Conferences in Tech
Bryan and Adam were joined by Theo Schlossnagle, KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, and Steve O'Grady to talk about conferences in tech. A lot has changed in the past couple of decades about the impetus for conferences and what makes it worthwhile to attend.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Theo Schlossnagle, KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, and Steve O'Grady.The lightly edited live chat from the show:ellie.idb: 2005, huh? y’all met when i was 2goodjanet: yea i was younger than 10 loljgrillo_: I was just thinking I feel very young because I was a junior in high school but not anymore lolaka_pugs: my first conference - 1975ellie.idb: oxide appeals to the youthjbk1234: my first one was LISA in 05 or 06... mostly because it took a near act of god because my director didn't believe in sending his people to conferencesjgrillo_: "before software ate the world" is what I usually call "when the internet was still fun"ellie.idb: my earliest memory was, uhhh, Google I/O 2008 when they gave every attendee that android phoneellie.idb: i don’t recall which one it was, but i do remember playing with it when i was 5 hahahahataitomagatsu: I've only been to one tech conference in person, and it was a very tame SIGGRAPH that happened in Santiago, CL (I live in Chile). It was a lot about animation. I wanted it to have talks on image processing like the ones over on the US x3 but oh well, beggars can't be choosersgoodjanet: I've never been to a tech conferencedevdsp2175: The Germans know how to run a conference. The chaos communications congress is wild.ellie.idb: same!! never actually attended one as an adult hahahataitomagatsu: Have you attended one remotely?goodjanet: nope, closest is just watching recorded talks after the facttaitomagatsu: I attended the rustconf of 2 years ago remotely. It was amazing and I was soooo tired by the end of it. Brain got depleted of juice for the daynetwork2501: looking forward to in person dtrace conference with a dedicated zball roomahl0003: more of a trade show, but I went to the MacWorld conference in the late '90sahl0003: I still have some BeOS install CDs from thengoodjanet: im so thankful for recorded talksahl0003: this is kind of wild: I went with my brother who was 12 or so and we met a guy at Be... my brother would go on to work with him 30 years later!ellie.idb: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid the OG droid with the flip up keyboard and everythingtocococa: ISCA this year was just around the corner from Santiago in Buenos Aires and it was pretty cool, and CARLA took place this year in Santiago tooblacksmithforlife: Since I can never get a conference approved from work, I live off recorded conference videos on YouTubenetwork2501: best momdevdsp2175: The shade! Sending hugs to Bryan's inner child.taitomagatsu: daaaaaamn, I didn't know about either! I might keep an eye on ISCA, maybe I can go next year ❤️devdsp2175: You can't record the hallway track...jh179: Bryan's talk for Papers We Love on the History of Containers is how I found out about him, Oxide and all the rest. Had an incredible tangent about jails...zeanic: Conference idea: all hallway tracksdevdsp2175: YouTube keeps recommending Bryan's talks on running containers on the metal at Joyant.devdsp2175: And I keep watching them!ellie.idb: wow, ISCA had some really fucking cool talks this yearellie.idb: damn. i’m adding this to my watch list too!!! i’ll try and see if i can get funding for next year hahahatocococa: yeah, 100%, but my brain was melted after every daynahumshalman: Bryan has the luxury of working on OSS. I think the point that Theo was making is that Surge (I only attended the very last one) was a space where you could be open about proprietary stuff. Talking about failure in a safe space, etc.nahumshalman: Ah, Theo is now making that point.taitomagatsu: Does ISCA have any sort of official YT channel?taitomagatsu: Because I might... have a handful of talks to watchgoodjanet: 18 years ago isnt that long ago?network2501: 18 years ago is almost 3 generations of lives/eras agoellie.idb: what HPC conferences are going on? i need to hear about the deets going on with CXLjgrillo_: although 18yr is ~half my life it doesn't feel very long ago..tocococa: I am not sure, I know that all keynotes were recorded, but I don´t know where they might beellie.idb: 21 years ago i was not alive 😅network2501: What if the second time you do the talk it's even better than the last? Like book revisions?ahl0003: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i1OK4y9x0wtaitomagatsu: I've found a channel that has older ISCA videos https://www.youtube.com/@acmsigarch2299, imma keep looking for one that might have the 2024 oneblacksmithforlife: Working in government, watching "old" conference videos is great because they're "cutting edge" for where my organization is at currently. Case in point, we are just now going to the cloud and doing micro servicestaitomagatsu: https://xkcd.com/979/ahl0003: https://craft-conf.com/2025srockets: That’s why I liked !!con so much. No one tries to sell you anything.jgrillo_: I've never owned a car newer than 20yo, that's kind what it's like when you look at the car ads from its eradevdsp2175: Are you also doing an "Agile Transformation" which is neither transformative nor optimising for agility?ahl0003: https://monktoberfest.com/srockets: (Also, Ghent had better bike racing than Budapest)srockets: But worse weatherbcantrill: https://youtu.be/stMEuZJJDck?list=PLvsKqlNNP3R8JKE97pwewsDmZdcO5MEWVdrkellyannfitz: Here are the talks from this year: https://redmonk.com/?series=monktoberfest-2024blacksmithforlife: What does "hallway track" mean?zeanic: Cr...