Oxide and Friends

Oxide and Friends

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Conferences in Tech

/ 01:30:09/S4:E31
Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Now you can hear me.

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, yeah. Boy, can we hear you!

Bryan Cantrill:

Boy, we'd like to hear a lot less of you. No. It was not plugged all the way in. I I I know you're dying to know the answer.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Theo, how are you?

Theo Schlossnagle:

Doing well.

Bryan Cantrill:

And, KellyAnn, you're here.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

I am.

Bryan Cantrill:

Joanne, we understand that we are going to be, like, we are going to be assembling like red monk Voltron here. We're gonna be putting together various limbs. Steven is here in some diminished capacity. Is he on stage yet? Adam, is he have we dragged him on stage yet?

Adam Leventhal:

No. I I have not seen him. Steven, if you're in the audience, please take up your hand.

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, there you

Adam Leventhal:

are.

Bryan Cantrill:

If you're your lights are on and you are about to be towed. Steven O'Grady, your lights are on. There it is. Steve, how

Adam Leventhal:

you how you feeling?

Steve O'Grady:

Oh, you know, super strong.

Adam Leventhal:

That's great. Yeah. You

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

actually sound unwell. This is not like a, like, pretending to be unwell.

Steve O'Grady:

No. The trajectory has been better. So it it's this morning, I couldn't I couldn't talk at all, and that was not super helpful. But, we'll see how long it lasts. The hot toddy has seemed to help a little bit, although I can't taste anything at all because I smoked the inside of my mouth with some broth earlier.

Steve O'Grady:

So

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Steven, I like the fact that your, your colleague is, somewhat, like, surprised at how unwell you sound. It's like, wow. This is like I think he's actually ill. I think this is this is the the post about the the the the flu test.

Bryan Cantrill:

So this all this all might actually add up. You actually might be sick.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. That's right. Right? So, yep, I'm,

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm I'm here, and I'm

Steve O'Grady:

you can you can please understand me now, so that's good.

Bryan Cantrill:

That is yeah. And and, we understand if you need to drop dead at any moment. So, you

Adam Leventhal:

you will not be able

Bryan Cantrill:

to apologize. If you feel free to drop dead, feel free to but, you know, I hey. Look. If you're well enough to skate, you're well enough to podcast as my mother is fond of saying. So I'm I'm glad to see that.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

I do not give you permission to drop dead. That's not happening.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not that's not real high on my agenda. But

Bryan Cantrill:

Theo, you also may not drop dead. I'm sorry. So, well, I am, really stoked to have you all here, to talk about a conference that a subject that is near and dear to our hearts, and which is, conferences in tech. And I was I was kind of reflecting back because, Steven, I met both you and Theo at conferences. Steven, I think you might you and I may have met at, like, Sun Network in 2002.

Bryan Cantrill:

Is that possible? Something like that?

Steve O'Grady:

That's that seems sort of roughly in that in that ballpark. Yeah. Although dating us is probably not a great thing.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm I'm sorry. I'm I'm doxing you as as old. Yeah. This is listen. Have you did you listen to our podcast?

Bryan Cantrill:

This is the this is like the gen x senior hour. We do we talk about attending, like, readings from from Ad Rock of Beastie Boys book?

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah.

Steve O'Grady:

I mean, you're you're talking to somebody who tries desperately to conceal exactly how old his company is. We try to pretend that there is no birthday. So make make that call for us.

Bryan Cantrill:

You want the company to be younger than it is?

Steve O'Grady:

We don't we just don't like to talk about how old it is. Doesn't necessarily need to be younger. So we just pretend that that does like this.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Alright. Yeah. RedMonk has got, like, an an aging complex or something. Are you getting, like, Botox injections for red monks?

Bryan Cantrill:

So that and I noticed that no crow's feet. I mean, RedMonk looks like as far as I know, it looks like you know, see, it's the Brian Johnson of companies. We have of consulting organizations, we often say. So got the, the okay. Well, so in the unspecified past, Theo, I don't know if you got the same hang up, but, I mean, you and I met, and I think, Theo, do you met when do you think we met?

Theo Schlossnagle:

I'm comfortable with my age. Let's put it that way.

Adam Leventhal:

It's good to

Theo Schlossnagle:

know that you and, Steven's relationship is old as my first daughter. So when did we meet? My guess is probably 2003 or 2004.

Bryan Cantrill:

So okay. I am guessing I think we met at OzCon 2005.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Okay. That's possible.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's feasible.

Theo Schlossnagle:

That's feasible. They that would did you do a Detroit session there?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. We did a Detroit session in OzCon 2005.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I don't

Bryan Cantrill:

know. I and I

Theo Schlossnagle:

don't know.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I and I

Bryan Cantrill:

don't know. I and I

Steve O'Grady:

don't know. Pour one

Steve O'Grady:

out for OzCon.

Bryan Cantrill:

Pour one out for also okay. So let's so let's start actually a little bit with OzCon. So OzCon was the the O'Reilly Open Source Conference and, Phew, you had been to OzCon's earlier than that. I think that was my first OzCon in 2005, but I think you had been maybe a couple years prior.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I maybe. Maybe. My first, conferences were the ApacheCon conferences.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Okay. So, yeah, would you tell me about your first conferences?

Theo Schlossnagle:

My first conference was surreal because I was in grad school. Didn't know anything about, you know, open source other than it seemed cool and, you know, communist or something. I don't know what I thought back then. It was wild. So, I wrote

Bryan Cantrill:

I wrote a,

Theo Schlossnagle:

Apache module to do load balancing, as part of my master's thesis and wrote a paper on it, submitted it to the conference, went there, and it turns out that they gave me the closing plenary slot with, like, 2,000 people in the audience as my first talk ever. And Wow. They they only got smaller from there for a long time. But yeah, it was really cool. So it was in Orlando at a resort, so I spent most of my time in, swim trunks with a Mai Tai.

Bryan Cantrill:

So. In front of 2,000 people.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Well, yeah, not at the same time, but close. Very close. Questions and answers afterwards. We're at the poolside. Yes.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

Yeah. Your your grad student conference experience was just very different and much better than mine is what I'm hearing.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Kelly, you're making a very important point. For those of you contemplating grad school, this is Theo's experience is highly unusual and atypical. This is not what grad school normally is.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Yeah. Stay away from the academic conferences. Go to the commercial conferences. Much higher bullshit.

Bryan Cantrill:

And so was this what conference this was ApacheCon? What was the conference? It was ApacheCon.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Okay. Discussion of all projects Apache, which at that point, I guess that was 1999.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. That's gonna be super yeah. 98,

Theo Schlossnagle:

maybe. 1 of those 2.

Steve O'Grady:

Right.

Theo Schlossnagle:

And, there were, I don't know, either probably a 100 Apache projects back then. It felt like there were 8 or 10. But there's always been, you know, an order of magnitude more Apache projects than anyone even had Apache knows. But it was really weird because there was a convergence. It was right before the dotcom boom that you could feel the ramp up at that point.

Theo Schlossnagle:

So there were all of these companies that have sent their people there to say, hey. You run this software that that apparently we don't pay for support for, but sending you to this conference is gonna make us safe. And, and there were a lot of people there.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Interesting. Because this is part of my my hunch is that the just looking at kind of the history OzCon being one of kind of the the early industry conferences that this kind of came out of 1 academic computer sciences conferences. Academic computer science has the very strange tradition of having conferences as their kind of publishing vehicle rather than journals, which is what every other scientific discipline does. Right.

Bryan Cantrill:

And that combined with these open source and open source projects that needed to have a way or were looking for a way to get people that were otherwise collaborating to physically meet up because they were not co located. Is that a fair kind of read for the origin of the kind of those early days of conferences?

Theo Schlossnagle:

You know, it I think it's a combination. Well, you know, there were very few academics at these conferences, so I think they resembled them, but I'm not sure that it was a genesis. I feel like the genesis was birds of a feather and and, and user user groups. Right? Yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Right. You got your, you know, your old car user group, and you've got your Apache web server user group and hung out together. And then they realized they were spread all around the world and could never meet up. So they they started creating conferences to to actually get together as user group.

Bryan Cantrill:

Is there something actually really special about conferences of that vintage? Because you kinda felt like you had, like, a super nerdy interest that you were, you know, in a Usenet group with people talking about maybe RARC. And then to, like, meet those people in real life felt very kind of validating at a time when it when to be in software was kinda counterculture. I mean, it feels so I mean, kinda feels just so ancient. So sorry, Steven, we're ending we're gonna date RedMonk here as being founded in the in the 18 eighties at at this rate.

