No Rest For The Weekend » events

Why do we need conferences?

markstickley — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:58:21 +0000

Seriously? Why do we need to spend hundreds of pounds, dollars, euros or whatever to attend these events? They are pretty pricey and more often that not they are nowhere near home so you have the added cost of transport and hotel bills and all those meals you’re going to consume out while you’re away. It’s not cheap, and even if you can afford it, why spend it?

The Talks… it’s all about the presentations & sessions!

Is it really though? These people who get on the stage and talk: Yeah OK, they’re great. They do a fantastic presentation, insightful with great slides and funny too! But don’t they put articles on their blogs for free that cover that topic and a wealth of others besides, all year round? If hearing and seeing them actually say the words is so integral to getting their message across, they could very easily record themselves and publish it in a video or audio format right there on their blogs.

In fact, recently some conferences have taken to publishing all the talks that are given right there on the web for all to see. Everyone can watch, even people who didn’t pay to go to the conference itself! I was watching the videos from a conference that I didn’t go to – Build – which was held in Belfast at the end of last year. How nice of them to go to all the effort of filming it, editing it and putting it online, I thought. And the talks are great, I’d encourage you to go and watch them. But I was thinking… how would I feel about this if I actually PAID to go to the conference?

Money talks

If I’d laid down cold hard cash to see the talks, wouldn’t I be unhappy that others who hadn’t could then just browse to a page and see all the content… for free? Maybe a little. But then again I’m all for sharing information and content, especially when it’s of benefit to the community so maybe I’d be a little conflicted about that.

Most people I ask, however, seem not to mind this sort of behaviour. They seem to think that conferences go beyond the talks, and I’d be inclined to agree.

It’s not about what you know

I think that while the talks are nice and all, what most people value the most from conferences is the opportunity to meet other like-minded people. Or to put it in business-speak: networking. Between the talks and in the evening(s), you get to mingle with people who all have their own goals, ideas, methods, questions and accomplishments in the same field as you and are quite willing to share them with you. The more people you talk to and the more conferences you go to (where you’re likely to see these people again) the more contacts and even friends you are likely to make.

Nothing drives this home more clearly than the general chatter I picked up from this years SXSW which I was sadly unable to attend. Essentially, the vast majority of talk I picked up from SXSW was not about the panels and talks (which no doubt were excellent) but they were about the parties, BBQs and the socialising. The Networking.

But this brings me back to my original point. Why do we need conferences? If all we need to make contacts is to get people who are in similar lines of work to talk to each other why don’t we do it all the time? The talks are nice but completely unnecessary to get what people seem to value the most from conferences.

Pub Standards

Pub Standards is something that happens in London on a monthly basis. It also happens in Melbourne, I believe (Wikipedia confirms this so it must be true). What it is is this: a whole bunch of web folk get together and take over a pub for an evening. They sit and drink and talk about whatever they please which may or may not include topics such as:

What they are doing at work
What they are watching on TV
The contents of that controversial blog post that’s been doing the rounds on Twitter
The latest CSS tricks that they’ve learned or seen in action
Why anyone who uses a Palm Pre should be hugged / pitied / unfollowed / shot on sight
Anything and everything else

…you get the idea. It sounds pretty much like the after party at a conference then.

The other night it was in fact my first Pub Standards (for shame) but it certainly won’t be my last. I just can’t imagine why this hasn’t caught on more places than just London and Melbourne!

The reality

While it would be awesome to think that we could all get our conference fix by reading blogs, watching online video and going to Pub Standards the reality is that it’s just not logistically possible.

There are actually people outside of London (and indeed outside of any large city) who are involved in the web industry who just couldn’t make it in to the city on a regular basis. They could start their own group but you really need a large city environment to get a decent sized and varied bunch of people together each month. In addition to that, conferences can provide the chance for people to meet developers from other parts of the country or from the other side of the world which local meet-ups just can’t.

It would be nice to think that we might be able to organise some kind of International Pub Standards where people fly in and join the fun for a few times every year, but that wouldn’t work for so many reasons:

Spouses and significant others often remain unconvinced of the value of developers drinking beer together.
No one’s going to fly in from Amsterdam just for a night out at the pub – it has to be for longer to make it worth it.
Any longer than an evening and you start having to take things like food breaks and accommodation into account… and the conversation could start to need a catalyst of some sort.
No company is going to pay your transatlantic flights for what can only be described as a night down the pub with a bunch of geeks.

The talks that you get at a conference and the information you glean from them, or the questions that arise from them seem to solve all these problems quite neatly. And let’s face it they generally are quite good, otherwise they wouldn’t bother making them available for everyone else on the internet.

Is that your final answer?

