On 10/02/2018 02:26 AM, Joakim wrote:
> I'm sure some thought and planning is now going into the next DConf, so I'd like to make sure people are aware that the conference format that DConf uses is dying off, as explained here:
> 
> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
> 
> People are now experimenting with what replaces conferences, we should be doing that too. I came up with some ideas in that thread:
> 

Yes, let's be a bunch of trend-chasing hipsters. Maybe we can even get Portlandia to do a biopic on us.

On 10/2/18 4:34 AM, Joakim wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 09:39:14 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
>> On 10/1/18 11:26 PM, Joakim wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>
>> I disagree.
> 
> It is not clear what you disagree with, since almost nothing you say has any bearing on my original post. To summarize, I suggest changing the currently talk-driven DConf format to either
> 
> 1. a more decentralized collection of meetups all over the world, where most of the talks are pre-recorded, and the focus is more on introducing new users to the language or
> 
> 2. at least ditching most of the talks at a DConf still held at a central location, maybe keeping only a couple panel discussions that benefit from an audience to ask questions, and spending most of the time like the hackathon at the last DConf, ie actually meeting in person.
> 

This point has a subtle flaw. Many of the talks raise points of discussion that would otherwise go without discussion, and potentially unnoticed, if it were not for the person bringing it up. The talks routinely serve as a launchpad for the nightly dinner sessions. Benjamin Thauts 2016 talk about shared libraries is one such example. Indeed every single year has brought at least one (but usually more) talk that opened up some new line of investigation for the dinner discussions.

> Since both of these alternatives I suggest are much more about in-person interaction, which is what you defend, and the only big change I propose is ditching the passive in-person talks, which you do not write a single word in your long post defending, I'm scratching my head about what you got out of my original post.
> 
>> There is much more to the conference than just a 4-day meetup with talks. The idea that it's just the core 8-15 people with a bunch of hangers-on is patently false. It's not about the conversations I have with the "core" people. It's Schveighoffer, or Atila, or Jonathan, or any of a long list of people who are interested enough in coming. Remember these people self-selected to invest non-trivial treasure to be there, they  are ALL worthy of conversing with.
> 
> Since both my mooted alternatives give _much more_ opportunity for such interaction, I'm again scratching my head at your reaction.
> 

This is untrue. See responses further down.

>> Is it a "mini-vaction"? Yea, sure, for my wife. For her it's a four day shopping spree in Europe. For me it's four days of wall-to-wall action that leaves me drop-dead exhausted at the end of the day.
> 
> So it's the talks that provide this or the in-person interaction? If the latter, why are you arguing against my pushing for more of it and ditching the in-person talks?
> 

It's everything. The talks, the coding, the talking, the drinking. All of it has some social component I find valuable.

>> Every time I see somebody predicting the end of "X" I roll my eyes. I have a vivid memory of the rise of Skype and videoconferencing in the early 2000's giving way to breathless media reports about how said tools would kill the airlines because people could just meet online for a trivial fraction of the price.
> 
> People make stupid predictions all the time. Ignoring all such "end of" predictions because many predict badly would be like ignoring all new programming languages because 99% are bad. That means you'd never look at D.
> 
> And yes, some came true: almost nobody programs minicomputers or buys standalone mp3 players like the iPod anymore, compared to how many used to at their peak.
> 

Sure, but the predictions about videoconferencing have yet to come true. As told but the data itself. The travel industry is setting new records yearly in spite of videoconferencing. That's not conjecture or opinion, go look for yourself. As I have previously suggested, the stock prices and order-books of Airbus and Boeing are are record highs. Airplanes are more packed than ever (called load-factor). For example, Delta's system-wide load-factor was 85.6% last year. Which means that 85.6% of all available seats for the entire year were occupied. (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/221085/passenger-load-factor-of-delta-air-lines/). Airlines are delivering entire planes for business travelers.

All of this demonstrates that videoconferencing has done nothing to curb travel demand and the current data suggest that it is unlikely too in the foreseeable future. That it might at some point in the distant future is not relevant to this discussion.

>> However, it's 2018 and the airlines are reaping record profits on the backs of business travelers (ask me how I know). Airlines are even now flying planes with NO standard economy seats for routes that cater specifically to business travelers (e.g. Singapore Airlines A350-900ULR). The order books (and stock prices) of both Airbus and Boeing are at historic highs.
> 
> You know what is much higher? Business communication through email, video-conferencing, online source control, etc. that completely replaced old ways of doing things like business travel or sending physical packages. However, business travel might still be up- I don't know as I haven't seen the stats, and you provide nothing other than anecdotes- because all that virtual communication might have enabled much more collaboration and trade that also grew business travel somewhat.
> 

The reason I lump business and conference travel together is because that is precisely how the travel industry defines it. Primarily due to the fact that businesses pay for the overwhelming majority of conference travel. You may disagree with that characterization, but that is how it's defined. And airlines kitting out entire airplanes for business travel isn't an anecdote. It's a simple, and verifiable, fact that you too could verify should you so choose. I provided you with all the relevant data necessary to verify for yourself.

