Last week, I spent a few days in Leeds attending All Day Hey again, a brilliant conference for developers, designers and tech leads. This conference is part of my holy-grail of community-led conferences that I purchase tickets for regardless of the schedule. This is because I want to support these events that bring me so much joy and because I know I'll find myself amongst like-minded individuals (and my internet friends!).
The amount of conferences I attend is a little bit unusual as someone who isn’t a dev-rel but the curse of having front-end development as one of my few hobbies is that I guess that I enjoy a tech conference like people enjoy music festivals. It is part of my routine to attend these and luckily, my job benefits from it. So, what happens sometimes is that I may have seen some talks already. I can see why this would put off a good number of people but I love revisiting talks, especially months apart. It’s like re-reading a book you love or a comfort film. But with tech talks, when I re-watch them, they are a good reminder that I'm never the same person I was months ago. My projects, life circumstances and work situations have evolved. So these "repeat" talks normally spark entirely new feelings and insights because of whatever currently occupies my thoughts.
Anyway, as the day carried on, I found myself chatting with people about the current conference landscape, despite not currently being an organiser myself. It’s no secret that many community-led conferences are struggling and I spent the rest of my weekend mulling over why it seems like “corporate and expensive” conferences seem to be thriving. Deep down, I know it is capitalism.
The true value of conference attendance
I recently spoke with a junior developer who had been tasked with writing reports on how each talk they attended at a corporate conference could directly apply to their company's work. And it brought me bad flashbacks.
I’ve made a personal decision many years ago to not spend any of my money on “latest trends/framework” conferences because I’ve been in this industry long enough to know they are just that - trends. The few times I did attend, I was in a soulless place where almost nobody wanted to be in either. We were mostly tasked by our employers to learn and report back and make sure the company you work for benefits from this intense training. But the reality is: you’re not going to bring a million dollar solution to your company by watching a 40 minute code focused talk by someone who works somewhere that is the complete opposite of your workplace. I don’t think you will leave inspired either.
The point of a conference shouldn't be to provide ready-made solutions to specific workplace problems. A 40 minute code-heavy presentation might offer some technical pointers, but these will never truly address your specific challenges. Unfortunately, I’ve seen attendees demanding this - even from free meet-ups! But also, especially now, in this era of AI and LLMs, code-heavy focused talks can have a short shelf life. Or, or!! Brace yourself: AI/LLM slop content! Imagine that.
However, a talk that inspires you to become a better colleague, leader, or simply a more considerate person who thinks about the diverse needs of everyone using your products? Leaving a talk inspired to be a better human has a far greater impact than any code you will see in a slide. Leaving a talk feeling inspired to create backlog tickets to make things better? Or leaving a talk feeling inspired to finally work on a side project? Priceless!
Lex puts it into better words than me but if you're to take anything from a conference, it should be the inspiration to improve yourself. Not just technically, but as a human. Code alone doesn't create that transformation. What does is human connection, lovely chats, and community that cares about people and the web.
You're in the UK? Get tickets for these if you can, and come see for yourself: