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Comment by sklivvz1971 | Hacker News Reader

sklivvz1971

I have been speaking at about 50 conferences over the years and I refuse to do online ones. Why?

- Conferences are usually not paid, except expenses. In fact the "compensation" for a speaker is to be able to travel and attend in person. Maybe for some this is a drawback, for me it's not.

- In person conferences allow you to meet and network with other speakers. Online conferences do not (unless you count "come to our discord" as networking, I don't)

- The value I get from conferences is also interacting with the public and listening to them, outside of the talks.

- I also don't really get any of the promotion value for my company, which obviously I represent.

In short, I understand they are cheaper to organize but the value is simply not there at all, so I will not speak at them, attend them, or sponsor them.

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For me giving a talk to a quite camera is also a lot more exhausting. Got to make sure I remain in focus of the cam, hope the audio works and get no feedback (did the joke work? Am I too fast or too slow?)

And not being there also has the consequence that I do other things on the day and it's a lot more "in between" than focus.

All that, I assume, also reflects to the experience for the audience.

Even watching recordings of online-only conferences isn't interesting. You would think for a remote viewer it's the same, but it's not.

> did the joke work? Am I too fast or too slow?

I gave a remote talk a bit earlier this year, and that was the hardest part for me. I didn't quite realize how much I adjusted my speaking based on how the room is reacting. Sometimes my sarcastic humor doesn't land, or it would have landed but I talk way too fast, or people just can't understand what I'm saying and I can see that by looking at peoples' facial expressions.

Probably won't do it again unless there's some kind of emergency. I would have done it in person even this last time, but there was some scheduling conflicts on my end. It's just a lot more fun to do this stuff in person.

Guys do you all realize this is why our modern work from home zoom era of meetings all day is silly and why nothing is getting done anymore? We get all these same benefits from working in an office together. This thread is a Gell-Mann Amnesia generator. Everyone says online conferences are stupid and then doesn’t see how absurd it is to say working the other 51 weeks of the year that way makes sense.

If your job is to present on stage to a crowd 5 days a week, 9-5, sure. If not, don’t draw bad comparisons.

For some, a lot of their work is not doing "conference-style" activities (networking, meeting people, giving presentations, promoting to the public).

For others, perhaps it is, and your point would hold more water for them.

But surely you can see that yours is not a one-size-fits-all answer.

I didn't say they were "stupid", I said I had trouble presenting at one.

That said, it's not apples to apples. I spend like 60% of my day coding, which of course I can do from pretty much anywhere, and it doesn't really matter if my jokes land. When I do video calls, it's generally in relatively small meetings, and it actually is relatively easy to gauge reactions that way.

It feels like you're extrapolating a bit much here.

Man i wish work was just a big hang-out-and-chill conference! Talking and eating all day and watching endless presentations. But unfortunately some of us need to get actual work done.

Conferences are fundamentally different from work though?

For me that is very different. Regarding conferences I wrote above, while at the same time I am working remotely for 15 years.

In remote work with zoom meetings for me (may be different in other jobs)

* Most meetings are in small groups/teams and more discussion, where the feedback problem works better than a conference talk for 100 people * I know most of the audience, thus know what this expected to present, where the audience got experience and which humor does (not) work * In many meetings I can keep it running on the side while doing some other work and only give attention to the parts relevant for me * and am not involved in all that office noise and all the related distractions, but focus on my actual work

My boss of course has to trust me I do my stuff instead of standing behind me.

For larger milestones etc and socializing having in person meetings once in a while is important. But day to day remote massively reduces distractions and removes a lot of irrelevant stuff.

One of the bigger meetups I used to go to would pull in speakers who used us as practice for a conference talk. We were dress rehearsal for standing in front of a crowd three to thirty times the size.

I not sure how live rehearsal, virtual conference would work. Great for some presenters, not so great for others.

I’ve only stood in front of more than a dozen people twice outside of college, and it’s definitely a vibe. At a conference or even just a presentation you get up that morning and you focus differently. You travel to the event and you psych yourself up for it. You mull over your talking points and lock them down more. Less extemporaneous speaking. I have never put that sort of energy and focus into a video call.

They're mostly not comparable. High-quality streaming keynotes (especially for conferences I couldn't otherwise justify attending) not-withstanding.

Two very different experiences, and the fact that a lot of conference presentations would probably be better at half the length also not withstanding, a bunch of YouTube videos may be fine for some but, as someone who has probably attended hundreds of conferences, they're really not the same.

During COVID, I resigned myself to attending and presenting at online conferences, but it was mostly a waste of time.

What do you talk about at conferences?

Mainly software architecture, inspirational developer stuff like cool personal projects, software team building and practices.

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