>> There are more conferences, attendees, and business travelers than there has ever been in history, in spite of the great technological leaps in videoconferencing technology in the past two decades.
>>
>> The market has spoken. Reports of the death of business/conference travel have been greatly exaggerated.
> 
> You are conflating two completely different markets here, business versus conference travel. Regarding conferences, your experience contradicts that of the iOS devs in the post I linked and the one he links as evidence, where that blogger notes several conferences that have shut down. In your field, it is my understanding that MS has been paring back and consolidating their conferences too, though I don't follow MS almost at all.
> 

Yes, some conferences shutdown, but many more started up. Your premise is that "Popular Conference X was shutdown so all conferences are dead forevars!" In reality the attendance to conferences is going to depend on the community it serves. For example, IOS has been getting primarily cosmetic updates and bugfixes for the past few cycles, but there really isn't much truly new tech that needs to be communicated because what IOS does hasn't changed significantly in years. In this case, a conference being moved to a virtual environment with a limited number of presentations my be the most effective course. This is not surprising, it is the natural lifecycle of things.

For example, Microsoft killed PDC after 2008, only to bring back a different, but related conference (Build) in 2011. Now .NET has it's own virtual conference in Sept, but Build still has a lot of .NET related content at Build, it's just the Build's broader scope means that a lot of good content can't make it in, so yea, virtual-conference for the content that didn't make the cut. Microsoft took an incredible amount of heat for canceling PDC. So they brought it back with a new name.

But saying that because Apple did it for one of their conferences (note that WWDC is still a thing) that all conferences everywhere are dead is both prima facie ridiculous and easily disproven.

>> The reason for this is fundamental to human psychology and, as such, is unlikely to change in the future. Humans are social animals, and no matter how hard we have tried, nothing has been able to replace the face-to-face meeting for getting things done. Be it the conversations we have over beers after the talks, or the epic number of PR's that come out the hackathon, or even mobbing the speaker after a talk.
> 
> It is funny that you say this on a forum where we're communicating despite never having met "face-to-face," discussing a language where 99.999% of the work is done online by people who don't need any "face-to-face" meetings to get "things done." :)
> 
> Also, my suggestions are about enabling more face-to-face time, not less, so there's that too.
> 
>> Additionally, the conference serves other "soft" purposes. Specifically, marketing and education. The conference provides legitimacy to DLang and the Foundation both by it's mere existence and as a venue for companies using DLang to share their support (via sponsorships) or announce their products (as seen by the Weka.io announcement at DConf 2018) which further enhances the marketing of both the product being launched and DLang itself.
> 
> Don't make me laugh: what part of this marketing/legitimization couldn't be done at either of the two alternatives I gave?
>  >> I have spoken to Walter about DConf numerous times. He has nothing
>> against, and indeed actively encourages, local meetups. But they do not serve the purpose that DConf does. My understanding from my conversations with Walter is that the primary purpose of DConf is to provide a venue that is open to anyone interested to come together and discuss all things D. He specifically does not want something that is only limited to the "core" members. As this suggestion runs precisely counter to the primary stated purpose of DConf it is unlikely to gain significant traction from the D-BDFL.
> 
> Wrong, both of my suggestions fulfil that purpose _better_. What they don't do is limit attendance to those who have the passion _and_ can afford the time and money to travel 2-20 hours away to a single location, just so they can get all the in-person benefits you claim.
> 

You misunderstand my point. What you are asking for is the balkanization of the community by splitting it up along regional geographic boundaries. What you are demanding would mean that we only ever meet the people from our specific geographic regions. Not one of the people I listed is in my geographic region. Therefore I would NEVER meet them, and indeed, I never would have if not for DConf. This demand is tribalism at it's worst.

The purpose of DConf is that it is specifically open to any person from anywhere in the world who wishs to attend. It is a global meeting point for everyone. What you keep propounding is a Meetup. We have those. They have not yet been able to replace DConf in terms of cost-benefit effectiveness as judged by the attendance of DConf. Balkanizing the community will no more produce forward motion than a single conference limited to just the "core" people.

>> Yes, it is expensive, but in all the years I've attended, I have not once regretted spending the money. And indeed, coming from the west coast of the US, I have one of the more expensive (and physically taxing) trips to make. I know a number of people who found jobs in D through DConf, would that not make the conference worth it to them?
> 
> How many people got jobs versus how many attended? Would that money to get 100 people in the same room seven times have been much better spent on other things?  Run the cost-benefit analysis and I think it's obvious my two suggestions come out better. At best, you can maybe say that wasn't the case at the first DConf in 2007, when high-speed internet wasn't as pervasive and Youtube was only two years old, but not for every DConf since.
> 

To the one person who did, the collective cost is irrelevant. To them it was literally a life-changing event. Is their experience somehow less relevant, important, or meaningful?

>> Something is only expensive if you derive less value from it than it costs. And for many people here, I understand if the cost-benefit analysis does not favor DConf. But calling for an end to DConf simply because it doesn't meet someones cost-benefit ratio is inconsiderate to the rest of us who do find the benefit.
> 
> I don't care about your personal cost-benefit ratio. I care about the cost-benefit analysis to the language and ecosystem as a whole.
> 

What, pray tell, is so cost ineffective about the conference if enough people choose to attend every year that it does not loose money?