Bryan Cantrill:

But the, I mean, it it feels like such a distant time when this is kinda like before software became, like, overrun with tech pros and and ate the economy. Before software ate the world. It it felt like it it I don't know. Should what would what were what was your first conference?

Adam Leventhal:

So I went back to my calendar, which, because I I was curious about that. I think my first conference and I'm not sure this counts, but the first conference is the one we went to, AA debug, and that was an academic conference.

Adam Leventhal:

So I'm

Adam Leventhal:

not sure I'm gonna count that one, but that was a very academic conference.

Bryan Cantrill:

A conference that I think we've actually already talked about on Oxide Friends because this is the conference at which we we sought to eat horse.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I heard that.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yes. This is the, the California.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Were you in Ghent?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. We were in Ghent.

Adam Leventhal:

That's exactly right.

Theo Schlossnagle:

That's correct. Because if I was I think it was one of my favorite cities, and I was thinking if I, if I went on a rampage looking for horse, I'd be in the end.

Bryan Cantrill:

That is exactly what happened. The we we called it run, Brian, run after run, Lola, run popular at the time. I a film. Yeah. The, no.

Bryan Cantrill:

We were Adam had the, California had just made passed a up a populist proposition making it illegal to consume horse meat, and Adam never wanted to have his diet dictated by the people, was, was enraged and said that, well, in Europe, we needed to go find horse.

Adam Leventhal:

I wasn't angry. I was focused.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I have a much more unique perspective on that now.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I I, I

Theo Schlossnagle:

don't operate a butcher shop, so, very familiar with all of these things from the inside.

Bryan Cantrill:

Can we, can we get some some horse meat from you when you can just maybe a lot of the table? We we we make it interesting for you. We'll get you a little, California, but

Adam Leventhal:

we'll go across the border.

Bryan Cantrill:

What if Alexander Hamilton wished to order some horse meat? Would that be would that be possible? Yeah. Sorry. Adam, it was a No.

Adam Leventhal:

No. It was so it's a debug, which is a weird conference and not I think not I don't know. It was a weird conference. My my next one, also a weird conference, was Sun Network in Berlin.

Adam Leventhal:

I don't know

Adam Leventhal:

if you

Adam Leventhal:

remember this conference, Brian.

Steve O'Grady:

Oh, I well, we've got lots of memories.

Adam Leventhal:

It was, like, 21 years basically to the day. We were celebrating your 30th birthday.

Bryan Cantrill:

We were celebrating my 30th.

Bryan Cantrill:

We

Bryan Cantrill:

were celebrating my 30th birthday.

Adam Leventhal:

And and you were trying to keep that a secret from, like, the VP Sure. We were.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's right.

Adam Leventhal:

Oh my goodness. It was

Bryan Cantrill:

a German tradition that on your birthday, you buy food for everybody else.

Adam Leventhal:

Right. Right.

Bryan Cantrill:

And so I I was like, do I actually have to, like, not tell people it's their birthday? And I had people who were German who were like, if it's your birthday and you don't wanna buy you don't wanna bring a plate of sausages for your coworkers, you should definitely not tell anybody because it is definitely expected. Oh, okay.

Adam Leventhal:

This is again, we're gonna have to apologize to Germany on the podcast.

Bryan Cantrill:

Once again. Here we are. Another apology video. But the other thing is this

Adam Leventhal:

is gonna sound hopelessly quaint. It was even probably quaint at the moment. We were told that we had to wear suits, and I, being a child, didn't own a suit. So, like, I bought a suit for this Sun Network conference in Berlin, in 2003.

Bryan Cantrill:

We we celebrate your bar mitzvah in Berlin. It's exactly right.

Adam Leventhal:

My my Brooks Brothers. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Your Brooks Brothers suit. Yeah. I had forgotten about the suits. Okay. Steven, how about, what what was your what was your first conference?

Steve O'Grady:

Oh, man. Best guess is, like, some random IBM event, from the firm that James and I worked at prior to starting RedMonk. They sent us this. I don't even remember what the event was. But I got down there and was like, what the hell is this?

Steve O'Grady:

Like, how does this work? Where is everything? What am I doing here? So, yeah, it was, you know, sort of a shock to the system as it were. But

Bryan Cantrill:

Right. Right. So it it was figure that out

Steve O'Grady:

because we go to so many of them now. So

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. I was gonna say, I mean, have you counted how many conferences you've been to in your life?

Steve O'Grady:

No. No. No. I I

Bryan Cantrill:

don't wanna do that.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

I I really I wanna I wanna weigh the the lanyards that I have, though, like, instead of counting number of conferences, just the weight of conference lanyards and badges.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. When I lived in Denver, this is years ago, I would take all my lanyards and I would hang them up, like, right above my desk. It got to be this, like, enormous pile, and I was like, this is just that no. I'm I'm getting rid of all of them. So No.

Steve O'Grady:

No. It's collapsed. This point. At this point, it's probably been I don't know. Been doing this for I'm trying to think.

Steve O'Grady:

I don't even know what the number would be. Because we're going to half a dozen a year at least. Been doing it for a long time. So it's a big number.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. And then, Kean, how about what was what was your first conference?

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

My my first so I I was an academic before I was in tech, and I was a medievalist. So when we talk about the history of RedMonk, that's why I'm willing to talk about it because, you know, for me, decades is not that long. Sorry, Steven. And, so my first conference was with medievalist and Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Interesting.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

Yeah. They have a very different, different view of the world even even compared to say, like, other folks in the humanities. So you would go to a medievalist conference and be like, you tap your papers and you talk, and then there would be, like, a party. There'd be a banquet. There'd be wine.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

There'd be beer. There would be actual need. Right? So going from that to the tech industry wasn't too bad. But my first my first actual tech conference was Munktoberfest 2015.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, there you go. Okay. Wow. I think I think mine was I think like yours, Steven, was a prior to AAD bug, Adam, which is obviously very memorable for many reasons. The, it was an internal, the the Sun had a Sun Tech Symposium, the STS, where one of these large but it was an internal conference, large internal conference.

Bryan Cantrill:

This is the the conference where they had had apparently a complaint in previous years that there were too many things people to pick from. And this is before anything was videoed, which I think is kind of an important remember when we're remembering that super early conference era. Like, talks are not recorded. You go to the talk, you watch the talk, and, like, it's whatever you can remember from the talk, basically. Yep.

Bryan Cantrill:

There's no kind of you can't I mean, which is such a sea change in the way we kind of consume information, but they had they had gotten the feedback that there was just too many talks to pick from. So they they they came up with what they thought was a brilliant solution where every presenter at STS, this is in 2000, every presenter, that was selected to give a talk would give their talk 3 times in a row, back to back to back. And it is the only time in my life I've done this. This was in Denver, I grew up in Denver, and my mom said, Oh, well if you're if you're coming to Denver, I'm like, I wanna come watch you talk. My very supportive mother.

Bryan Cantrill:

And so I give the the first talk, and there are like 15 people there, and they're like, I'm presenting something that's pretty esoteric, and I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna be able to fill 3 rooms on this is the real time support in the Solaris operating system. And I have to make I could send maybe, you know, 15, 20 people, and then in that next middle session, one person shows up. And I'm and and my mom also shows up for that middle session. And I explained to the guy, I'm like, look, this this conference has got this very weird idea that everyone presents back to back to back. You know, my mom is here.

Bryan Cantrill:

Why don't you let's wait to see if if someone else shows up. But if no one else shows up, like, it doesn't make sense to give the talk just to you. You can come in the next I'm gonna give this talk again a 3rd time. You know, I'll kinda like go to lunch with my mom or whatever. I'll come back and I'll give the talk to you.

Bryan Cantrill:

And he just says, I don't really feel like doing that. I'm like, Okay. And then no one else shows up. And so he sits down, I'm like, Alright. I I guess I'm gonna give the talk to you and then my mom.

Bryan Cantrill:

And so I start giving this talk and this guy like starts spacing out during my talk. And, like, you can't do this. Like, there's only one person here. Like, the social contract is now different. Like, if you're in a big room, you can, like, space out.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's fine. There's only, like, 1 per it's just me and you, man. Like, you can't, like, look at the ceiling or whatever. So I kept, like, trying to make eye contact with him. He's kinda this is, like, before phones and laptops or whatever, so he's, like, literally, you know, like

Adam Leventhal:

Like, doing the crossword. Right?