Why do we need conferences? It’s so we can meet people and gel as a community on a global level in a way that you can’t do by just using Twitter, Facebook and all of their social contemporaries.

But let’s not underestimate the value of local groups either. I find it astounding that Pub Standards is only happening in London and Melbourne. There must be so many places, large cities, where there are plenty enough web developers interested in Standards and beer to get a regular meet-up going. If you live or work in one of them, why not start one up? I’m sure it would be very rewarding on many levels.

BarCamp London 7

markstickley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:06:47 +0000

Well I didn’t quite know what to expect having never attended a BarCamp or indeed an “un-conference” before. What I found was one of the best geek-xperiences that I have come across, something that I would recommend to anyone into what they do and who enjoys the company of other people also into what they do.

Un-conference

So the premise behind an un-conference is that there are talks, but there is nothing scheduled when the event starts. Instead, right at the start all the attendees fill out the gaps in the schedule with sessions, presentations and talks that they have prepared (or will prepare over the course of the event). Everyone is encouraged to participate, especially those for whom it is their first BarCamp, which meant I was going to be doing one.

Public speaking isn’t one of my stronger qualities, but one thing I do know about it is that the more you do it the better (and the more confident) you get. This is a fact, and it’s also helped by the fact that all the attendees are lovely. The thing about this kind of event is that no-one is going to want to pick a fight with you or want to make you feel small. If they attended your presentation in preference to someone else’s then they genuinely want to hear what you have to say on the topic you have chosen. Also, most people will be in the same boat – all having their own sessions to run – and so they will treat you in the way they hope to be treated themselves. Finally, as it’s a free event, no-one will feel cheated if your talk doesn’t live up to the high expectations that might surround a conference which costs, say, £300. It’s the perfect incubator for talent!

Variety is the spice of life, and BarCamps

The sessions can be on anything, and when I say anything I mean anything. There were sessions on topics varying from CSS to Erotic Writing, the alcohol ban parties on the Tube to multi touch programming on Snow Leopard and from Autism to LOST. Whatever your interest or topic of expertise, there will always be people interested in what you have to say!

I’d say my main complaint about the event is that you can’t attend all the sessions! Obviously with so many sessions happening all at once, filming them all would be tricky and so it’s very much a case of if you miss it you miss it, so don’t miss it!

Free is my favourite price

BarCamp is free. I say that; it must have taken some serious clout to pull it all together but to the attendees it’s free. It’s all done through sponsorship and the generously donated time of the wonderful team that organise it all. The sponsors are many which means they all only need to donate a little to add up to a decent pot of cash. That said, the prominence of the sponsors was minimal which I think added to the general feel of the event. It was all about sharing ideas and information and not wanting anything back for it – a fine and noble idea, and one I can get behind.

Of course staff from the sponsors are free to come along and give presentations (which the did, at least in some cases) but these are usually pretty interesting, at least to some people. And hey, if you don’t find it interesting you don’t have to go – there are probably 7-8 other talks happening at the same time… take your pick!

My experiences

I had already decided to do a CSS-related presentation (a blog version of which is forthcoming) but sadly this meant I had to miss a chunk of sessions during the first day just in the name of finishing off. I wish I had started to prepare earlier but it’s that always the case? It had to be done though… imagine turning up to do a talk with a half-finished set of slides. Not too impressive.

So what follows is a list of the sessions I attended (or would have attended if I hadn’t been preparing my own):

Saturday

BarCamp Bootstrap: 1st Timers Panel
How we broke the tube with Facebook (Steve Emslie)
Google Street View + Virtual Reality Goggles (Tom Scott) (Regrettably missed)
CSS Nuggets – Some snippets of CSS that will help you make better sites and stuff (Anna Debenham) (Regrettably missed)
Split fares aka Hack yourself a cheaper train ticket (Sam Machin) (Regrettably missed)
Mobile Stats 2008-2009 (Adam Cohen-Rose)
Design in Lost (yes, the TV show) (Inayaili de Leon)
Don’t break my stuff! A guide to writing CSS for widgets and pages with widgets (Mark Stickley) (My session!)
Want to write a tech book? (Gavin Bell)
Sex and other things we don’t talk about (Ian Forrester)
Why I give web clients no control over their project (and why they love it) (Alex Teugels)
Web Scale Identifiers (Use and Abuse) (Ade)

Sunday

Linked Data and the Semantic Web for Dummies (David F. Flanders)
Designing for the teenage generation – what they ‘dig’ (Jack Franklin)
Multitouch: on Snow Leopard + Quartz Composer & Chuck (@gernot)
10 Fucking Awesome Bands You Should Be Listening To (Mary Rose Cook)
Putting telly on the Internet (David F. Flanders)
Photography is not a crime (know your rights as a photographer) (Martin C)
Lightning Talks
Teach Me How To Run A New BarCamp – Cultures, Languages (BSL) (@bjfletcher)
Autism, Internet and Antelope: Cognitive Accessibility and how people with autism use the web (Jamie + Lion)

If you’re interested in the full list of available talks, here’s the Saturday talks and the Sunday talks.