>> Nobody is making you go, and, since you already get everything you want from the YouTube video uploads during the conference, why do you care if the rest of us "waste" our money on attending the conference? That is our choice. Not yours.
> 
> Try reading the older forum thread I originally linked, Jonathan and I have already been over all this. D is a collective effort, and it's a colossal waste of the community's efforts to spend all that time and money on the dying conference format that DConf has been using.
> 
> It signals to me and many others that D is not a serious effort to get used as a language, but simply a bunch of hobbyists who want to have "fun" meeting up at an exotic locale once a year, in between hacking on an experimental language that they're fine if nobody else uses.
> 

It may signal that to you, but I have seen no evidence that it signals it to others. And I'd hardly call Berlin or Munich "exotic". Now if we could get something going in Mallorca, or Sardinia, or Bali... Beam me up Scotty!

> If that's D's focus, fine, just own it. Put it on the front page: "This is a hobbyist language, please don't bother using it in production. We are much more focused on where we can vacation together next year than trying to spread awareness and improve the language."
> 
> Regardless of whether you post that notice or not, that is what continuing the current DConf format advertises, given that others have already been moving away from it.
> 
>> Note: Limiting anything to "core" members is a guaranteed way to create a mono-culture and would inevitably lead to the stagnation of D.
> 
> Good, then you agree with me that we should avoid such stagnation by broadening DConf to be a bunch of meetups in many more cities?
> 
>> Which is why anybody can post to all NG's, even the internals NG.
> 
> This is not actually true. There are two newsgroups that seem to have that designation, which show up separately as `internals` and `dmd` at forum.dlang.org, and the latter doesn't allow me to post to it without registering somewhere, unlike the rest of the web forums.
> 
> Guess what the current DConf format does to most people who don't attend too...
> 
> I'm done responding to these irrational responses that ignore everything I wrote. I'll just link them to this long debunking from now on.

In all of your response I get the sense that there is a deeply personal motivation behind your crusade. Yet you dance around that motivation carefully, you routinely dismiss other peoples experiences as invalid either simply because you disagree, or some other conference did something different, and you set up strawmen to attack rather than directly answering questions.

Please. For the benefit of all of us. Explain your motivation. The level of emotion you are bringing to this debate cannot be rationally explained on the merits of your argument alone.

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
import quiet.dlang.dev;

On Tue, 2018-10-02 at 14:49 +0000, bachmeier via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
> 
> I think this is something that could be done *in addition to* DConf. I honestly don't think DConf is very effective at promoting D, except perhaps to a small sliver of the overall population of programmers, due to the content of most of the presentations. {This is not intended to be a criticism or a statement that anything about DConf should be changed.}

A programming language without a language specific conference or ten, is not a language to be taken seriously in the modern age it seems. Also language specific local user groups and meetings.

However… language specific conferences are places to support tribalism and confirmation bias as well as progressing the language and knowledge of it.

ACCUConf may have started as a C and C++ conference, but is now a conference about programming. The ACCU members do not want a conference solely about C and C++, they want a conference about programming where different language come to be marketed, compared analysed. This is a two-way street: the feedback on a language from people currently using other languages is as important as finding out about another language.

> I believe it would be a mistake to drop DConf. If we did that, the story that would be told is "D couldn't even support its own conference. Use Rust or Go or Julia instead." Our view would be "we're on the cutting edge" but everyone else's view would be "the language is dying".

Clearly there is currently an obsession for language specific events throughout the programming community. And yes, if there is no language specific conference at all the language is deemed incapable of supporting an active community. This alone militates in favour of DConf.

But these language are inward looking, not outward looking. They are about preserving the tribe, not about making programming better.

Last year some Rust folk came in numbers to ACCU and it worked. I am hoping it will happen again this year. My attempts to get the Go folk to ACCU seem to be failing, they appear to be too self-involved as a community. No outreach.

I have moaned before about the lack of outward looking approach from the D community, D is not alone in this, as the Go community have proven.

How about DConf continues, as it should, and people submit sessions to
ACCU as part of the outreach programme. The call for sessions opens at
the end of this week and lasts three weeks.

-- 
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

On Wednesday, 3 October 2018 at 06:40:28 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> How about DConf continues, as it should, and people submit sessions to
> ACCU as part of the outreach programme. The call for sessions opens at
> the end of this week and lasts three weeks.

Ow, that does not give me a lot of time, as I'm going to the US for a conference in the mean time.

On Tue, 2018-10-02 at 15:03 +0000, Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 14:49:31 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> > I believe it would be a mistake to drop DConf.
> 
> What about we design a DConf that focuses on interactive collaboration instead of sitting passively in a room watching someone talk over a slideshow?

I will be heading off the the annual GStreamer conference later this month – it's in Edinburgh, so, currently at least, in the UK. Two days of traditional conference with lightning talks, and two days of "hackfest". A very interesting format. I'll let you know if it works after.

Python conferences always have at least one sprints day after a conference.

-- 
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

On Wed, 2018-10-03 at 07:03 +0000, Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Wednesday, 3 October 2018 at 06:40:28 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> > How about DConf continues, as it should, and people submit
> > sessions to
> > ACCU as part of the outreach programme. The call for sessions
> > opens at
> > the end of this week and lasts three weeks.
> 
> Ow, that does not give me a lot of time, as I'm going to the US for a conference in the mean time.