Bryan Cantrill:

Doing the crossword. Absolutely. Counting, like, the flowers on the wallpaper or whatever. And fortunately, there was one other person there. It was my mom, and she was just, like, just totally locked on.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna give my talk to my mom. And the I felt, like, just mortified. I'm like, my mom is this is the, like, tautologically the smallest audience I can possibly have. And, but you actually was it was and after that, I was just like I felt bad.

Bryan Cantrill:

And my mom was like, that was I I learned so much in that talk. Like, mom, I just I'm so sorry you had to, like, see that. Oh, because then you get the end of the talk, and I'm like well, I mean, like, obviously, stop me if you have any questions because you're the only person here. And we get to the end of the talk, and he just, like, walks up and leaves. I'm like, okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

Goodbye. I'm glad you whatever. Anyway, sorry. That was my so that was that was, starting starting from a real low there from, but then, yeah, it was a debug and then OzCon. But see, the it'd be but it was still in those early days, like, you would I mean, the conferences had a a vitality to them because it was the I mean, it's not that they don't have vitality now, but it was a special kind of unique vitality I I feel because you had just no no other way of kinda consuming a bunch of this information.

Bryan Cantrill:

Is that am I being nostalgic here? Steven, without acknowledging how old RedMonk is, what do you, what what are your thoughts?

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. I think conferences today are very different. Right? You know, to the point where I'm at sort of the extreme end of the spectrum at this point where, you know, to your point, you know, sort of back in the day, you know, you'd go to a conference, you know, at least for for most people, you know, analyst less so. But for most people, they go to a conference, you know, to watch stocks, you know, that aren't recorded.

Steve O'Grady:

You can only get them there and so on. You know, these days, everything's recorded. Right? You know, for the most part. And so my I mean, as for my, probably skipping ahead here, but, like, you know, the way that I look at it at this point is that I don't ever wanna go to a conference at this point and see a talk.

Steve O'Grady:

That's not why I'm there. I could do that at home. Like, the only reason for me to travel and be at an event and spend time, you know, sort of away from family and everything else is is, you know, really to to spend time meeting with people face to face because that's the part that I can't duplicate.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's all the way track. Yeah. I understand.

Steve O'Grady:

It's all the way track. Right? It's the only reason I'm I'm going to these events. And that's the tough thing. You know?

Steve O'Grady:

This is that still there you know, there's a you know, conferences have not sort of transitioned, and a lot of them, and and many of them won't. Right? You know, you have an event like re:Invent. You have hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of presentations. People are going for that.

Steve O'Grady:

You know? That that's fine. But, you know, I think it's it's you know, again, like, if the if the primary I don't know. If if what you're going to a conference to consume is, you know, straight content and presentations and so on, like, I just don't see the point of, you know, getting on a plane

Steve O'Grady:

to do that. You know?

Steve O'Grady:

You know? Because it's in in many cases, you know, it used to be, okay, you can interact with the speaker afterwards, but that's, you know, such a zoo at this point. Right? You know, that you're not probably gonna get FaceTime with the person who's giving the presentation in most cases. So yeah.

Steve O'Grady:

Anyways and so yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

I I'm I'm sort of at one extreme end of

Steve O'Grady:

the spectrum because sort of as analysts, you know, for what we're doing is very different. But, Yeah. I mean, even even if I was there for the 40 real negative. Talks. Yeah.

Steve O'Grady:

Probably. Yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

Well, so

Bryan Cantrill:

well, so, Steve, let me just get this week because I, as a speaker, like, I like, I will not give a talk if it's not recorded, and I will not give a talk if it's not recorded, and and, like, the recording has to be made publicly available.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Yep. That's not true.

Bryan Cantrill:

And but so I kind of like You're under the search? Oh, yeah. Definitely. We're under the search.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Record your talk?

Bryan Cantrill:

Well, okay. So because of me.

Theo Schlossnagle:

No. It was the content. There was content that couldn't be recorded.

Bryan Cantrill:

It was and so and I okay. Theo, you know, I have, like, few regrets in life that I didn't record that talk as one of them. Okay. I Okay. So this is the it was the my talk at surge 2010.

Bryan Cantrill:

So this is yeah. This is kinda moving a little bit, but this is, Theo becomes frustrated with velocity. Right, Theo? I think I'm telling the story correctly.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

And, you know, like, I and because velocity had just I mean, I think that had just not serve was not serving the practitioner all that well. I mean, if Theo, what was is that what was your what's the exact source of the disgruntlement? I think that the the

Theo Schlossnagle:

hey. It's complicated. I was I was I was disgruntled with Velocity. They they shifted direction and, more, like, front end web oriented. There wasn't a backing.

Theo Schlossnagle:

SREcon had just sort of emerged, and you wanted something that actually, honestly, felt like the original Velocity audience. And then once we took on that task, it was a lot easier to sort of recraft the the the the desired aesthetic of the event into something that I also like.

Bryan Cantrill:

And, Theo, have have I voiced to you my desire to have a Surge 2010 reunion?

Theo Schlossnagle:

I I had thought about that. You you had said that, and I actually had thought about plans for that.

Bryan Cantrill:

I would love to do a surge reunion just because that I mean, there were so and and I I I mean, do we agree that Archer pays for it? I mean, I think so. Right? I mean, I think, like, search for

Theo Schlossnagle:

the union. For it?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. And it's like the guy that hit the jackpot, like, he pays for it. Whether he knows for it or not. No. He knows it or not.

Bryan Cantrill:

So, because I don't did you go to the search conferences, Adam? This is, like, 2010, 2011, 2012, 13? No. Oh, man. They were really, really good.

Bryan Cantrill:

They were really good. And because it was, like, also, Theo, like, it was kind of a jackpot in terms of timing too. You know what I mean? Like Yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Everyone was testing their their metal at that point in in an ever expanding scale on on the Internet. So, like, the horror stories were, more they were fresh. Right? Now it's usually the same old story told at a different company, at a different scale or a different tech. But the the the catastrophic failures that people talked about there were they they felt novel at the time.

Bryan Cantrill:

They did. And it was just, like, also at an era when it was kind of like before when when folks were hitting these scale issues that weren't just at the hyperscalers. They were hyperscalers were not hyperscale at that point. They were all a lot smaller. So there was I just I I don't know.

Bryan Cantrill:

It just felt like, those years felt, special.

Theo Schlossnagle:

And also

Bryan Cantrill:

it's like it was in Baltimore, which is great. I just, very fond memories of of Surge. And now, Theo, you because I think that was also That's an early conference that was that was making videos available from talks. I I I think

Theo Schlossnagle:

That's where we were on the the front edge of the kind of universal video access that was unpaid.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Right.

Theo Schlossnagle:

But we weren't the first, definitely. But but I think it was, like, we were within 2 years of that really becoming a thing.

Bryan Cantrill:

And you think that, like, you know, YouTube starts in, like, 2006,007, which is, like, just not that long ago. And then you hit these kind of the this kind of era of conferences where, I don't know, a bit of a different kind of a golden era. If you had this kind of prerecorded golden era that we can all live as in our our memory, you had these, talks that are all recorded, but also, like, really broadly attended. Because, Steven, people don't have your disposition today of, like, well, I'm just not even gonna go to the talk, I'm only gonna watch it online. People are definitely watching it in person, but the fact that the recordings are made available really and, I mean, what I started to realize after, like, a year or 2 of this is, like, wait a minute.

