How to Host or Attend a Tiny Conference
briancasel.com
briancasel.com
> A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" (Latin: aut delectare aut prodesse). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, were carried on until as recently as the 1940s in urban settings.
The idea of a small group of folks coordinating what is essentially a combination vacation / work trip seems viable, and I can see how it would be productive/enjoyable, but this isn't a "conference" any more than me going out to brunch with a group of my friends and chatting about DevOps is a conference.
To be clear: literally speaking, "conference" is basically a useless word: it just means folks getting together and talking. Practically speaking, if we're going to use "conference" to mean any time multiple people talk to each other, the word stops being useful for communication, because when it's used it doesn't convey any information.
It's "convention" that denotes "large conference". (OED, again: a large meeting or conference, especially of members of a political party or a particular profession)
I think the remaining debate is about semantic distinctions in individual connotations eluded to in the "formal" part of the literal definition of "conference". To many here it seems like open enrollment is a formality they expect, though an interesting argument here would be that invite-only is more generally/historically considered the more "formal" in connotation. It's an interesting assumption to question in people's connotations of what "conference" means.
The idea of a "conference" being a very tiny group of handpicked invitation-only friends to discuss a shared intellectual interest has a long history. The Solvay Conferences[1] being a good example. Ernest Solvay curated the physicists to invite and used his wealth to fund the meetings. There was also some rest & relaxation deliberately woven into those meetings.
But yes, this intimate gathering of peers is probably not thought of as a "conference" as much as Apple's WWDC and Microsoft's BUILD conferences.
We called it a "conference" in lieu of not thinking of a better word. It's also only for our dev/design team, and we get to ski/snowboard (although that's because our Swiss office is based in a mountain resort...)
It is a one-day conference and we fill the day with talks on engaging topics for the audience. (We're techies, so this works better for us) There's been 10-18 attendees and this has been working well as long as the room we have been in has had the right size. It is invitation only, and we're struggling to keep the invitation list from growing too quickly. We're taking turns giving the presentations, so we have a reason to keep inviting the same people back. We order take-out for lunch and after the talks we go out for dinner.
This is dirt cheap. The admission price is really that you have to prepare a talk once in a while. We sometimes charge a little bit to cover costs for coffee and snacks and we have made an investment in a HDMI capture card.
The most striking similarity with the "Tiny Conferences" of the article is that it is definitely the conference I get the best value out of. I heartily recommend organizing something like it! :)
(If you are super curious, recordings mostly in Norwegian are here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiAz5MrT56_p2DCt0D4fz8w A few are in English, and some are captioned in English)
Precisely 1 of the event photos shared is mixed gender. I'm not sure he's enough consideration in this guide to the gender dynamic, and this quote is one of the prime examples of where things can go wrong.
The quote you originally had shoots down your complaints anyway, if you're upfront about it you can plan around it. And if people have strong preferences for same sex lodgings they can plan that upfront, or if not, maybe I'm misunderstanding your complaint?
The problem is that on HN I would gather most people are tech workers or startup folks and have gone to "real" conferences which are big with tons of people, where Brian Casel fits more into the content marketing, consultant, life-style business sphere, which is usually for self-employed consultants, or 1-2 person bootstrapped SaaS or service businesses. In that sphere, there is so much value to be had talking to another successful person doing something similar to you and how they manage a solo 6 figure business and/or 100k+ mailing list empire.
As mentioned in the article, it's probably more akin to a mastermind group (again which seems like it only fits into that latter sphere, unless you are a high level operating exec), but with some variability into who gets in and who stays.
As someone who went from startup world into consulting world, reading and listening to the folks in that sphere, this kind of stuff is pretty common and is actually super valuable, perhaps 1000x more value then I've ever seen in another conference I've attended, especially since I'm more shy and dislike talking to rando's and going to strange parties knowing no one after hours, but this is a small group of people in an intimate setting where everyone can meet each other and get a chance to talk, like forced networking.
I don't think a group of friends or colleagues going skiing to discuss dev-ops or NodeJS would be that relevant or worthwhile in this type of case, but perhaps a group of founders running companies with 5-10 employees facing the same challenges might be.
I don't do any really small conferences but I do have several regulars in the 100-300 person range and they're definitely my favorites.
Is there something like this in Western Europe? I've attended both conferences and meetups, but there's too much presentation and too little discussion.
Mostly people assume that I'm joking about doing this, but it is legitimately something I think would be a good idea. I got tired of seeing the same reused slide decks in conferences/conventions, and I love the idea of a conference medium where the medium's limitations can be creative opportunities (you can't present a slide deck in ride line, but you can speak to a passion), and naturally present a different sort of conference rhythm. Seriously, what if at the end of each session, whether it was good or bad, there was an amusement park ride to enjoy?
It may be worth observing that conferences aren't binary "tiny" and "big vendor conferences," the latter of which can get into the 10s of thousands.
There is a size in the 100-200 or so range that does tend to involve sponsorships and finding some sort of event space but is still relatively intimate. Fees can still be pretty modest.
This one has the cost listed as $595/person. That’s probably above the running costs, which are likely anywhere between 50-80% of 595*11.
(the island we acquired for the purposes of inspiring and connecting great souls).
Off grid adventures and transformational relationships.
to make a cryptocurrency around spending time on it? < MAJA was created as an experiment, we've been giving it to people we are inspired by. It's backed by time on the island.
I have been to unconferences in mountain resorts. Actually great experiences but they’re not cheap. The very significant advantage is the intensity of the experience.
Yeah, I went to Hooters...conferenced pretty hard, drank too much, conferenced all over the sidewalk...you can tell I am serious because I use the word conference a lot...conference.