I have been muttering about this a while. :-)

Being at another conference clearly makes things a bit more difficult, but having registered, logged in to the Web application, a submission just requires a title, blurb and presenter bio. This might hopefully be feasible for you, albeit less than ideal.

-- 
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

On Wednesday, 3 October 2018 at 07:33:44 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> I have been muttering about this a while. :-)

I know, but this conference was sorta last minute realisation that it would be very beneficial to attend and I've been rather busy with it.

> Being at another conference clearly makes things a bit more difficult, but having registered, logged in to the Web application, a submission just requires a title, blurb and presenter bio. This might hopefully be feasible for you, albeit less than ideal.

Good, although I can't guarantee that the blurb will match the final presentation because I'm sure a lot will happen in the mean time, but oh well.

On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 16:10:20 UTC, Johannes Loher wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 15:42:20 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 15:03:45 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
>>> That is what Joakim is talking about - changing the main event to be more like the after-hours stuff everyone loves so much, to actually use all the time to maximize the potential of in-person time.
>>
>> I'm talking about growing two different qualities much more, with my two suggested alternatives to the DConf format.
>>
>> 1. Ditch the talks, focus on in-person interaction. That's why I suggest having almost no talks, whether at a central DConf or not. You clearly agree with this.
>>
>> 2. Decentralize the DConf location, casting a much wider net over many more cities. Walter and Adam could rent a room and setup a Seattle DConf location, Andrei and Steven in Boston, Ali and Shammah in the bay area, and so on (only illustrative, I'm not imposing this on any of these people). Some of the money that went to renting out a large conference room in Munich can instead be spent on these much smaller rooms in each city.
>>
>> Charge some minimal fee for entrance in some locations, if that means they can spend time with W&A and to cover costs. I wouldn't charge anything more than $2 in my city for my event, as event organizers here have found that that's low enough to keep anyone who's really interested while discouraging fake RSVPs, ie those who have no intent of ever showing up but strangely sign up anyway (I know an organizer who says he had 150 people RSVP for a Meetup here and only 15 showed up).
>>
>> By keeping travel and ticket costs much lower, you invite much more participation.
>>
>> Obviously my second alternative to DConf listed above wouldn't be decentralized at all, only enabling in-person interaction at a still-central DConf.
>>
>> Mix and match as you see fit.
>
> I totally agree with you on your first point, i.e. making DConf more interactive. I have had very good experiences with formats like open space or barcamp. However, these formats only work if people are actually willing to participate and bring in their own ideas. Not having anything prepared can in rare cases lead to the situation where there is a lack of things to talk about (I doubt this would be the case for the D community, but it is something to keep in mind).

As long as you plan ahead and compile an online list of stuff to work on or discuss in the weeks preceding, I don't see this being a problem.

> However, I must say I disagree with your second point, i.e. decentralising DConf. As many people here have already mentioned, DConf is about talking to people. And to me it is especially important to talk to lots of different people whom I otherwise don’t get the chance to talk to in person. By decentralising the conference, we would limit the number of different people you can get in touch with directly by a huge amount.

I doubt that, it would just be different people you're talking to. There are probably three types of current and potential D users worth talking about. There's the core team, power users, and everybody else, ie casual or prospective users.

A central DConf caters to the first two, almost nobody from the largest camp, ie casual/prospective users, is flying out or paying $400 to attend. A decentralized DConf tries to get much more casual/prospective users and power users who couldn't justify traveling so far before, but it has two potential costs:

1. The core team may be spread out and not mostly gathered in one spot anymore. That is why I have suggested having them meet separately from DConf or at one of the DConf locations earlier in this thread.

2. A power user who might have paid to travel to Berlin before doesn't get access to the entire core team at once, someone like you I'm guessing. I think there's some value there, but I suspect it's much less than the value gained from a decentralized DConf.

> Just to use myself as an example, last Docnf I was able to talk to Andrei, Walter, Mike, Ali, Jonathan, Kai and lots of others and exchange ideas with them. This would not have been possible with a decentralised event (except for the off chance that all those people by chance attend the same local „meetup“).

Yes, but what did the D ecosystem concretely get out of it? Is it worth not having the hundreds of people who might have met them at decentralized DConf locations at Boston/SV/Seattle/Berlin not meeting them last year?

That's the kind of tough-minded calculation that needs to be made.

> On the other hand, I have to admit that decentralising the event would open it up for a much bigger audience, which definitely is a good idea. However, I would much prefer to have something like a main DConf and if there are enough interested people in an area who will not go to the main event, they can host their own mini conference and watch streams, make their own small workshops etc. This is what happens a lot at the Chaos Communication Congress and it seems to work really well (granted, in this case it might also be related to the limited number of tickets).

Like I said in the post you're responding to, there's ways to mix and match the qualities I mention to various degrees.

On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 17:47:35 UTC, bauss wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 16:10:20 UTC, Johannes Loher wrote:
>>
>> Just to use myself as an example, last Docnf I was able to talk to Andrei, Walter, Mike, Ali, Jonathan, Kai and lots of others and exchange ideas with them. This would not have been possible with a decentralised event (except for the off chance that all those people by chance attend the same local „meetup“).
>>
>
> And local decentralized meetups already existing. In fact I'm co-organizing one here in Denmark.
>
> Similarily there are a lot other local meetups other places around the world.