I’ll just run over the panels that I actually went to and remember enough of to talk about extremely briefly to give some idea as to how they went.

BarCamp Bootstrap

A brief introduction to BarCamps for first-timers. I figured I’d only be a first-timer once so why not pop along. We were told to enjoy it and given brief tactical instructions on the inevitable games of Werewolf that would take place overnight. Then we took part in an exercise which was supposed to both help us get over our fear of public speaking and put us more about saying something stupid by actually standing up and saying something stupid (we were fed a line) in front of everyone else. Good introduction!

How we broke the tube

Brief account of a couple of guys who innocently created a Facebook group encouraging people to go and have a “last drink” on the tube the night before the alcohol ban came into force and thought nothing more of it. Until it started to gain massive traction ultimately shutting down large parts of the tube on the night in question! They also asked if anyone knew how to mine the Facebook data to try and find who was responsible for the tipping point which caused such a huge uptake.

Mobile stats

Basically going through a bunch of stats on mobile device usage which showed the screen resolution of devices is quite rapidly on the up and how Apple crept up from 6th place to 5th in the device manufacturers sales charts in just one year.

Design in LOST

Going over some of the finer points of the hit TV show and showing how the plot and prop design goes so in depth that you wouldn’t really notice some of the more elaborate details unless you were paying meticulous attention. Also covered some of the cross promotion with other brands and Easter Eggs that don’t add anything but are a real treat to those who spot them. Fascinating!

Want to write a tech book

Tips mainly on how not to write a tech book actually! Don’t drag it out and don’t try and do it as well as a full-time job were the main ones I took away from that.

Sex and other things

What was essentially a hosted discussion about geeks, sexuality, how comfortable we are with it and why. It was interesting to listen to but I wasn’t compelled to get involved…

Why I give my clients no control

Alex took us through how he runs his business which is basically to take complete control of his clients’ sites, charge them an ongoing fee and make sure conversions keep moving skywards. A very different and interesting approach which I haven’t seen before. Strangely enough this talk was given by an old school friend of mine who I hadn’t seen since all those years ago which was an unexpected bonus!

Web Scale Identifiers

An interesting talk that gave way to an interesting discussion that went on for almost an hour! It’s basically an idea that’s floating around that “wouldn’t it be nice if people would stop making their own ids for objects and start using standard ones.” For example, books have ISBNs. But what about things that don’t have a centralised authority? How do you identify the id to use? Very interesting.

Designing for teenagers

As a teenager himself, Jack gave us an insight into what they like and what they are indifferent to. Turns out that the average teenager doesn’t give two hoots about fancy CSS3 rounded corners, gradients and the like – they are mostly interested in the content. Especially flash games. I still can’t help thinking, though, that if there was some excellent content or games available but the design was terrible they wouldn’t really be so interested…

Multi touch on Snow Leopard

This was an interesting talk on programming with Quartz and the presenter demoed his own test app in which he showed how the trackpads on modern MacBooks can detect up to 11 simultaneous touches. Pretty incredible!

10 Fucking Awesome Bands

Mary took us through 10 bands which in her opinion no-one should be without. Most of them were not so much to my taste but you can’t please them all, eh? Afterwards she took suggestions of other bands that should be added to the list.

Putting telly on the internet

Some of the more technical challenges the iPlayer team have experienced. Very interesting stuff.

Photography is not a crime

Fascinating talk on photographers rights and how little law enforcement actually seems to understand them on the whole. Basically, anything you can see while standing in a public place is legal and fair game, although snapping people’s kids and other such intrusions are usually misunderstood and it pays to ask first. It’s just polite!

Lightning talks

The lightning talks session is actually a series of 5 minute talks by whoever wants to do them. The trouble with these is they aren’t really long enough to be that memorable… I do remember one about a collaborative art project which was quite interesting.

Teach me how to run a BarCamp

This was kind of a ‘reverse’ session where the guy running it basically asked the audience their advice on how to set up, publicise, fund, organise and run a BarCamp… for deaf people! The responses were interesting, especially when discussing the advantages of a deaf-only event.

Autism

Jamie (and his friend Lion) gave an interesting talk on how cognitive diversity affects internet use and taught us all a little about autism and how it affects people. Very useful indeed!