. Academic is going nowhere, research needs presenting, organisation of collaboration needs to happen.
>
> Research conferences are irrelevant. I don't pay attention to them and the fact that the Haskell link Atila gave above says their conferences are for presenting research is one big reason why almost nobody uses that PL in industry.

I concede that I find PL theory useless, but not all academic conferences are PL theory, and I don't think that the potential scope for more academic talks of DConf is limited to PL theory. Novel applications of D in anything from physics to bioinformatics to optimisations based on immutability to DSELs enabled by D's meta programming are all possible in an academic setting.

>> Industrial, there is project coordination, employment prospectus, business opportunities, why do you think companies sponsor conferences? They get their moneys worth out of it.
>
> Clearly not in the iOS community, and according to a commenter in my second link above, the Javascript community in his country, as the number of tech conferences is going down a lot. It is my impression that this is true across the board for pretty much every tech community, but I presented that iOS link because he actually tallies the evidence.

I don't doubt those numbers and perhaps the other forms of communication do lessen the need for multiple conferences per year, but there is a large difference from many to one compared to one to zero, in person communication cannot be easily replaced.

Industrial sponsorship is definitely real, take a look at the side column of http://llvm.org/devmtg/2018-10/ which I went to and talked to the authors of https://github.com/wsmoses/Tapir-LLVM for potentially targeting OpenMP and other parallel runtimes with dcompute, talked to the people developing the SPIR-V target of LLVM, the list goes on. I'm going to EuroLLVM (Brussels) to continue those conversations, followed straight away by ACCU (Bristol) to give a talk about meta programming with D in the context of developing and using DCompute. Then a few weeks later I'll be going to DConf for many reasons but principally to coordinate development, deal with the gripes that have accumulated. I'll probably return home via Boston for IWOCL (OpenCL).

>> Perhaps you as an individual believe that they are not cost effective for you, fine.
>
> As I keep repeating, this is not about me. I'm pointing out trends for _most_ devs,

DConf has been growing in size every year it has been held, as have IWOCL and the LLVM conferences. I'm sure some topics for some conferences are declining, it may well even be an industry wide trend, but I'd bet good money that the new equilibrium will have conferences as a staple.

> my own preferences are irrelevant.

I certainly hope not.

>> But consider that the foundation reimburses speakers and I personally would be very interested to hear what you have been doing with Andoird/ARM and I'm sure many others would as well, the question becomes: is it worth your time?
>
> I don't understand what's so special about "speakers" that it couldn't simply reimburse non-speakers that the foundation wants at one of the decentralized locations instead. It seems like the talk is a made-up excuse to pay for some members of the core team to come, when the real reason is to collaborate with them. Why not dispense with that subterfuge?

The talks together with the topic of the conference are what draw people to the conference and make it economically viable. It is a perfectly rational decision. If I was running a conference trying to turn a profit I'd probably get more applications for the available speaker slots => better quality speakers => more attendees => $$$.

DCompute would not exist were it not for that reimbursement, as a poor student that made the difference between this is something I can work towards, afford to go to and get good value out of vs not. Perhaps we could run general travel grants like LLVM does but I don't think we're large enough for that, Mike Parker would be the person to talk to about that. But if, like me, they are students and wan't to have something to talk about to aid in networking, then giving a talk will help with that.

> I see little value in a full talk about a port to a new platform like Android, that is basically another linux distro with a different libc. It's not a matter of my time, I don't think it's worth the audience's time. I wish those organizing DConf would focus on that more.

You can choose the length of the talk you think would fit the topic. You could cover the basics of using the port for developing Android apps, the difficulties you experienced doing the port and the troubles others might have in doing their own, ... as they say, the stage is yours. It would also present an opportunity to convince others of the direction  you think we should be going in e.g. w.r.t mobile/ARM/AArch64.
December 23, 2018
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 14:20:08 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> they cannot compare (as in apples to oranges) to high-bandwidth low latency personal communication with all the people that have an interest (business, technical, whatever)  and technical expertise in the subject at hand.

