Hero image credit: Photo by Christopher Spencer

I was listening to Taylor Dessyn’s Guidance Counselor 2.0 and he was talking to Clark Sell about a bunch of things, including the importance of community and getting involved. And it spurred in me some thoughts.

User Groups and Conferences

Clark was the driving force behind THAT conference. Like many conferences, it saw a big drop off during COVID and, sadly, it won’t be back for 2025. Just another conference. Another conference where I was on the board gave up after last year as well. And those conferences and user groups that are still going are almost all hurting. Attendance just isn’t there anymore. That’s unfortunate, and it makes me sad.

A lot of work sectors rely heavily on there being a strong community outside of the “work” space. Tech relies on it more than most. And the developer community has always been one of the strongest communities around. At least, it was before COVID. And it just hasn’t recovered… Yet. Like I mentioned, attendance is down across the board. I spoke at one of my most favorite conferences a couple of weeks ago, Stir Trek, and you could tell there just weren’t as many people there. Many user groups and conferences have gone online or disappeared altogether. And sponsorship has diminished greatly from the heyday, with many companies abandoning the community.

It’s not all doom and gloom. There are signs that user groups are slowly, so slowly, seeing some rebound in attendance. Some of them have gone to a hybrid approach, meeting both in person and online, which I think is fantastic. It supports both those who want to be together in person as well as those who, for one reason or another, can’t or don’t want to meet in person but still want to feel some of that camaraderie of meeting with like-minded individuals.

There are also signs that some businesses are once again becoming more willing to host or support user groups. That’s one of the trickier pieces. User groups and conferences rely on support from the business community. At the very least, an in-person user group needs a place to meet. That has been one of the bigger struggles in many areas. Thankfully, in Columbus, there are a number of local companies that are willing to host, especially among the various consulting firms (of which there are MANY hereabouts). But even so, a number of user groups have struggled to find a regular place to meet. And in other locales, there hasn’t been that abundance of support, making it even more difficult.

For conferences it’s even worse. A conference needs a venue to host it, be it a conference center, a meeting hall, a movie theater, or whatever. These venues are not cheap. Even a small venue can easily cost several thousand dollars for a single day. And that doesn’t cover food, audio/video, or anything else. That’s just to use the rooms.

As an example from the conference I used to be a part of: The last year we held the conference, it ran us roughly $13,000 for one day, 6 rooms, breakfast, lunch, drinks, and snacks. And the venue supported roughly 200-250 attendees and volunteers. For 200 attendees, that’s $65 per ticket. And that assumes you sell all 200 tickets at full price, AND that all of your staff are unpaid volunteers, AND that none of your speakers require sponsorship and/or travel expenses. That was difficult enough before COVID, and impossible after. Conferences require sponsorships to make ticket prices affordable.

Thankfully, we had enough sponsors to keep ticket prices down around $35-$40. But sponsorship since COVID just hasn’t rebounded. For our last JavaScript & Friends conference in 2023, the only reason we were even able to hold the conference at all was leftover money from previous years. One last hurrah and we called it a day. Stir Trek, pre-COVID, had sponsor tables lined up from end of the theater to the other and down just about every hallway. The sponsors clearly haven’t returned and my rough amateur guess was that there were maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the sponsors there were a few years ago. (Note: I’m not involved in running Stir Trek so I don’t have any official numbers). Without sponsorship, these conferences just don’t happen. Period.

Mentorship

Another point Clark brought up was that he would offer to give speakers feedback on their session abstracts and how to make them better to get accepted more often. And he mentioned that of 600 speakers, maybe 5 or 6 would actually take him up on the offer and follow through to get that feedback. It was surprising that more people didn’t take him up on that offer. But then again, it wasn’t that surprising when I thought about it. You see, I was one of those 595 speakers that didn’t take him up on that offer. I submitted sessions to THAT conference several times and never got accepted. And I never took Clark up on his offer. I just “accepted” the rejection and moved on.

And yet, at the same time, I have been a strong advocate of mentorship for years. I have taken up opportunities to mentor and teach others as often as I am able, and yet I declined to accept such opportunities myself. It really makes no sense when I think about it. Especially when you consider one critical fact: The developer community relies on mentorship.

Sure, most of us receive some sort of formal education. It may be a boot camp or college or something else, but most of us start on some formal path of training. But tech changes. It changes often and it changes quickly. And we soon find that most of what we learned in school is no longer relevant. The tech has moved on, often before we even finish our schooling. And so, more than almost any other industry, we need to keep learning.

That learning comes in many forms. It may be more schooling or courses, or blogs, or videos, or conferences, or user groups, or whatever. However that learning comes, be it formal or informal, comes from some form of mentorship. It requires someone (i.e. a mentor) to share knowledge they have learned with others (i.e. mentees). Whatever form that learning takes, it’s really just mentorship.

What’s My Point?

So what’s my point with all this? Without literally thousands upon thousands of people willing to share that knowledge they have,and without thousands and thousands and thousands more people willing to receive that knowledge, this entire industry would fall apart. Of that I am convinced. That said, times change. Maybe user groups and conferences will never again be a primary driver for that mentorship. To me that would be sad and a travesty. There just isn’t any substitute for an in-person gathering of tech people looking to teach and learn together. And this is coming from someone who is an avowed introvert and hates leaving his house for any reason if he can at all avoid it.

Part of it is the fault of employers. It used to be common for employers to be willing to spring for to send their dev teams to conferences. For the most part, that day is long gone. Cost cutting in the pursuit of shareholder profit above all else has led to this common perk being stripped away, probably forever. That’s pathetic. The short-term benefit is coming at long-term expense. But they don’t care. The same for sponsorships going away or being drastically reduced.

But part of it is also from changing attitudes. People don’t see the benefit they once did in user groups and conferences. I don’t understand why. Maybe they just don’t see the benefit of paying money to go somewhere when they can learn for free from blogs and YouTube videos? I don’t know. TO me, you need a variety of experiences and learning opportunities. And these in-person events just can’t be replicated any other way.

So I’ll close with this. If you haven’t been to a user group or conference in a long time, or ever: GO. Pick one, and go. Be there. Be around other devs from your community. Talk to them, learn from them, share with them. It’s an experience unlike any other. You won’t regret it. Just go.