That's great, but the idea here is to turn DConf itself into a decentralized event.

> DConf is a great way to centralize all those meetups so you get to meet people from different cultures with different views on things, because whether you're aware of it or not then programming is done different in every country, because each country has their own technological needs, culture etc. and it shapes very much around that.
>
> Ex. a banking system in America is not the same as a banking system in Germany.

If each country is different, what do you gain from knowing how they do it, when your needs are different? Is much time really spent at DConf discussing: "In New Zealand, we write D this way, ...", "Oh yeah, in Germany we write D this way, ..."? I seriously doubt it, and the internet is already a giant centralizing force in many ways.

Anyway, the question isn't how to centralize or decentralize D itself or how its used, which strikes me as nonsensical, but how can we introduce as many people to the language as cheaply as possible, by avoiding the high travel costs associated with a central DConf.

On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 20:29:33 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 10/02/2018 02:26 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> I'm sure some thought and planning is now going into the next DConf, so I'd like to make sure people are aware that the conference format that DConf uses is dying off, as explained here:
>> 
>> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
>> 
>> People are now experimenting with what replaces conferences, we should be doing that too. I came up with some ideas in that thread:
>> 
>
> Yes, let's be a bunch of trend-chasing hipsters. Maybe we can even get Portlandia to do a biopic on us.

Do you just cut-n-paste these responses from some troll website? ;) It doesn't even make sense, there is no "trend" anybody's talking about chasing here. Conferences are dying and I present my own ideas on what we should replace them with.

Nobody has even talked about a trend we should jump on, so like many of the responses in this thread, it's almost as though you didn't even read the link or what I wrote. Oh wait, that's exactly what happened.

On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 06:26:30 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I'm sure some thought and planning is now going into the next DConf, so I'd like to make sure people are aware that the conference format that DConf uses is dying off, as explained here:
>
> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era

It is a matter of personal preference, and a view of a modern-day geek, in my humble opinion... I _highly disagree_. People go to conferences for different reasons. You know, even though we "computer people" tend to be branded as antisocial, there are still many of us who prefer to see someone in person, talk to him/her, meet new people, speak to them too, build the network, exchange phone numbers, etc...

As usual with conferences not all people are happy - you will ALWAYS have people who prefer more technical stuff, and people who prefer more business side - people who try to promote their products and services. - Conferences are brilliant places for them.

Another group of people interested in conferences and meetups are recruiters. My company found few new colleagues this way...

Yet another group are people who also want to see the town where the conference is held - it is a form of tourism if you like.

Yes, you can have all that interaction with some internet-conferencing software, but not at the level when people interact with each other directly!

On Wednesday, 3 October 2018 at 01:28:37 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On 10/2/18 4:34 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 09:39:14 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
>>> On 10/1/18 11:26 PM, Joakim wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> I disagree.
>> 
>> It is not clear what you disagree with, since almost nothing you say has any bearing on my original post. To summarize, I suggest changing the currently talk-driven DConf format to either
>> 
>> 1. a more decentralized collection of meetups all over the world, where most of the talks are pre-recorded, and the focus is more on introducing new users to the language or
>> 
>> 2. at least ditching most of the talks at a DConf still held at a central location, maybe keeping only a couple panel discussions that benefit from an audience to ask questions, and spending most of the time like the hackathon at the last DConf, ie actually meeting in person.
>> 
>
> This point has a subtle flaw. Many of the talks raise points of discussion that would otherwise go without discussion, and potentially unnoticed, if it were not for the person bringing it up. The talks routinely serve as a launchpad for the nightly dinner sessions. Benjamin Thauts 2016 talk about shared libraries is one such example. Indeed every single year has brought at least one (but usually more) talk that opened up some new line of investigation for the dinner discussions.

I thought it was pretty obvious from my original post, since I volunteered to help with the pre-recorded talks, but the idea is to have pre-recorded talks no matter whether DConf is held in a central location or not.

>> Since both of these alternatives I suggest are much more about in-person interaction, which is what you defend, and the only big change I propose is ditching the passive in-person talks, which you do not write a single word in your long post defending, I'm scratching my head about what you got out of my original post.
>> 
>>> There is much more to the conference than just a 4-day meetup with talks. The idea that it's just the core 8-15 people with a bunch of hangers-on is patently false. It's not about the conversations I have with the "core" people. It's Schveighoffer, or Atila, or Jonathan, or any of a long list of people who are interested enough in coming. Remember these people self-selected to invest non-trivial treasure to be there, they  are ALL worthy of conversing with.
>> 
>> Since both my mooted alternatives give _much more_ opportunity for such interaction, I'm again scratching my head at your reaction.
>> 
>
> This is untrue. See responses further down.

It is true. You merely prefer certain interaction for yourself to the overall interaction of the community.

>>> Is it a "mini-vaction"? Yea, sure, for my wife. For her it's a four day shopping spree in Europe. For me it's four days of wall-to-wall action that leaves me drop-dead exhausted at the end of the day.
>> 
>> So it's the talks that provide this or the in-person interaction? If the latter, why are you arguing against my pushing for more of it and ditching the in-person talks?
>> 
>
> It's everything. The talks, the coding, the talking, the drinking. All of it has some social component I find valuable.