Bryan Cantrill:

There are way more people consuming this when it's recorded than are in the room. And

Theo Schlossnagle:

I think the shift that I one of the the reasons for the shift that Steven's so, like, frustrated with, I think that it used to be that you didn't want to, you know, blow your exciting presentation on an online YouTube video that everyone could just consume because you wanted to use it at the conference where you've got and had that hallway track that was so valuable. So, like, submitting a talk, becoming a presenter, going into a lot of them had speakers' dinners and things like that where everybody kind of stared a lot of there's a lot of mindshare in the room. That that that whole arc was important. So Yeah. The idea of just, like, putting that talk online without any sort of pomp and circumstance didn't serve those other other desires very well.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

Yeah. And one thing I think that you mentioned, the whole point of the pump there's a pump in circumstance, but then there's also that element of, can you get feedback on your talk? Which if you're looking at conferences from like the more kind of academic point of view, talks are almost that they can be that thing that you're kind of maybe even still working on. Right? So if nobody's going to the if nobody's going to your talk and nobody's giving you feedback on your talk, that's a that's a big change from, I think, how things were, how for many years ago.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Kelly, and I think that's a very good point because I think when talks became recorded, it it did change kind of the tenor of a talk. It was like it was kind of necessarily more of a performance and less of a dialogue. It was not a boff, you know? To go back to kind of the birds of the feather sessions, it was much more of a, it I mean, not necessarily scripted, but, definitely not necessarily having that iteration of an idea was not happening as much, for sure, when you kind of hit that recorded era.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I decided somewhere along in there like 2013 or 2014, I decided that I'm never giving the same talk twice. And I'm just not going to do that.

Adam Leventhal:

I'm, I- I would say, Brian, at the time, that felt like I don't know. At the time, I was like, oh, that's a great idea. That feels almost controversial. Now with the proliferation of video, I feel like I mean, I don't wanna

Bryan Cantrill:

take it

Adam Leventhal:

away from you, but, like, why would you do it twice? You know? Like, why

Bryan Cantrill:

Exactly.

Adam Leventhal:

And and I'm only gonna give a talk if it's recorded. It's like, why would they not record the talk? You know, here we are in 2024. But I feel like that it like, what what was once a bold position has now become people's expectations.

Theo Schlossnagle:

There were definitely some some speakers that I mean, why would you why would you watch a Netflix comedy special and or why would you go see someone out of theater instead of just watching their next Netflix comedy special? Right? There is some aspect that that of of personal satisfaction you get by setting the audience, being in person, and all that kind of stuff. And there were a lot of, like, seminal tech leaders that gave talks that attracted audiences where you're like, that have been in that same talk three times. They're still there and they're showing up because it it makes them excited and it reinvigorates them.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I don't see that anymore. But that was that was very much the case.

Adam Leventhal:

What about the annual, like, Verte Vogel's, Like, will he pass out? Like, will he actually have a heart attack this time? Like, I think we're I mean, I've never I've never been to it live, but I've certainly

Bryan Cantrill:

watched I would

Steve O'Grady:

go to

Bryan Cantrill:

to reinvent?

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I mean, have you ever seen his talks at reinvent?

Bryan Cantrill:

No. I didn't I said I it it there's like a

Adam Leventhal:

I mean, he just gets like real sweaty and animated, just like and, like very into it, like starts breathing very hard and you're like,

Bryan Cantrill:

labs onto every word

Adam Leventhal:

because it could be his last. Yeah. Am I the only one?

Bryan Cantrill:

I think that's a little a little bit edge to it. I kinda like it. Yeah. I mean, it keeps the audience on edge. Oh, a 100%.

Bryan Cantrill:

But, yeah, feel that's interesting that you need because, I mean, I do think that, like, some of those were, and it was so it is great when you've got, like, a room of people that are really engaged in in what you're saying. It really it's it's energy that really, that does bring something that is greater than the sum of its parts. I mean, Theo, one of my favorite talks of yours, is your closing plenary from Surge 2011, I think.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Why why why building software makes systems administrators angry people?

Bryan Cantrill:

You well, yeah. This is what we're Yes. Where this is where the it was the the elephant, the Larry Wall elephant. Do you recall this?

Theo Schlossnagle:

Oh, yes. Yeah. I remember. I remember the whole thing was they, there was a a hardware bug in a virtualized NIC adapter that was slightly different than an actual hardware bug in a NIC. It was like that was wild.

Bryan Cantrill:

It was wild. It was a little bit of this is like you were complaining to me. It's like the conference is like they were kind of in the pre conference, like, the days before the conference. You're like, I gotta give this plenary in, like, 3 days, and I've got no idea what I'm talking about. And then, like, unrelated to the closing plenary, you were relaying to me your like, the extreme frustration of your past week, which I found hilarious.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm like, Theo, that is your closing plenary. Like, you just need to go and, like, describe your week. And I still Theo, I gotta say, I still absolutely love that talk because in part because you can just, like, feel your visceral pain. The thing I also love is, Adam, Theo goes down a blind alley because someone has his exact problem and suggests a fix. And then someone replies to him saying, thanks, that fix worked for me.

Bryan Cantrill:

The fix was wrong. Fuck. Totally. And there's like, feels like there is a special place in hell for someone who says a fix that does not work, works for them. You can waste an arbitrary amount of time, but it was, it was right.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I think that the theater that was kind of like that was definitely that era of, like, you got a big room and it was great. I mean, it was it was it was it was a lot of energy, live performance. It was, it was really terrific. Thank you. But then I feel like so you you guys did surge for, I think, 5 years and then folded the 10 up.

Bryan Cantrill:

I think it was

Bryan Cantrill:

Something like that? Or

Theo Schlossnagle:

No. I think it was 6.

Bryan Cantrill:

6? Something like that.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I think.

Bryan Cantrill:

But you but it stopped doing surge, presumably because the dynamics were shifting and obviously conferences are super expensive and what what would what was some of the the the and maybe this gets to part of what Steven was saying in terms of, like, the dynamics really changing about conferences.

Theo Schlossnagle:

The 2 things that changed there were that people wanted to be bigger. Everybody always wanted to be bigger. It was a corporate con it was corporate run conference. And while I was the CEO and the major stakeholder, there were other stakeholders, and they didn't want to do it unless it could be bigger. Right.

Steve O'Grady:

So

Theo Schlossnagle:

we had to shift venues. The old venue shut down. There was a lot of things in the way. And then we just realized that that conferences were changing and getting more expensive, so we couldn't provide the same quality at the same price. And SRE con emerged as something that was redundant in content, so we had fewer people.

Theo Schlossnagle:

No. It wasn't that. It was there was a velocity go on that. A velocity waited until we publish our dates 3 years in a row and, scheduled over top of us so that they would deprive of us. That's that's

Bryan Cantrill:

the reason I was told that I remember

Theo Schlossnagle:

now. It because I wasn't I was there for the 1st year they did that, and I took a sabbatical from the company for for, like, 2 years. And, those the second 2 years were really rough because, we had a tried to, put out the flame.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'll get you Schloss Nagel. You you could start a conference at Opposition of Velocity. Yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I was the Velocity China chair for fuck's sake, but whatever.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. These people eat their own. Well, then and then O'Reilly, I mean, that was an O'Reilly conference. O'Reilly had many, many years of conferences, and then after COVID, they O'Reilly totally folded the fan up and decided to go completely online. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

But there was this kind of like 3 legged stool of like you had the attendees, it was kind of in their interest to go. You had the speakers, it was kind of in their interest to go because, you know, they are able to get their ideas out there, things are recorded and so on. And then you also have like the sponsors who are there. And I know that, you know, Theo, Steve still remembers fondly Surge 2010 when he realized that, like, he is with all of these practitioners, he's like, I am the only sales guy here. He's like, I am, like, I am fishing in a stocked pond.

Bryan Cantrill:

This is this is I'm I'm on a game preserve, and I have been like and I I've just got, like, no limit, no bag limit. He he was like, this is great. I was like, please do not tell anybody else about search. He loved that conference. But, of course, like, that that is not sustainable.

Bryan Cantrill:

Like, you can't actually have a game preserve. You actually need to have this kind of other element, this commercial element of, like, people who are there to sell the products. So I

Theo Schlossnagle:

will say that the the the conference that I've been to recently I mean, that's been 3 years now. But, KraftConf out of Budapest.

Bryan Cantrill:

I love KraftConf.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It's incredibly surge esque in its

Bryan Cantrill:

It is.

Theo Schlossnagle:

In its aim to for for its its attendee experience.

Bryan Cantrill:

It is great. Have you ever been to Budapest, Adam? It's No. Never. No.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, it's a it's amazing. It's better

Bryan Cantrill:

than Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. We've gotta, like, let's let's just settle down here.

Bryan Cantrill:

Like, we I the Gen is my second favorite city. Gen is the 3rd largest city in Europe in, like, 15 50 behind Paris and London.

Theo Schlossnagle:

And and it and it captured the moment, man. Still has it.

