IT circus left, clowns left

Recently, an interesting article that the EPAM collected all the IT knowledge of the world, most modern conferences do not carry any value to its participants, has slipped through the Internet, and everything that happens can be described as "zero ideas, zero content and zero contacts."

I would not like to analyze the original post in detail, since it is clear that it is more emotional than rational, but still the topic is relevant and therefore I would like to add a little of my own theses.

First I want to dwell a bit on the development life cycle of a participant in conferences and other events.
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1. Newbie At this stage, as a rule, still a young specialist attends all conferences and meetings for the sake of content in the style of “What's New in .net 4.5”, “Overview of Drupal v.Next”, etc. Pleased with the shirt, pen and company mug. At the same time, in 99% the participant is satisfied with the content, organization, and writes rave reviews about the event.
2. Participant. At this stage of development, a person not only goes to the presentations, but also asks some questions, communicates with the speakers. Rejoices new t-shirt, but the initial orgasmic feelings will not experience. In most cases, pleased with what is happening.
3. Party-goer At this stage of development, a person walks not for the sake of content, but for the sake of communicating on the sidelines or afterparty. As a rule, he rarely writes reviews, receives a portion of communication, networking and new business connections.
4. Organizer. At some point, a participant or a party-goer can become an event organizer (although far from a mandatory stage of development). In most cases, after several organized events, it begins to make more restrained comments on other organizers, and finally stops believing that by selling 300 tickets for $ 100, you can buy maybach, at least second-hand.
5. The speaker A person who starts to speak at events himself, outside of his speech, behaves, as a rule, as a party-goer.
6. Guru. A person who has achieved the highest degree of enlightenment, a master who stops attending conferences, because, in his opinion, everything has turned into a UG, there are no ideas, and in general the world has stopped developing. Allows himself to critically evaluate the work of colleagues.

And now I want to make out several popular opinions about conferences.

At large conferences, most of the reports from Captain Obvious

It really is. This happens because when 300-1000 people are sitting in the hall, then according to the law of normal distribution you will receive only 5% of the audience who can understand the highly specialized topic.

Not once was a witness when, after the first slide, with a formula, charts, people massively rose and went to listen to a more blond performance. Thus, if the event is designed for more than 100 people, you will not hear anything complex or specific from the stage.

Foreign speakers are cool, and ours sucks

A very popular misconception. I had the opportunity to listen to both foreign and domestic speakers. I can say with confidence that our speakers, on average, provide more useful information per unit of time than foreign ones. In addition, speakers, at best, are the same KOs (they are even harder, because they are not only not oriented in the level of competence of the audience, but often they hear for the first time about the country in which they will have to perform), at best, they do mini a stage show, really turning everything into an IT circus at times.

But let's face it: what speakers are always loved more - those who are bright on the stage and their presentations consist of demotivators and funny pictures or those who tell an hour and a half details of some technology or solution? Here I am about the same.

The only foreign speaker who could “ignite”, talking about technology, was Scott Haselman at the past DevCon. But such bright talented speakers are very, very few.

The organizers are greedy beasts and, in general, who organizes events like that? Here I would ...

Let's start with objective reasons - that in Moscow, in Kiev, in Minsk there are very few places where you can hold an IT event at a high level. As soon as the organizers do not pervert - they spend it in theaters, in houses of culture and sports, and even ... in night strip clubs.

There is always a dilemma for the organizers - either a good Internet, a long way to go, or a good place, but bad catering. I am already silent for the content and other organizational part.

The second point is that practically all local communities and conferences are managed by the IT specialists themselves. Those. very rarely there is an organizing committee working in full time, with dedicated employees and even less often IT conferences make event agencies. Why? The answer is simple: if event agencies understood IT at such a level to organize a cool IT conference, they would work not in an event agency, but in IT companies. Vicious circle.

Here they have a conference ...

Yes, good. With a budget of several million dollars. Organizing Committee for 50 people. With sponsors in the amount of 20-30 pieces. With rooms for 15 thousand people. And yes, with a price tag of at least 600 euros. I would like to look at a local company that can regularly send 5-10 people at their own expense to such conferences.

Instead of conclusion

Finally, I want to give some tips on how to stop worrying and start catching the buzz from activities:

1. When selecting reports, look not at the big names of employers and not even on the name of the report. Look at the names of the speakers, even if they are not familiar to you (to fix this, there is Google). If you do not know the person, but he somehow got into the list of speakers, there is a high probability that he is a good expert, but he has not yet reached the level of the “star”. By the way, there are stellar speakers who at some point begin to talk about the same thing, and bending objective reality for themselves. Such reports can do even more harm than good.
2. Ask questions to speakers and experts. Preferably on the sidelines or afterparty. No matter what you ask them, the main thing is that you can hear how they think. 10 minutes on the sidelines will bring you more benefits than the hour performance of the same person on stage.
3. If all the speakers are familiar to you, you do not intend to hang out, and you have more knowledge than all the visitors of the two back rows, change the scope of activities. If you are an IT professional, be like a meeting for marketers, PR people or designers. This will give you a new feeling and life cycle, in fact, you can go through again.
4. Go not to those reports in which you understand subjects, but to those in which you are not a pro (exceptions of course can be, if you like the speaker or you want to delve into studying your topic).

Personally, I have the following criteria for success of the event:

• as a speaker - if at least one person became interested in my topic or I convinced him to try something new;
• as a listener - if after the event I can tweet at least two new thoughts or ideas.

And yes, if you go to an event for the sake of content, then most likely you can easily find everything you see in MSDN, Wikipedia or books. But the main value of events, in my opinion, is that after them self-motivation and desire to do something increases . Well, new acquaintances and ideas, so that the author of the original article does not speak.

Conferences interesting to you and thank you for your attention!