No more “petting zoo for developers” for me

I just finished a talk at another “developer conference” which is a side-attraction at a larger trade show and decided that this was the last one of those that I will do.

The reason is that I’ve done a few of them, and they’ve always been a disappointment to me. Of course there are great ones, I am sure, but I’ve had quite a lot of very disappointing experiences. In detail these were:

• Poor attendance by developers – it is a trade show, people are busy running around and dousing fires on demos not working instead. Trade shows are full of distractions and attractions and having a full day taken out is too much for a lot of people.
• The AV setup was always abysmal. I always had to bring my own connectors and got a minute or so to set up whilst the last speaker still answered questions. The sound was always bad as you are in some hall to the side with lots of blaring music and advertising and – in the worst cases – with two side-by-side stages where you hear other people talk and not yourself
• There is never a recording of the talks or a centralised repository where to get the slides and other materials afterwards. It seems organisers just expect lackluster talks by company speakers to lure people to their respective stands and writing a bespoke talk made me feel like a waste
• There was always an overall feeling of half-hearted organisation being sold as “being different for developers”

All in all these “amazing developer event inside the main event” appear to me as a petting zoo for developers. The market knows developers are important, but there is no point or much of value for them on a trade show. So, let’s have some own playground for them to do two hour hackathons with prizes and some talks that don’t really need planning. It feels condescending and to me out of place. Especially when the rest of the show is staffed by half-naked booth babes who have no stake in the product they are actually promoting (something that simply needs to stop). Developer events have a different goal than that.

If you want to integrate developers into trade shows (as it might be useful as they will be around anyways) have an own event in an own venue or a day before or after instead. The way I found things to be organised now just seems like a bleached carbon copy of a good idea. Instead of asking known speakers or asking for sponsoring from large companies and yet another “look our product $x makes it so easy for developers, you are almost redundant” talk, have unknown speakers get up there, allow local small companies to do a technical talk and show themselves (as they are not likely to be able to afford an amazing booth at the show). Have partner companies of large corporations show how they use the products sold as infallible and give information what the real experience looks like. Be disruptive, be different than the main event, but don’t force it by stating you are different without delivering.

Hackathons take time, workshops need dedicated and non-disrupted and prepared attendees, developer talks need audiences. Don’t cheapen this because it seems simple to organise and you already have a location – of sorts.

If this sounds arrogant then it is only because I have been disappointed about all this. I love events, I know how much work it is and I want every event to count for the audience, the organisers and the speakers. I’d rather have “conference in conference” organisers allow someone unknown to speak and give them coverage and promotion in the main event channels than get known speakers in. That’s helping more people on the whole.

I am happy to give a keynote at a partner booth, show demos and examples and talk to the press. But I will give someone else the chance to have a go at talking at these sorts of events in the future. Not because I feel too good for them, but because I feel that these events need to change drastically – or vanish.