Bryan Cantrill:

Did and then it was like and then again, is is he oh, listen. I'm I I feel like I gotta, like, I gotta come in here and defend Ghent. Ghent, oh, man, you appreciate this is a medievalist. Ghent was then the the the the changing wool trade and wool being it was no longer a port for wool, which was all moved oh, I feel like this is like, what

Theo Schlossnagle:

It's like a concept of trade.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah, that's right. And so it basically is kind of like economically kinda collapses. And as a result, like, it's not economically interesting, and so it doesn't get bombed during World War 2. So it's like, it's total it's a completely persistent Frozen

Bryan Cantrill:

in time.

Steve O'Grady:

I don't

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Frozen in time. Amazing city. Budapest, also an amazing city. Don't make me choose.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's what I gotta say. Theo, whatever Theo says, I I don't I think they're both great cities. But yes, KraftConf is great. And I but it's just far away, is the problem with KraftConf. And then, I mean, Steven, you've obviously been, you know, had had a front row seat for all of this kind of changing in terms of of conferences and you started when did you guys started was MonkeyGraw before Monctoberfest or was Monctoberfest before what's the origin of Mugtoberfest versus Monkey Gra?

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. Mugtoberfest was first. And then so we get through the first Mugtoberfest. We never run an event. I ended up sleeping for something like 14 hours after the event or something because we didn't staff it right.

Steve O'Grady:

We had no idea what we're doing. And, and then James gets up on the on the stage, at the end of the first one. I'm just like, thankfully, I survived. And he's like, hey. We're doing monkey draw, and it's gonna be, like, in a month, 2 months, or whatever it was.

Bryan Cantrill:

So you're like, what?

Steve O'Grady:

And I was like, that's that's all I like. You could do that, but I'm I'm gonna have no part of that. So, so, yeah, it's the my myctoberfest was first.

Bryan Cantrill:

And the in what year is the 1st monthtoberfest? It's gonna be like I think it's 2010. 2010? Okay. Well

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

It's 2,011 according to, the history

Bryan Cantrill:

of our record. Difference. Split the difference. We we we were on the other side of that one. So the Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

21. The I mean, obviously, RedMonk is is your I mean, they got to get they do have our have Monctoberfest be your first conference. Because Monctoberfest, I think, is still something special. I mean, Steve, do you wanna describe kind of what what why Munktoberfest and kinda why that's endured?

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. So so we wanted to do basically 2 things. We we have been fortunate enough. You know, we've been doing this over the 1 we've been doing it. And we've gotten to know, 2 2 really cool people doing interesting work from lots of different disciplines.

Steve O'Grady:

Right? And it was okay. You know, what what if we brought them together, and put an emphasis? Like, yes. We have talks, and the talks are great and whatever.

Steve O'Grady:

But what if we just brought them together and optimized our conference for the hallway track? So that was our sort of our theory. And, we needed to obviously figure out what our content strategy was. And so we ended up doing you know, I I talked to, I don't know, probably 2 dozen people. You know?

Steve O'Grady:

And, you know, we we sort of came up with some I don't know. The way we describe it now, is not necessarily the language we use at the time, but it's basically the same principle, which is, you know, I talk to people like, hey. I'm gonna come in and give a talk on on Python internals. It's like, hey, man. Like, there's there's events for that.

Steve O'Grady:

Right? We don't we don't need another. And more importantly, like, our our audience is very diverse. The people are you might have sort of one portion of the audience which is super into that and, you know, another portion of the audience which is totally relevant. So what we try to do is basically find things that are, horizontal.

Steve O'Grady:

In other words, they they touch on, you know, some or and certainly in the guardian of the audience, but, ideally, you know, all of them in some form or fashion. And most importantly, they just don't have a home at other events. Right? So, you know, this this past week over for us, for example, you know, there's a great guy from Microsoft, David Smith, and he and his partner, Jay, have been coming to the event for years, and, sadly, Jay died. And so David pinged me and was like, hey.

Steve O'Grady:

You know, could we have, like, a you know, 4 developers and other technologists, could we have a talk that's about the practical experience of grief? Like, how this works? Wow. And that's not a talk that you're you're not gonna see that at re Invent. You're not gonna see that somewhere else.

Steve O'Grady:

But, you know, those are the kinds of things where if we think it's important, you know, for the people on orbit, right, to to have the opportunity to hear messages like that. And some of them are are gutting. Like, I know, Rachel's listening. You know, we had, Kelly. Not Kelly.

Steve O'Grady:

Kelly Ann. When Kelly Sturman, I believe, gave a talk on his son's experience, you know, with Instagram on social media. Oh, yeah. And I know Rachel

Bryan Cantrill:

And that was intense.

Steve O'Grady:

And, you know, so what we're trying to do, like I said, some of them are lighthearted. Some of them are are, you know, really potentially traumatic. But what we're trying to do with the event is create a home. Like I said, just 2 things, like optimize for the hallway track and then have people think about the world around them. What are they building?

Steve O'Grady:

How are they building it? Why are they building it? And sort of what does that look like? And so, you know, when people propose things, it's very you know, the the heuristic is is actually really simple. Because in other words, I I can look at it very quickly and say, alright.

Steve O'Grady:

If this has a home at another event, it's not a good talk for us. Doesn't mean it's a bad talk. Like, you know, you know, we turned down lots of things that'd be that'd be great talks. But they have homes elsewhere, and that's not what, you know, sort of we're we're trying to put together.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

There is a question in chat about Yeah. What the hallway track is, and I think that, like

Bryan Cantrill:

Is that a is that a gen x term?

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

No. But I think I think that's a that's a really good point because, like like, those of us who go to conferences all the time and, like, Steve clearly has been running, like, Montoberfest for a while, like, we we we've heard of the hallway track, but, like, the question of, like, what is it if you're not used to that term?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. I I I speak Gen Z. So it's low key chill for real for real. No cap. Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

The I don't speak gently. I have

Steve O'Grady:

no idea what you just said.

Bryan Cantrill:

No. It's it's fine. My kids right now unfortunately, my kids don't listen to this. They would be just absolute it just oh, god. To be mortified.

Bryan Cantrill:

They drop dead. Yeah, the hallway track is the, and maybe this is a data term, but this is like kind of the the the the meeting outside of the talks when you're you're talking to people in the hallway. Yeah. Yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I mean, I think it's it's easy to explain this. You know, all those networking events that people that like networking events go to, this was the one the only type that engineers truly enjoyed.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's right.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. And I'll I'll give you an example. So, like, you know, one of the one of the reasons that I I miss OSCON was that it was the one event for many years where people from all sorts of walks of of open source life would get together in one place at one time. And, you know, I tell the story tremendously internally. But there was one year I was there for 3 days, I think it was, and I had 30 minutes unaccounted for the entire 3 days.

Steve O'Grady:

And I didn't go to One Talk. All it was was meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting and or bumping into people, you know, sort of in the hall. And, you know, so there are some events which are very good for that. Like, so the, you know, the the Portland, Convention Center, Portland, Oregon, was much smaller and easier to navigate. You can't do that at re:Invent.

Steve O'Grady:

Right? It's too big. Right?

Bryan Cantrill:

So Yeah. Interesting.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. So in other words, there there you hit a certain point, and the hallway track is is not a thing. Right? Because it's just it's not inhabitable. But

Bryan Cantrill:

I hadn't really thought about

Bryan Cantrill:

that by the Portland Convention Center in Portland or in Portland, Oregon. It is kinda like it's a very large hallway, actually. And you clear the hallway track.

Steve O'Grady:

You could basically you you could walk in there and grab a table outside the Starbucks. And, yeah, every 10 seconds or so, like, somebody would walk by and it's like, oh, hey. I haven't caught up with him, you know, or her in a while. And it's like, great. You know?

Steve O'Grady:

So, you know, I you you can sit down and catch up, and then other people would stop by and, oh, they have I've seen them in in a while and so and so. That's the that's the type of experience for me, which is, like I said, that's what I get on planes for because that, you you cannot duplicate, in my view. At least, if if you can, if somebody's got a way to do that, please let me know because if I never had to get somebody again, that'd be great.

Theo Schlossnagle:

The Santa Clara Convention Center had that same aspect as that when you sat on the that that bar, everyone walked by.

Steve O'Grady:

Yes. Well and and so a perfect example is that so 1 year, Oscon went down to Austin.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. I I was gonna say at

Steve O'Grady:

the Austin Convention Center, and that Disaster. Totally totally broke, you know, the hallway track. Because that place, you know, for people who haven't been, it's like a maze. It's like Harry Potter because like, escalator, you end up, like, 3 floors away. You're like, wait.