Then why don't we tweak the schedule to maximize the time spent on this stuff?! When pressed, everyone says their favorite part is what happens outside the talks... so I say we bring more of that inside the talk time too.

I'd be pretty happy if we just experimented with more interactive stuff during the talks, like I proposed in my last message. We do that kind of stuff at my day job in-person retreats and it is pretty successful. (Though I'd prefer to go further away, this acts as a kind of compromise position.)
December 23, 2018
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 10:07:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/22/2018 10:20 PM, Joakim wrote:
>> Honestly, yours are routinely the worst presentations at DConf. Your strength as a presenter is when you dig deeply into a bunch of technical detail or present some new technical paradigm, similar to Andrei. Yet, your DConf keynotes usually go the exact opposite route and go very lightly over not very much at all.
>
> Eh, I went pretty far into the DIP 1000 material.

That one had more technical examples, but I didn't think it was very well-motivated and could probably have had more detail.

My feeling is that you save your best stuff for your NWCPP talks and present the baby versions at DConf.

>> 1) Ditch in-person presentations for pre-recorded talks that people watch on their own time. Getting everybody in the same room in London to silently watch talks together is a horrible waste, that only made sense before we all had high-speed internet-connected TVs and smartphones with good cameras. Do a four-day hackathon instead, ie mostly collaboration, not passive viewing.
>
> It's very different listening to a presentation live rather than pre-recorded. There are the before and after interactions they inspire.

I'm not sure how a talk is supposed to inspire anything substantive _before_ you've heard it, and pre-recorded talks watched at home would fill the same purpose after.

Perhaps this is a generation gap, as I see that you and Russel are a couple decades older than me, so let me give my perspective. I've probably watched a week or two of recorded tech talks online over the last year, and maybe a couple hours in person. Invariably, I find myself wishing for a skip-ahead button on those in-person talks, like I have for the online videos. ;)

I suspect there are many more like me these days than you two.

>> 2) Rather than doing a central DConf that most cannot justify attending, do several locations, eg in the cities the core team already lives in, like Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Hong Kong, etc. This makes it cost-effective for many more people to attend, and since you'll have ditched the in-person tech talks, spend the time introducing the many more attendees to the language or have those who already know it work on the language/libraries, ie something like the current DConf hackathon.
>
> London is the most cost-effective destination for most D team members. For distributed meetings, there have been several D meetups that do what you suggest. While fun and valuable, they're not a replacement for DConf.

I have never heard of a meetup doing what I suggest, ie an all-day D event with almost no in-person talks, possibly co-ordinated with other cities. I think this would be _much better_ for D than DConf.

>> 3) Get the core team together as a separate event, either as an offline retreat or online video conference or both. I know you guys need to meet once in awhile, but it makes no sense to spend most of that in-person time at DConf staring at talks that could be viewed online later.
>
> If you ever came to one, you might see it differently.

I'm not a member of the core team, so I'm not sure how that's relevant. If you just mean that I could observe how the core team is getting a lot of value out of in-person talks, I call BS.

>> While I find it questionable to say that they couldn't easily find and recruit those people online, given that D is primarly an online project where most everything and everyone is easily available online, I see no reason why any of the changes above would stop that.
>
> There's a very clear connection between DConf and successful collaborations with industry and D developers. Why mess with success?

For the chance of much more success? I'm sure there have been some fruitful collaborations and hiring at DConf. I'm saying there would likely be _even more_ with my suggestions.

>> It seems clear to me that you, at the very least, have not engaged with the links and ideas I've been providing about why the current DConf format is broken.
>
> Your opinions would have more weight if (1) you've ever attended a DConf

Perhaps but since I haven't been, you could presumably articulate what you find so great about DConf that contradicts my opinions, but you mention nothing here and your reasons elsewhere aren't too worthwhile.

> and (2) can point to successful instantiations of your theories.

What do you consider a "theory" above: that you could have better outreach at several locations or that pre-recorded talks watched at home are a better use of valuable in-person time? I don't think that's theorizing, it's well-accepted by most everyone who knows these subjects.

