On Why JSConf Rocks
blog.noderiety.com
blog.noderiety.com
- Destination: I considered both San Francisco and the venue to be perfect. For me, a destination mainly has to be easy to reach. Tourism is a plus, but ranks a distant second to the ease of getting to the venue. Additionally, San Francisco has the advantage that many important JavaScript people live close by which increases the chances of them speaking.
- Parties: Agreed. At least one evening event for everyone would have been nice.
- Food: I’m a bit difficult with food, so I often buy my own and don’t care about conference food much.
- Significant others track: I’m single. As long as my money isn’t spent to support other people’s partners, I don’t have an opinion either way.
- Spectacles: Again, I bring my own, so I don’t need a video game lounge etc. All of these things cost money.
- “Free beer / drinks throughout the day”: I am a beer drinker, but would only want a conference to serve alcohol in the evening.
- Schwag: please no. I always have an incredibly bad conscience when I throw away (most of) the stuff I get at conferences. After a certain point, one has enough toys, bags, pens and paper. That being said, a B2G phone certainly would have been cool.
- Community / Speakers: I like JSConf’s egalitarian approach. Not sure how well it scales up, though.
The biggest problem with JSConf is that it’s nearly impossible to get tickets (I tried twice). So where JSConf wins with regard to its egalitarian speaker/audience approach, it loses with regard to tickets, where it can feel a bit elitist: Some people will easily get a ticket, others won’t.
You might completely disagree with my taste as outlined above, but then the conclusion is easy: The JavaScript community can only profit from the increased conference diversity that is currently developing. In my opinion, Fluent should mostly stay as it is, as probably should JSConf (which I haven’t been to, yet).
- Parties: It was actually two JSConf organizers (Malte and Mikeal) who organized the beer.js event at FluentConf
- Food: Your "bit difficult" is well received at JSConf. We have full, proper meals specially made for anyone who identifies a meal preference/allergy/concern. We happily provide amazing, wholesome meals for everyone so that no one has to bring their own. It is hard to describe to someone who hasn't attended, but we do try our hardest to ensure that everyone's needs and palettes are satisfied.
- SigOTrack, Spectacles, etc. Most of these are paid for with sponsorship funds, all of the money brought in from all parts is put directly back in to the enjoyment, education, and venue/food of the attendees, speakers, and sponsors. I, and friends, live and die by what we call the 'value per attendee' (cost of having the person there over money they spent to be there), IMHO that that should always be greater than 1.25.
- Swag: Once again hard to describe if you have never attended, but we push our sponsors to provide meaningful and worthwhile items. I, and many others, still use all of the swag they received (Hot sauce, twitter notebook, coffee mugs, etc) to this day. My wife and I coordinate with the sponsors to ensure everything is unique and should be worthwhile to the attendees. This helps the sponsors as well as the attendees.
- Community/speakers: it scales as well as the organizers are willing to incur the risk that a talk might flop just as easily as it might succeed. It is the question of do you put people on stage you know will do "good" and consistent, or people that MIGHT do amazing or horrible. I, personally, would only pay money to see and do things I can't already see and do on the internet, hence the reason for our speaker selection process (and other items).
- Biggest Problem: I can assure no people "easily get a ticket" to JSConf. The only people that have a slot at all are the other JSConf organizers who are there solely for the explicit reason of staffing the event. If you want to help staff the event (this applies most likely to all events) offer to help staff. Everyone else is a first come, first served basis -- including sponsors. It isn't elitist, if anything it is opportunistic. This year 75% of the US audience was attending JSConf for the first time, so to clarify it isn't the "same people each time". As for the "others won't" something to consider is that if a conference doesn't sell out, or at least meet the "positive income" point, the organizers have to bear the burden of that cost difference. Size decisions are made and locked long before the first ticket sale (in all conferences). That contract is a very, very scary and binding item and carries with it a lot of cost if the conference doesn't at least make its break-even point. Just bear in mind, in all these events it is a small group or possibly a single person bearing the entire risk for the "community" and when it goes wrong/bad, the "community" is rarely there to help defray the costs (I know some communities do and I think that is awesome and should be modeled everywhere)
The model and concept we (US, EU, AR, AU, etc.) have built is not to be bigger (in fact we shrank in size this year), but to be more widely available through more local events. The small size breeds conversations and conveys a feeling (for better or worse) of "I can meet everyone". We keep it small because we are still experimenting, trying different (sometimes failed, sometimes not) methods and ideas. This isn't a knock on the larger conference model, I believe there are many conference models and they should all exist (or continue to be created/refined) because people are varied and unique and that is what makes these events awesome. There are many events that don't appeal to me (personally) but I am glad they exist for people that it does appeal to. We all have our own reasons for liking things and as long as it doesn't offend/hurt anyone else - I say carry on!
I agree. One stat that surprised us - O'Reilly's work on stats and analysis is amazingly thorough - was the percentage of attendees who have never been to a conference before and/or who have little to no exposure to the JS developer world. This was reflected in a very diverse attendee base demographically (honestly, I've not met so many women at a tech event before).