Steve O'Grady:

What? Like, how does that I'm trying to get to it's like anyway. So that's the thing is is that some of it is a design in size and scope of the conference, but some of it is the event or the event venue rather. And like I said, the bigger and more complicated they get, you know, the the sort of more unwieldy, and frankly impossible, you know, hallway trinkets.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. So let's talk about size a little bit because, you know, you, Steven, I mean, one of the it'd be interesting to know your perspective on this, but one of the things that is a challenge with Monctoberfest is you want it to be small. So therefore, it's like it's hard to go. It's like hard to score a ticket. It's not something that, like, you are not able to accommodate everyone who wants to attend mock Oktoberfest.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. You know, and and and that's a trade off and and, you know, sort of as you know, we've we've sort of thought about you know, we used to release all the tickets, you know, to sort of prior attendees and or people signed up for the list. We cut that in half. So we only release half ahead of the time. So then people who've never been have, you know, 30 minutes of opportunity score half the tickets, but half the tickets at the event is, you know, under 200 tickets.

Steve O'Grady:

Right? You know, we're typically between a 150 and and, you know, 200 people at the event. So, you know, it it's limited. And that is you know, unfortunately, you know, because, you know, sort of very much like Theo, we've had people many, many times over the years saying this is great. You know?

Steve O'Grady:

Can we scale it up? And so on. And we sort of looked at it after the 1st year or 2. We're just like, we can't. We just can't scale the event to the way that we want.

Steve O'Grady:

Could get a little bigger. Sure. But, again, you begin to add people and it breaks down. Because the reason that we kept it the size that we did, this was this floored me. So after the first one that we the the first one Oktoberfest in 2011, excuse me, we capped we intentionally capped the tenants at a 100 people.

Steve O'Grady:

Because because we're like, we've never run an event. It's probably gonna be a disaster. So when it fails, let's keep the blast radius small. So, we had a 100 people, and and people had a a they seem to have a pretty good time. And, I had a bunch of people come up to me after and say, I met more people at this event than any other event I've ever been to of any size.

Steve O'Grady:

And I was sitting there and I was like, I don't I can't that that doesn't work. We we're we're too small. There's literally a 100 people in the room. But it turns out if you take a 100 people and you stick them in the same room, singletrack, and it's a very navigable space, they end up having conversation. It doesn't hurt that we, you know, serve, beer at lunch, you know, which tends to free people up.

Steve O'Grady:

But it's just, that's a fundamentally different approach, and we cannot scale that to 3, 4, 5, you know, 600 people, or up. It's just it's not you know, it would break fundamentally the what you know, sort of what we value about the event itself.

Bryan Cantrill:

Totally. Well, in the field, I think in terms of, like, venue because Steve, did you go to the any of the search conferences? I'm not sure if you Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve O'Grady:

I went to 2 or 3 of them, I think. But, yeah, I was late to that party.

Bryan Cantrill:

Because that venue in Baltimore was definitely amazing and unique. I feel like Theo I mean, you when you when you scaled up and you you changed the venue, something changed in the conference. I mean, it was still great, but it it was it was different.

Theo Schlossnagle:

We ended up relocating. I think we did it in Baltimore at another place. It's all vague memories now. But, then we ended up switching to the Gaylord in National Harbor, which is not far away. It's about 40 minutes away, but but, yeah, completely different vibe.

Theo Schlossnagle:

You know.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yep. It's a complete the the the where you held it in Baltimore was like it was like 4 hotels that were mashed together, and so you would be on and you wouldn't didn't really know which hotel you were in, and I just remember you would be on floor 3 in one hotel, and then you'd be on the 4th floor in the next hotel without actually going up or down any stairs or it was just like it was kinda delightfully confusing, that it there was like, and there were rooms that were like kind of like abandoned ballrooms. Yeah. I know this feels very dreamlike, but it was

Theo Schlossnagle:

It was, it was an incredibly posh ex Shriner temple. Right. So, like, there were like hidden doors and all sorts of weird stuff. It has what was considered at the time the nicest women's bathroom in the United States. So they they shut it down for, like, a half an hour every day to take people on tours of the bathroom.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It has, like, chaise lounges in it, carpet. It's just, like, crazy.

Bryan Cantrill:

So it

Theo Schlossnagle:

was a wild place. It's now just a hotel.

Bryan Cantrill:

But I think it's but it's kind of interesting because I think this gets to, like, what what conferences need to do to like, if a conference is going to be an in person conference, there's gotta be something about it that is that like, there's about the venue or about the experience. I mean, obviously at Oktoberfest, Steven, you've got you've got the local beers in and the local flavor. I mean, there's and it's it's I mean, it's obviously always gonna be, I would assume, in Portland, Maine. Yep. A very difficult city to get to from the West Coast, but but always work trip.

Steve O'Grady:

But, again, that's part of it. Right? So in other words, you know, so the the difference there because, again, we've had people ask us, like, hey. Can you, you know, could you move this out to San Francisco? Can you do it?

Steve O'Grady:

So The answer is sure. I mean, we could. Yeah. But, otherwise, part of the part part of the opportunity is is that if you if you are in Portland, right, particularly if you're coming from the West Coast, like, you really have to wanna be there. And so, you know, if if we ran it in sort of downtown San Francisco, we'd have people, you know, show up, and this is, you know, sort of not the cast of burdens, but people would show up just because they could.

Steve O'Grady:

Right? Not because they're necessarily invested in the event. Whereas

Bryan Cantrill:

That's what we do around here. Look. This is the, you know Yes. The the this is the we just kinda show up at places. This is, you know, we we we

Steve O'Grady:

I've done it many times.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Talk about unique venues. Like, what what about, like, Foo Camp and Kiwifu?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yes. Yeah. Totally. Yep. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Foo Camp, that's where actually I met Bob Lee, the late Bob Lee, I met at at at Foo Camp.

Adam Leventhal:

What is Foo Camp?

Steve O'Grady:

Friends of Orai.

Bryan Cantrill:

Friends of Orai.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It is gone.

Bryan Cantrill:

It is gone.

Theo Schlossnagle:

But FU as a general camp style is still there. It's it's it's an unconference. You everybody shows up with a shared mission. There are no talks. And then you, you know, you quick bore I forget how what the term for that is.

Theo Schlossnagle:

But you, you know, you whiteboard all of your concepts and then you vote for the ones that you wanna see and then the Yep. It's self organizing.

Steve O'Grady:

Yep. And then it's invite only, importantly.

Bryan Cantrill:

It is invite only. I and I knew when I was invited, I'm like, I think I'm gonna be invited once, so I should just enjoy it because I don't think I'll be invited back. And that was right. So I was I was right about that. I got in a couple of

Theo Schlossnagle:

this really weird experience at my first boot camp. That's where I met Nat Porkington for the first time, who is a delightful, delightful human being that requires a special tolerance.

Steve O'Grady:

He's a trip. He's a trip.

Theo Schlossnagle:

He is so wonderful. I remember I was very, very young at the time. I think I was 22 or something like that, 21. And I I got there, and he he was 26 or something. He looks at me, and he he learned that I was 21, and he looked surprised.

Theo Schlossnagle:

And I said, what? And he's like, oh, the years have not been kind to you.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I was like,

Theo Schlossnagle:

wow. Okay. Alright. This is how this relationship's gonna be. But, yeah, I sat at a table with, Esther Dyson, Jeff Bezos, Danny Hillis, and one other person having lunch.

Theo Schlossnagle:

And they were talking about, like, building nuclear reactors in Mexico and feeding the the the energy back to the US. It was the weirdest freaking thing. And that was in, like, 2,000 and I think it was, like, 2,003. Maybe it was 2,003.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. That's gonna be I think it was 2,003.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Yeah. It was the 2,000 that was the 2nd year or 3rd year that it happened. And, it was just so weird because, like, I mean, AWS didn't exist. Right? So Pithos was a very different person.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It was interesting. It was interesting.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. The, the the Fugitive I went to was in 2011 where I saw Quinn Norton presenting on Bitcoin. And I I I I often think of how what's how many if I if I had only had this this is where Adam, we, you know, we had this, you know, meeting with the proto Twitter, and I'm like, I'm never gonna do that. Like, those guys are jokers. And Adam's like, those guys are jokers, and I should reserve AHL on Twitter.