I started off by pointing to documented evidence of conferences going down, and popular bloggers and people who track this stuff talking about how online talks have replaced them, so it is well-known that this trend away from the old conference format is underway.

I find it strange that you call documented social trends "my theories."

>> My fundamental point is that the current DConf conference format is an outdated relic, that made sense decades ago when getting everybody together in a room in Berlin was a fantastic way to get everybody connected. With the ready availability of high-speed internet and video displays to everybody who can afford to pay the registration fee and go to London, that hoary conference format needs to be rethought for the internet age.
>> 
>> I have no problem with anybody disagreeing with my suggestions or the reasoning behind them, but I find it flabbergasting for anyone to suggest, as Mike has above, that the old conference format still makes sense, especially given the documented evidence of it declining.
>
> People *like* conferences.

Apparently not, or they wouldn't be declining.

> You can buy a Led Zeppelin CD or spend $$$$ to see them live and enjoy it with the crowd. Maybe you'll go backstage and meet & greet. Which would you rather do?

I'm the wrong person to ask this as I don't listen to music and so have never been to a popular music concert.

But your question is strange considering all my suggestions are about having _more_ interpersonal interaction at more locations, not less.

> BTW, another point for the presentations is that we cover the air fare and hotel expenses for the presenters. Quite a lot of people have been able to attend because of this. It's our way of giving a little bit back to strong contributors.

So why not just pay for the strong contributors to come and not give talks? This reason is completely illogical.

On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 11:25:23 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/23/2018 2:59 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> I wish those organizing DConf would focus on that more.
>
> You're free to organize D meetups and conferences as you see fit. Heck, C++ has many conferences, run by different organizations with different ideas on how to do it. Nothing wrong with that.
>
> Even Andrei and I and some others put on our own C++ conference about 10 years ago.

I have considered doing some kind of online webinar series in the past. The way I've been spreading the word instead is by giving a talk introducing D at a handful of local tech meetups organized by others. When I ask people to raise their hand if they've heard of D- not tried or used it a lot, mind you, just _heard_ of it- I think maybe 1% raised their hand. I currently live in a bit of a technical backwater, but that's not good.

If you look at the total expenditure on DConf as currently organized, it probably comes to between $100k-300k, if you include all the travel and hotel costs for everyone. What you have to consider is the opportunity cost of spending that money elsewhere, even given that you will only get a fraction of it otherwise, as for many it's really a vacation or their company's conference budget footing the bill.

I don't think there's any way the current format, in-person talks at a central location, even comes close to the alternatives I've suggested in terms of bang-for-the-buck, whether decentralized without in-person talks or spending that money on more D interns like Razvan or Nicholas.

Of course, it's not my money to spend or decide: I've granted that several times. But such bad decision-making comes across as severe managerial incompetence to me, which affects me as a downstream contributor and user.

From your flippant responses to me and aversions on the issues I raise, I suspect you don't take such non-technical matters very seriously. I get the sense generally with non-D decisions in this project that you just want to go the safe, conservative route: just follow the traditional conference format because it's known, ignoring the downslide I've highlighted. I don't think D can get very far that way: you have to take some calculated risks on non-D matters too, like you did when you went full open-source with the language.
December 23, 2018
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 at 15:40, Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
>
> On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 14:20:08 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> > they cannot compare (as in apples to oranges) to high-bandwidth low latency personal communication with all the people that have an interest (business, technical, whatever)  and technical expertise in the subject at hand.
>
> Then why don't we tweak the schedule to maximize the time spent on this stuff?! When pressed, everyone says their favorite part is what happens outside the talks... so I say we bring more of that inside the talk time too.
>
> I'd be pretty happy if we just experimented with more interactive stuff during the talks, like I proposed in my last message. We do that kind of stuff at my day job in-person retreats and it is pretty successful. (Though I'd prefer to go further away, this acts as a kind of compromise position.)

Perhaps it would be nice to have two tracks running.  One with talks, the other with BoFs, so you can switch between talk / group conversation depending on which interests you.

-- 
Iain