Why you should go to Geeknrolla (and other start-up conferences) | Hacker News Reader

Why you should go to Geeknrolla (and other start-up conferences)

danieltenner.com

26 pointstomh-19 comments

I'm becoming a fan of Daniel Tenner's writings, and I'm looking forward to seeing them upvoted rapidly to the News.YC front page like 37Signals stuff usually goes. I like how he writes because he makes a point and then tells a story (usually his) to support that point (public speaking keystone).

I've been fortunate to go to several conferences on my company dime. The best was the Colorado Software Summit in 2000 where they were talking about Ruby as the next big thing. However, none of these paid conferences match up to the BarCamp-type events and even informal meetups at bars to drink and discuss projects. I think there is a certain artificial short-term hype that is instilled in you when you fly to a conference and get hyped up on the energy and excitement and marketing parties - it is not sustainable once you return. I find that I enjoy local meetups more now - more long-term, less virtual, and you might even become friends.

Daniel Tenner's previous piece "Dealing with Impossible Crises" is worth reading if you missed it the first time

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552581

The typography is also refreshing.

If you sit a mile from the screen.

(Sorry Daniel, but the font's too big for me to quite read comfortably!)

Lesson 1 of blog design: you can't please everyone!! :-P

See swombat? Resize the font!

Thanks for this feedback :-) I really do appreciate it.

I'm curious. If you don't mind me asking, what do you like to read (not necessarily blogs, books)? Your writing is easy on the mind.

That's quite hard to answer... When I was younger, I read almost exclusively fiction - pretty much anything ranging from classics to science fiction. For the last fifteen years or so, the proportion of non-fiction has increased, largely because I read a lot less for pleasure. If you counted blogs and other online writings as well, I'd say that most of what I read today is non-fiction. But I've always preferred a good novel to any factual book.

> That's quite hard to answer.

Good answer. Thanks. I tend to shy away from the '10 ways to X' blogs, and I could surf from Techmeme for hours if I'm bored at home. I like stumbling upon random people talking about their lives, sharing their experiences.

For example, I don't know the methodology for selection but each of the Blogs of Note all seem to be interesting in their own way.

http://blogsofnote.blogspot.com/

Geeknrolla was awesome. We need more events like this in the UK!

That raises a good question actually... what is the next event like this in the UK?

Mike tweeted me saying when he has recovered :)

He seems to have recovered pretty damn quick!

http://twitter.com/mikebutcher/status/1585118548

I think it needs to be something for the entire Europe to get some real traction. If you keep it UK only, it'll continue being small and you won't get as much exposure.

I've been to LeWeb and the Web 2.0 Expo both in Europe. It's actually quite nice not to have to leave the country for once. This event was organised by TechCrunch Europe and by no means limited to UK attendees :P

Fear not - the kind of thing I did with GeeknRolla #gknr is something I want to replicate again. The trick is in the content and the vibe. Stay tuned... @mikebutcher

Most of the TechCrunch "UK" events have a decent pan-european crew around. Basically all of the European TechCrunch events (I've been to them in Prague, Berlin and London) are run out of TechCrunch UK. Despite us being based in Berlin, I'd have been at Geeknrolla if we hadn't had conflicting plans.

There were quite a few non-UKers at this conference. I met one guy who'd flown in from Estonia, though to be fair he was also there for business.

I would be even happy if there was one event like this in NL :)

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