Please try to stay on the subject. Nobody's talking about getting rid of coding/talking/drinking, in fact, the idea is to have _more_ time for those, by ditching the in-person talks.

So the relevant info here would be what you find "social" about passively watching a talk in person with 100 other people in the same room, which as usual, you don't provide.

>>> Every time I see somebody predicting the end of "X" I roll my eyes. I have a vivid memory of the rise of Skype and videoconferencing in the early 2000's giving way to breathless media reports about how said tools would kill the airlines because people could just meet online for a trivial fraction of the price.
>> 
>> People make stupid predictions all the time. Ignoring all such "end of" predictions because many predict badly would be like ignoring all new programming languages because 99% are bad. That means you'd never look at D.
>> 
>> And yes, some came true: almost nobody programs minicomputers or buys standalone mp3 players like the iPod anymore, compared to how many used to at their peak.
>> 
>
> Sure, but the predictions about videoconferencing have yet to come true. As told but the data itself. The travel industry is setting new records yearly in spite of videoconferencing. That's not conjecture or opinion, go look for yourself. As I have previously suggested, the stock prices and order-books of Airbus and Boeing are are record highs. Airplanes are more packed than ever (called load-factor). For example, Delta's system-wide load-factor was 85.6% last year. Which means that 85.6% of all available seats for the entire year were occupied. (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/221085/passenger-load-factor-of-delta-air-lines/). Airlines are delivering entire planes for business travelers.
>
> All of this demonstrates that videoconferencing has done nothing to curb travel demand and the current data suggest that it is unlikely too in the foreseeable future. That it might at some point in the distant future is not relevant to this discussion.

Yes, you know what is even more irrelevant to this discussion? Your entire unrelated tangent about business travel versus video-conferencing, which has essentially nothing to do with the topic of this thread, ie what a good format for DConf would be.

>>> However, it's 2018 and the airlines are reaping record profits on the backs of business travelers (ask me how I know). Airlines are even now flying planes with NO standard economy seats for routes that cater specifically to business travelers (e.g. Singapore Airlines A350-900ULR). The order books (and stock prices) of both Airbus and Boeing are at historic highs.
>> 
>> You know what is much higher? Business communication through email, video-conferencing, online source control, etc. that completely replaced old ways of doing things like business travel or sending physical packages. However, business travel might still be up- I don't know as I haven't seen the stats, and you provide nothing other than anecdotes- because all that virtual communication might have enabled much more collaboration and trade that also grew business travel somewhat.
>> 
>
> The reason I lump business and conference travel together is because that is precisely how the travel industry defines it. Primarily due to the fact that businesses pay for the overwhelming majority of conference travel. You may disagree with that characterization, but that is how it's defined.

Again a wholly irrelevant point, as who cares how they define it? Maybe if you presented some data on how the combined business/conference travel miles has gone up but you have none, and even then it would be spurious since we only care about the conference portion for this thread.

> And airlines kitting out entire airplanes for business travel isn't an anecdote. It's a simple, and verifiable, fact that you too could verify should you so choose. I provided you with all the relevant data necessary to verify for yourself.

I see no data with which to "verify" it, another one of your weird prevarications.

>>> There are more conferences, attendees, and business travelers than there has ever been in history, in spite of the great technological leaps in videoconferencing technology in the past two decades.
>>>
>>> The market has spoken. Reports of the death of business/conference travel have been greatly exaggerated.
>> 
>> You are conflating two completely different markets here, business versus conference travel. Regarding conferences, your experience contradicts that of the iOS devs in the post I linked and the one he links as evidence, where that blogger notes several conferences that have shut down. In your field, it is my understanding that MS has been paring back and consolidating their conferences too, though I don't follow MS almost at all.
>> 
>
> Yes, some conferences shutdown, but many more started up. Your premise is that "Popular Conference X was shutdown so all conferences are dead forevars!"

No, try actually reading the links I mentioned, he lists 10 Apple-related conferences that have shut down and says nothing has replaced them.

> In reality the attendance to conferences is going to depend on the community it serves. For example, IOS has been getting primarily cosmetic updates and bugfixes for the past few cycles, but there really isn't much truly new tech that needs to be communicated because what IOS does hasn't changed significantly in years. In this case, a conference being moved to a virtual environment with a limited number of presentations my be the most effective course. This is not surprising, it is the natural lifecycle of things.

Others report the same for other tech, including one guy in the comments there who runs a javascript conference in South Africa.

> For example, Microsoft killed PDC after 2008, only to bring back a different, but related conference (Build) in 2011. Now .NET has it's own virtual conference in Sept, but Build still has a lot of .NET related content at Build, it's just the Build's broader scope means that a lot of good content can't make it in, so yea, virtual-conference for the content that didn't make the cut. Microsoft took an incredible amount of heat for canceling PDC. So they brought it back with a new name.

The point is that the MS ecosystem has been cutting back on conferences also, just as I said.

> But saying that because Apple did it for one of their conferences (note that WWDC is still a thing) that all conferences everywhere are dead is both prima facie ridiculous and easily disproven.

No, what's easily disproven is that _nobody said it was only one conference that shut down_.