Bryan Cantrill:

And it's, which I and this, by the way, that, like, the the, the American Hockey League, like, now you and the American Hockey League have this kinda ongoing bit where you've got AHL at Blue Sky, and now they've got the AHL of Blue Sky.

Adam Leventhal:

It was great. God bless their social people. They're they're social people.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's really heartwarming, honestly. It's like a buddy movie, the u 2.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Yeah. That'd be great.

Bryan Cantrill:

But I think I Adam

Theo Schlossnagle:

I went to I I went to a Kiwifu in New Zealand in, I wanna say, 2018, 2019. And that was really interesting. But, I mean, it's sort of off the reservation. So it's invite only, but, like, the the the topics are not unified enough in mission statement where you just get a weird array of things. So it's I don't know.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I think they're the conferences for the conference's sake now.

Bryan Cantrill:

Well, okay. So so we got these kind of conferences that are for that really are focused on this kind of like social aspect, and I don't think those are gonna go away. I think that they've also I mean, I think one of the unfortunate bits I mean, I think both the strength and the minus is that you've got this exclusivity with it. I mean, I do think like these you kinda think of these food camps that are, you know, these are kind of extraordinary folks, but it's not like the it's not open. It's in by Dolby.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's not open to all comers. What about I just to shift gears a little bit, because I do think that like the way we, present information and giving talks, I do think is important. What does the future of that look like? And obviously, I'm, you know, I'm I'm a I've got my thumb on the scale a little bit because of what we're doing with dtrace.com this week. It should be said, Steven and Theo, both attendees of the 2,008dtrace.com.

Bryan Cantrill:

Mhmm. That's true. That was so much fun. That was so fun.

Steve O'Grady:

That was that was one of my that was one of my favorite experiences where, you know, somebody somebody asked in the room. It's like, okay. Who who has basically written sort of low level internals for for hardware? And every goddamn hand goes up in the room and said, well, I'm looking around like, yeah, man. I I I don't do that.

Steve O'Grady:

Like, no. I was not very good at this. So, like, one of these things is very much not like the other.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, that was so great. It was so I I I actually and that was a very technical, fun conference with a very, you know, a niche conference. Like, this is not gonna be nobody is asking us to scale up DTracy talking. This is not, Adam, this is not something that we have, we were like, boy, this conference would be great, but can we do it in Santa Clara Convention Center? Like, I

Adam Leventhal:

yeah. No

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. And I I do, and and Steven, as I'm as I'm sure you recall, that the I mean, this is like a conversation I recall so vividly, because I remember exactly where we were at the end of the conference when you're telling me this has been a great conference, but, next year is gonna be like, you just like, next year is gonna be worse. I was like, like, this conference is not even like, today's not even over yet. Like, I can't even have today, and we're already talking about next year.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's like, no. I think it'll be fun.

Steve O'Grady:

Yikes. That was that's 4th time. We don't remember this.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Oh, no. No. It was no. No.

Bryan Cantrill:

I think it was extremely helpful. You're like, no. Like, look. I you know, this conference, it's like, this was great. I'll I'll highlight it to you.

Bryan Cantrill:

Like, this was really great. This is amazing. You brought but, like, next year, like, some people can make it, some people can't make it. And then everyone's just gonna invite comparison to this year, and it's just gonna be, like, people are gonna kind of, like, reminisce about this year. Like, next year is just not gonna be quite and then, like, the next year, like, won't be good as Gannon, and it'll just kinda fizzle out.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I'm, like, can we can we talk about this tomorrow maybe? Like, do we have to talk about this?

Steve O'Grady:

Well, I what what I'll say what I'll say is is that, I've I've certainly learned from organizing conference, because 100% when people come up to you with, like, feedback during the event, you're like, not now, man. Just just not now. Just just keep waiting. I'm not I'm happy to hear it after the event. So I will I

Bryan Cantrill:

will say, in my defense, that is my fault. This is 2008. This is before 2011. Yeah. Sure.

Bryan Cantrill:

Shut up at your 1st month toberfest and be like, hey, Steve, before you go to sleep for 14 hours, I've got some feedback for you.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah.

Steve O'Grady:

Right. And that happens

Steve O'Grady:

every time. Right? Every

Bryan Cantrill:

time. But I actually really appreciate it because this is what, like, when we you you this kind of like your, this is, you were like an apparition from the future. And as, because we had this idea like, oh, this will be an annual event. And I'm like, no, no, we need to not make it an annual event. And like, no, forget it.

Bryan Cantrill:

We're just never gonna do it again. Like, I I that's it. Like, that's the way to play it. We're not gonna do it again. And then it was, you know, when when we had kind of, you know, 2010, 2011, 2012, and then by 2012, we're like, well, maybe we can't do it again because no one can remember 2,008.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I'm like, this is why they only do the Olympics every 4 years. So we need to we can do like the Olympiad cadence. Yep. And this is this is 2024. It's a it's a Detroit Olympiad year.

Bryan Cantrill:

But we did make the decision to go completely online, because, for deetrix.com was great for, you know, in kind of that 2008 era, but now it's like, why would people travel when they can get I mean, and it's this is this is gonna be interesting to see, like I I'm so this is on Wednesday, by the way, not that this is a not that this entire episode is just like a cheap promo for our our conference, but, you know, it is free to attend. But actually, it's because one thing that that that's important is that it's, it is actually freely available for everybody. Like, I'm not gonna have to charge anything and anyone can go. And because I I I like the socialization you get with the exclusivity, but everything else about the exclusivity, I don't like. And I want as many people to be able to participate as want to participate.

Bryan Cantrill:

Now in dtrace.com's case, not exactly worried about being overwhelmed with attendees. But what what do you make of kind of the online conferences, Steven? I mean, when or and and Theo?

Steve O'Grady:

You know, like, I'm I'm in favor, because, again, you know, it really just depends on sort of what you know, we use the, you know, Christiansen notion of, jobs to be done. We'll add a red monk. And, you know, if the job that you're trying to trying to sort of tackle is, hey. I wanna get, you know, essentially content and messaging and lessons learned and so on out, you know, a virtual event's a great way to do that. Right?

Steve O'Grady:

And, you know, I can say like, so I I walk a lot for, just for for health and and selling reasons. And one of the one of the things I do all the time is okay. You know, I don't have time necessarily to sit down and watch this talk, but I will pull them down and just listen to them while I'm walking around. Right? And, you know, so it's it's a great way of sort of, you know, sort of maximizing, you know, sort of, the availability.

Steve O'Grady:

Now, again,

Bryan Cantrill:

it it you

Steve O'Grady:

know, it's all trade offs. Like, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. But, you know, I'm I'm you know, look, I think if it's, for me, it's either, you know, sort of online, small and in person, or huge. Right?

Bryan Cantrill:

Right. And

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Types of events at this point, at least for me, you know, speaking just for myself, those are the ones that I'm likely to attend.

Bryan Cantrill:

Right. And So you got so yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Yeah. I don't I don't know. I mean, I think that the the appeal of comp the the online conferences are more like online content. It's very hard to get the sort of interactivity that you would get at a at a regular conference. A lot of times, there's not multiple tracks, so you can't use your feet.

Theo Schlossnagle:

You have to, like if you're not in shit in a session, you know, you there's no others. You just have to, like, tune out until the the next session comes. Those things are tricky. I've always been a big fan of, nonviolently, you know, voting voting for my interest with my feet.

Bryan Cantrill:

Right? Yeah. You do walk out of my talks.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I have walked out of some great talks just because it's like, hey, I I think I know this content. I'm gonna talk to this person later anyway. I'm gonna go over to this one I haven't seen before. I've heard that's that might be interesting. I find the atmosphere of in person not too large.

Theo Schlossnagle:

So, like, the sweet spot, the the other ends of what Steven's saying, is, like, that that 200 to 300 person conference is the right size for me. I had Monktoberfest pulls it off because of the single track. It's slightly that's not at the, like, 150 to 200 range. But that's the right number to get to make me wanna go somewhere. Right?

Theo Schlossnagle:

That if it's bigger than that, you know, I'm not a salesperson. I don't wanna set up a 1000000 meetings. I don't wanna, like I like to be able to not plan everything and run into interesting people that make it worth being there. I think if the conference is bigger than that, you have to plan everything ahead of time. You have to plan your encounters, all of that kind of stuff, and I'm not into that.

