Clojure/West conference has launched

There are really two (well 3) things you should hope to get out of a conference.

1) Information. The most visible reason to go to a conference is to extract information from speakers in a direct form. Whether this actually "works" depends largely on whether you (the attendee) have the right prior knowledge and expectations and whether the speaker has the ability to teach you something. If either of those is wildly off, the session will be a miss. My goal as an organizer is to find great speakers and make expectations as clear as possible to both attendees and speakers so that this connection is maximized.

That said, there are many books, videos, tutorials, blogs, etc on Clojure (or any other topic). Will you learn better from a teacher than a book? Maybe. Hard to say. Sometimes seeing a talk live forces a focus and clarity that you would not otherwise have. In short, I can't answer this for you. :) But I will work hard to create the environment for it.

2) Relationships. AKA the "hallway track". This is something that is much harder to get through online learning - meeting and creating relationships with the people creating and using the technology. For many people it is hard to quantify this value (unless you're trying to get a job or something very concrete). But I'd say this is every bit as important as #1.

3) Inspiration. This one is even more elusive, but a conference with the right speakers and audience can be electric and inspire you to learn and create. Clojure is a young and exciting community right now with a ton of crazy smart people. I find it quite energizing to be talking to people in the context of that.

You may find that taking a training course (which we will be offering prior to the conference), gets the really hard focus on #1 which is what you want. However, that training will certainly be more than $450. :)

The cost is an interesting thing to attempt to justify, and it depends entirely upon how you take on the conference. If you simply attend, sit in the audience, and listen to some of the talks, with rare exceptions I would argue that the cost isn't worth it for any conference. You'll notice that many conferences put videos of their talks online–for free. There's a reason for this: the talks are not the most valuable aspect of the conference; rather, the rest of the experience at the conference is the precious part.

This isn't to say that the talks are unimportant. The quality of speakers reflects on the quality of the conference as a whole and the speakers set the stage for the great discussion that will flow from there. At a conference, you'll sit in the audience and listen to some really intelligent person speak about a given topic, and people really get into what that person has to say; but the real magic comes just after the speaker finishes. You'll notice that those that really found the talk interesting will rise from their seats and rush to the stage, crowding around the speaker to engage her in discussion. Fellow attendees–speakers or otherwise–will further break off into their own groups to keep the conversation flowing.

So, if you think of a conference as a novel, then imagine the speakers as the main characters. While they keep the plot flowing, it's really the other characters–the attendees–that tie everything together and make the main characters worthwhile.

Additionally, you'll find yourself thrown into a large group of people where you are both stronger than others in some areas and weaker than other attendees in different areas. This tends to be any geek's best dream–you're simultaneously around people from whom you can learn and to whom you can impart knowledge, which means that you're in an environment that fosters creativity and open discussion.

You won't remember everything that you learn at a conference. That isn't the point. Instead, you'll be introduced to a wide range of new ideas, and you'll take that new perspective back to work or other areas of your life and apply it accordingly. For example, I saw Nathan Marz's talk at Strange Loop 2011, where he open-sourced Storm. For days after (and, frankly, even as I was working on something just the other day), ideas that he put forth in that talk have resonated in my mind, and I've architected solutions to numerous problems in ways that I otherwise would not have imagined, all because I was exposed to a different point of view.

This benefit is what just one speaker has done for me–now imagine how powerful this is when you're exposed to 20, 40, or even 60 different speakers! The benefit continues to grow as you talk not just with speakers, but with fellow attendees as well, absorbing their newly gained snippets of knowledge and sharing some bits of your own.

For these reasons I would say that, while $450 can indeed be a lot of money, it isn't just applied to the two days that you will be at a conference. Instead, it continues to work for you through the lessons learned and–perhaps even more importantly–people met.