>>> The reason for this is fundamental to human psychology and, as such, is unlikely to change in the future. Humans are social animals, and no matter how hard we have tried, nothing has been able to replace the face-to-face meeting for getting things done. Be it the conversations we have over beers after the talks, or the epic number of PR's that come out the hackathon, or even mobbing the speaker after a talk.
>> 
>> It is funny that you say this on a forum where we're communicating despite never having met "face-to-face," discussing a language where 99.999% of the work is done online by people who don't need any "face-to-face" meetings to get "things done." :)
>> 
>> Also, my suggestions are about enabling more face-to-face time, not less, so there's that too.
>> 
>>> Additionally, the conference serves other "soft" purposes. Specifically, marketing and education. The conference provides legitimacy to DLang and the Foundation both by it's mere existence and as a venue for companies using DLang to share their support (via sponsorships) or announce their products (as seen by the Weka.io announcement at DConf 2018) which further enhances the marketing of both the product being launched and DLang itself.
>> 
>> Don't make me laugh: what part of this marketing/legitimization couldn't be done at either of the two alternatives I gave?
>>  >> I have spoken to Walter about DConf numerous times. He has nothing
>>> against, and indeed actively encourages, local meetups. But they do not serve the purpose that DConf does. My understanding from my conversations with Walter is that the primary purpose of DConf is to provide a venue that is open to anyone interested to come together and discuss all things D. He specifically does not want something that is only limited to the "core" members. As this suggestion runs precisely counter to the primary stated purpose of DConf it is unlikely to gain significant traction from the D-BDFL.
>> 
>> Wrong, both of my suggestions fulfil that purpose _better_. What they don't do is limit attendance to those who have the passion _and_ can afford the time and money to travel 2-20 hours away to a single location, just so they can get all the in-person benefits you claim.
>> 
>
> You misunderstand my point. What you are asking for is the balkanization of the community by splitting it up along regional geographic boundaries. What you are demanding would mean that we only ever meet the people from our specific geographic regions. Not one of the people I listed is in my geographic region. Therefore I would NEVER meet them, and indeed, I never would have if not for DConf. This demand is tribalism at it's worst.

First off, I never "demanded" anything. I have presented reasons why the current format should be changed and said it makes a lot of sense to change, so much so that not doing so would signal negligence.

If you want to meet someone from a DConf location that's farther away, nobody's forcing you to go to the local DConf: you can always fly across the country to see Andrei and Steven in Boston. Yes, you won't get to see all of the core team if they're not all there, but I don't see why you're so obsessed with that. You contribute almost nothing to the dlang organization on github, what do you want to fly across the world to see them for anyway?

https://github.com/search?utf8=✓&q=user%3Adlang+author%3Alightbender&type=Issues

I see six merged pulls, none in the last four years, most of them trivial C declarations.

Your balkanization/tribalism claims are really ridiculous, suggesting you don't even know what those words mean. Tribalism refers to trying to keep everybody in your tribe together, usually by attacking a common enemy, yet you simultaneously accuse me of balkanization, ie splitting up the community by decentralizing DConf. So which is it: am I trying to keep the tribe together or split it up? Don't answer that, I know whatever you say won't make any sense either.

The truth is that you're the one here suffering from tribalism, because you'd rather keep the traditional DConf-going tribe together than open the community up with many more DConf locations. That only causes "balkanization" if you're forced to go to the local DConf, but since you have the interest and can afford to fly to any far-away location anyway, clearly that's not a problem for you.

> The purpose of DConf is that it is specifically open to any person from anywhere in the world who wishs to attend. It is a global meeting point for everyone. What you keep propounding is a Meetup. We have those. They have not yet been able to replace DConf in terms of cost-benefit effectiveness as judged by the attendance of DConf. Balkanizing the community will no more produce forward motion than a single conference limited to just the "core" people.

What is the use of having a single "global meeting point" that 99.5+% of the community doesn't attend? Yes, a decentralized DConf has some similarities to meetups, but it's not the same. For one, these would be all-day events, not one-off talks like meetups.

I have no idea how you determine the "cost-benefit effectiveness" of meetups versus DConf, considering an order of magnitude or two more people attend the meetups than DConf. Andrei's talk in Munich last year alone had more people attending than DConf:

https://www.meetup.com/Munich-D-Programmers/events/243402617/

>>> Yes, it is expensive, but in all the years I've attended, I have not once regretted spending the money. And indeed, coming from the west coast of the US, I have one of the more expensive (and physically taxing) trips to make. I know a number of people who found jobs in D through DConf, would that not make the conference worth it to them?
>> 
>> How many people got jobs versus how many attended? Would that money to get 100 people in the same room seven times have been much better spent on other things?  Run the cost-benefit analysis and I think it's obvious my two suggestions come out better. At best, you can maybe say that wasn't the case at the first DConf in 2007, when high-speed internet wasn't as pervasive and Youtube was only two years old, but not for every DConf since.
>> 
>
> To the one person who did, the collective cost is irrelevant. To them it was literally a life-changing event. Is their experience somehow less relevant, important, or meaningful?

You don't make organizational plans for the D community based on emotional pleas about a single "life-changing event," especially since no reason has been given why that event wouldn't happen anyway if the DConf format changed.

Rather, the goal should be to enable the growth of the D community as a whole, not finding a few people within the community jobs that supposedly "change their life."