Many of the attendees who were not speakers or people I knew, at least the ones I spoke to, had heard of O'Reilly (obviously!) but didn't know about things like my JavaScript Weekly, other events like JSConf, or even superheroes like Paul Irish(!) Terms like WebGL and Node were new to many.
This surprised and delighted me, because it made me realize O'Reilly/Fluent should hopefully not tread on JSConf or similar conferences' awesome toes. As a large share of the audience is fresh to the "scene" or otherwise not well connected, they may become more experienced and connected enough over time to "level up" and get to love user groups, more community-run conferences, JSConf, informal events, hackathons, and so forth. I hope that is a win for everyone ultimately. Events like beer.js can only help to win people over and bring them into that fold. (Personally, I would be more than happy for Fluent attendees to be shown things like JSConf, community meetups, etc, and to realize what they mean and why they matter. Maybe we could work on this next year.)
From both my and O'Reilly's point of view (although I'm not an official spokesperson for them) there is no animosity with other events and O'Reilly is keen to use its strengths (such as getting in those unconnected types, enterprise folks, and similar groups) rather than undermine the strengths of others. There have been allusions to things "going on in private" which I have no idea about (yet seem to get the blame for by certain people) but my experience with O'Reilly and their attitude to other conferences and their organizers has been nothing but positive.
(Consider that HTML5DevConf was also in downtown SF a week before Fluent, it was only $100 or so, and was smack bang covering the same topics.. very direct competition, yet the folks at O'Reilly were genuinely unconcerned - no emergency meetings! - were supportive of the event, and thought it could only serve to help the community.)
I hope I can encourage O'Reilly to coordinate more with community events like beer.js and to make the experience more fun and better value for attendees generally. But, likewise, I think it would be wrong for O'Reilly to flat out copy JSConf or similar events because those events really nail a certain type of atmosphere and deserve their well earned esteem.
It's what happens when you sell tickets to companies, for a price that is too high, and incentivize people to sell to their friends for some bounty you offer.
This isn't necessarily wrong, but trying to mask it as a "good thing" is naive at best.
ps. From an actual email sent to me from someone I have no idea who it is:
As an active participant in these technologies, you may be interested in joining our Conference Affiliate Program for Fluent. If you'd like to become an affiliate, you can link to the event through your blog/website and earn affiliate fees of $250 for every eligible referral. It's simple and takes minutes to sign up, so take a look and let me know if have any questions. To participate, sign up directly on this online form and we'll send you everything you need to get started within a couple of days: http://fluentconf.com/fluent2012/public/sv/q/398
The latter part certainly wasn't true. I can't share details but having seen the data, the number of attendees who came in via that method was pointlessly low from my POV. Perhaps it works well on other events, but I thought offering a plan like this on a first time conference was a bit silly.. who's going to refer someone to an event they know nothing about? ;-)
Were the tickets relatively high priced and primarily sold to company-affiliated developers? I think that's fair to say. That's O'Reilly's approach for its conferences. I can't change that, but I think it's a market worth serving in any case, especially as other audience types are well served by other events in the JS world.
Naïvely or not, I think having a diverse audience of both beginners and experts is a good thing, especially when those beginners were saying they were leaving with so many ideas and ambitions to learn about things they'd seen. Not every conference is aiming to bring beginners into the fold, but O'Reilly seems to promote this approach (consider they have a full day of workshops, mostly introductions to new technologies, so targeting people ready to learn is intentional from their POV, I think).
Disclaimer: I was a program chair responsible for getting the program right. Everything else is managed and controlled by full time conference organizers at O'Reilly, so most of the above is just my opinion of other people's hard work.
Oh, BTW, I organize NodeConf.
I'm intrigued by these "topic tables" but I have to say that if they were considered for JSConf I'd have to advocate against them.
Here's why.
At a very large conference (over 300 people) you start to feel a little alienated. That's a huge number of people, and attendees tend to huddle together who already know each other. At an event this size having a way for attendees to find people with similar interests they don't know, break the ice, and have a conversation with a new person is a tremendous service and I'm glad to hear Fluent provided them.
But, at an event below 300 the dynamic is very different.
One of the things I try to do with NodeConf, and I know Chris thinks about at JSConf, is to reduce "coupling up". We try to get people to break out of the small groups of people they are most comfortable with and meet new people.
At a 200 person conference, over two days, you can actually have a conversation with every person. That's not just a possibility, it's a goal of NodeConf and JSConf.
While NodeConf is more specific and specialized JSConf is a melting pot of JS activity. One of the most important things that happens at JSConf is people having conversations with other developers who exist outside of their normal sphere of influence and comfort zone. That's why people from Smalltalk, Clojure and Ruby are invited to give talks.
There isn't another conference where the implementers of prominent client side technology meet so many implementers of prominent server side js tech. If JSConf added topic tables my fear would be that these conversations would reduce because it would be too easy to find more people in your comfort zone.
The goal of the parties and breaks isn't to get drunk and be stupid, it's to loosen people up enough to break out of their comfort zone and enable these conversations.