>>> Something is only expensive if you derive less value from it than it costs. And for many people here, I understand if the cost-benefit analysis does not favor DConf. But calling for an end to DConf simply because it doesn't meet someones cost-benefit ratio is inconsiderate to the rest of us who do find the benefit.
>> 
>> I don't care about your personal cost-benefit ratio. I care about the cost-benefit analysis to the language and ecosystem as a whole.
>> 
>
> What, pray tell, is so cost ineffective about the conference if enough people choose to attend every year that it does not loose money?

Just because DConf currently covers its costs has essentially no bearing on whether it is the best possible use of that money.

Apple could have just kept coming out with new iPods for years and been very profitable, rather than coming out with a different product like the iPhone in 2007. But the fact that they made that leap into the smartphone market is what makes them the largest and most profitable company in the world today, even though they knew and discussed the fact that it would cannibalize their existing iPod business.

Similarly, the D leadership's goal shouldn't be to maintain a profitable but antiquated DConf format, but to grow the community much more.

>>> Nobody is making you go, and, since you already get everything you want from the YouTube video uploads during the conference, why do you care if the rest of us "waste" our money on attending the conference? That is our choice. Not yours.
>> 
>> Try reading the older forum thread I originally linked, Jonathan and I have already been over all this. D is a collective effort, and it's a colossal waste of the community's efforts to spend all that time and money on the dying conference format that DConf has been using.
>> 
>> It signals to me and many others that D is not a serious effort to get used as a language, but simply a bunch of hobbyists who want to have "fun" meeting up at an exotic locale once a year, in between hacking on an experimental language that they're fine if nobody else uses.
>> 
>
> It may signal that to you, but I have seen no evidence that it signals it to others.

Until recently, nobody strongly made this case for changing the format. But now that I have and the market shows that format declining, I think that will be the signal sent by keeping the status quo.

> And I'd hardly call Berlin or Munich "exotic". Now if we could get something going in Mallorca, or Sardinia, or Bali... Beam me up Scotty!

For most engineers not living in Germany or Palo Alto, those locales are exotic enough. That there are bigger party locations is neither here nor there.

>> If that's D's focus, fine, just own it. Put it on the front page: "This is a hobbyist language, please don't bother using it in production. We are much more focused on where we can vacation together next year than trying to spread awareness and improve the language."
>> 
>> Regardless of whether you post that notice or not, that is what continuing the current DConf format advertises, given that others have already been moving away from it.
>> 
>>> Note: Limiting anything to "core" members is a guaranteed way to create a mono-culture and would inevitably lead to the stagnation of D.
>> 
>> Good, then you agree with me that we should avoid such stagnation by broadening DConf to be a bunch of meetups in many more cities?
>> 
>>> Which is why anybody can post to all NG's, even the internals NG.
>> 
>> This is not actually true. There are two newsgroups that seem to have that designation, which show up separately as `internals` and `dmd` at forum.dlang.org, and the latter doesn't allow me to post to it without registering somewhere, unlike the rest of the web forums.
>> 
>> Guess what the current DConf format does to most people who don't attend too...
>> 
>> I'm done responding to these irrational responses that ignore everything I wrote. I'll just link them to this long debunking from now on.
>
> In all of your response I get the sense that there is a deeply personal motivation behind your crusade. Yet you dance around that motivation carefully

That's funny, because that's precisely the sense I get from you, given your wildly incoherent responses so far that cannot even get the facts straight, like how many conferences were shown to be closing.

There is nothing "deeply personal," nor is it a "crusade." I don't know how I can dance around a motivation that until now nobody other than you has even mentioned.

> you routinely dismiss other peoples experiences as invalid either simply because you disagree,

Please point to a single instance where I dismissed someone's "experiences," you will find none in this entire thread. Nobody has even talked about their experiences, and I'm not sure how you even "disagree" with an experience. One can disagree with the conclusions they draw from that experience, but not the experience itself.

> or some other conference did something different

I have literally not presented _any_ other conference as precedent. I think this may now pass more than a dozen times you simply make up stuff you think I said. That's a stunning record for just two posts.

> and you set up strawmen to attack

Please point to a single strawman I created. I have pointed out more than a dozen you made up.

> rather than directly answering questions.

Heh, I have obsessively answered all your questions, while you just ignore mine.

> Please. For the benefit of all of us. Explain your motivation.

It is very simple. Unlike you, I'm presenting ideas to advance the D language and community. I'm not making arguments from the point of "I'd like to have fun in Berlin for 3-4 days and then ignore D again for the next four years."

> The level of emotion you are bringing to this debate cannot be rationally explained on the merits of your argument alone.

There is no emotion in the vast majority of what I wrote, merely dispassionate arguments. I have gotten somewhat frustrated with how you repeatedly make up stuff and attribute it to me or strangely talk about how we're "social animals" when I was pushing for more in-person interaction in the first place, but the only time I got angry was when you mirrored Jonathan's argument from the previous thread, basically saying, "We enjoy flying across the world for the current DConf format, why should we listen to anything you say?" I then pointed out that exhibited a very narrow mindset, ie that your personal enjoyment was more important than what actually advanced the D ecosystem.

Anyway, it's clear that you're incapable of contributing to a debate on the DConf format, considering all the factual errors you've made so far and that you finally stooped to the level of questioning my motivations, so I'll stop responding to you now.