Theo Schlossnagle:

So Yeah. I KraftConf is interesting in that the speaker group is so large that you end up having this sort of large floating nucleus in the in the conference that that makes that sort of feel the same way.

Bryan Cantrill:

So that works from, like, the I I definitely agree with you from, like, the speaker perspective or an attendee perspective. The economics, though, become harder at that small scale. Right? I mean, Steven, I mean, I you you I mean, it's it must be tough to pull off, I would assume. I mean, it's obviously a huge amount of work.

Bryan Cantrill:

And this which is another thing, actually, that's worth talking about in terms of, like, the actual burnout folks get from organizing conferences.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I'm biased in that I haven't attended a lot of conferences, not as a speaker. So it was, like, the core portion of my my activity when I ran the company with speaking. So if if I count, all of my my speaking engagement was over 300, And then it was over 250 if there were more than 1 speaker, and there was over 200 if there were more than 1 track. So I was, like, always always at a conference. You know?

Theo Schlossnagle:

Sometimes a

Steve O'Grady:

couple times a month.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I didn't have the I didn't have the luxury of attending very many conferences as an attendee. Oktoberfest was one of the few.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. I was gonna say, you you tend to yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

Brian, what's the last Brian, what's the last in person conference you've been to?

Bryan Cantrill:

Moktoberfest, I think. Okay.

Adam Leventhal:

Hello. I think Not this year, but the previous year.

Bryan Cantrill:

But previous year, I think Moktoberfest 2023. I don't know. Did I go to I but and this is where I think no. I because I did do Monctober I may have done it in person last year that I can't remember. Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

But, well, recently because the online conferences and the in person conferences are actually blending together.

Adam Leventhal:

Mhmm.

Bryan Cantrill:

I I do think that, like, there are folks are getting some tricks about online conferences that to give them more of that like, I think p 99 comp, I think that those folks do a a terrific job of getting a great energetic hallway track and by by mixing up live and prerecorded events. It So I I think that the, that's part of the reason that they're actually, blurring together, in a in a delightful way. But, yeah, I don't go to very many in person conferences, and I only go I generally only go if I'm a speaker because there's something work I mean, it's just harder otherwise. And, you know, I went to a one of these kind of traditional I mean, not to calm out because I think they do a great job, but I went

Bryan Cantrill:

to go to Chicago in 2023,

Bryan Cantrill:

and it was, to attend for 3 days, it was $3,000. It's like, man, that's a lot. I mean, that is like that's not the that's not a hotel and that's that's not that that's not travel. That is just the cost of attending the conference. So it was like 28100 or something like that for 3 days.

Bryan Cantrill:

And, like, that's not economically work, really. Yeah. I I don't think. I mean, I'm like And then I think that they And I'm I'm sure they're gonna change it up because, like, when I was at that conference, I'm like, this conference is many fewer people are attending. They were not recovering at all from their pre COVID numbers because the cost is so high.

Bryan Cantrill:

And as a result, like you're losing that critical mass and they're still at that kind of Stephen, you said that, like, conferences need to either be online, very intimate, experience oriented, or very large. And it was absolutely falling in that gap. And it's like that that's the valley of death for a conference call.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. I I talked to the organizer too, in sort of a a a bunch of events that were, you know, kind of in the mid sort of size. So, you know, a 1000 north of a 1000 people, sort of less than 3 or 4.

Steve O'Grady:

And and she was saying it's really, really it's it's almost impossible to pull them off. Because, you know, the the, you know, the sort of the the, selling part, like, in terms of what you get out of it. Right? You know, small intimate conferences are are easy to understand. Very, very large events like re Invent.

Steve O'Grady:

You know, there's everybody, is the sort of from the industry is there, so you get that. But it's a small, like, 1,000 people, 2,000 people, 3,000 people. You know, you know, there there are definitely events that pull that off, but I think it's much harder, you know, these days. You know? Because it's it's travel budgets are tight.

Steve O'Grady:

You know, a lot of you know, once you have the option of, like, hey. These things are gonna be online anyway. Right? You know, that that can be a tough sell, you know, for people to get

Bryan Cantrill:

their whole budget

Steve O'Grady:

to go to events.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's a tough sell. Yeah. And so I I kinda wanna I mean, so I think the thing that we're experimenting with, I would say, with the adjust.com for 2024, is can we can you get an online conference that has a bit of an unconference feel to it, where it is a little more, loosely structured? Can we get to some of that kinda community building and get some more people kind of giving talks? Because I do think it's like, it's it's helpful for people to give talks.

Bryan Cantrill:

But of course, like you're giving a talk to, you know, it's like you're giving a presentation in a Google Meet, it's not the same kind of experience. But I think it's actually important as an industry that we are getting younger technologists an opportunity to present their work. And I'm a little worried that we if if conferences don't afford that opportunity, that's a bit of a problem. I think it it it's really important that we we afford that to folks. But I don't know.

Bryan Cantrill:

Maybe maybe maybe I should be maybe the youths are are just like no. We're all like YouTube influencers. You don't make, like you know, don't know. I I I make I I have, like, 6,000,000 views on this, like, unboxing of a toy that I it's fine.

Steve O'Grady:

I don't. Love it.

Bryan Cantrill:

But I I do think that that that's important. So I think we this is gonna be a a different kind of experiment. I think we're also gonna try a bit of the unconference y bit, and we're trying to find I mean, Adam, do you wanna describe what we're doing? I think we're kind of trying to use Discord and Google Meet and YouTube streaming and and try to hit a Sure. I mean a sweet spot in here.

Adam Leventhal:

The the higher bit is we're making up as we go, but we have, you know, we're trying to collect some topic. You know, one of the things that, about the unconference in the past that we've done with detrius.com is, like, we write down the ideas. Like, literally, people are hollering out stuff and then moving their bodies and circling things with markers and so forth. And knowing that that's gonna be tricky. We're trying to on Discord, you know, on this existing Discord where where folks are now, you know, collect ideas for the that that people have and to to circulate some of these ideas.

Adam Leventhal:

Then we're gonna have a discord channel for each talk so that we can discuss the talk as folks are are giving it, have, you know, q and a for the speakers, for the presenters around that, and then switch to a different channel so that we can have that kinda archived along with that video, kind of focus conversation on that talk. And, you know, we're gonna see how it goes.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's it's gonna be it's gonna be a stage dive, potentially onto concrete.

Adam Leventhal:

We, you

Bryan Cantrill:

know, you never you never know around here.

Adam Leventhal:

We we know we've softened it up with some bodies already. Like, we know

Bryan Cantrill:

we've softened it up with some bodies.

Adam Leventhal:

Gonna juice it up with some folks who we know are gonna give some interesting, presentations, and and we have some cool work at Oxide. This can been sort of pent up. So we know that there's, like, not nothing there. And I'm looking forward to seeing what folks from the community have to have to share and what what people wanna hear about.

Bryan Cantrill:

And then we are also doing a an in person social here in the evening. So we're what we are really trying to have it both ways. And knowing that this is, like, not something that people will travel for, so we'll be, I don't know. You know, this could be maybe it'll be the worst of all worlds, but, And and and,

Adam Leventhal:

you know, at the very least at the very least, we have a very wearable t shirt. I mean, that's that's at the very least, that's what we get out of it.

Bryan Cantrill:

I use okay. Yes. That I thought you're you're saying at the very least, it's gonna be cheap because it definitely is cheap.

Adam Leventhal:

Is that too?

Bryan Cantrill:

It's like well, no, because I do think this is an issue that, like, that that the, this is it has become so expensive. And, and this is also like remote work. I mean, and and I mean, Steven, I think you must have also had this thought about, like, you know, we if we are transitioning to a more of a a truly remote world, what does that mean to kinda come into the world when it's all remote and how people, you know, as young technologists, how they actually, like, connect with people on on obviously, the world is also more connected than ever.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I had high hopes that that when we shifted into this online, online remote work, that, companies would successfully bow out of their their, you know, ridiculous office space, investments and invest in corporate retreats. Oh.

Bryan Cantrill:

And and lots of them.

Theo Schlossnagle:

And that did not because it would save a ton of money.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, I love that Fantasia. That would what a nice world that would have been. And that would We we

Theo Schlossnagle:

did that. But but, I mean, I think that that's a a great opportunity to actually turn some of these abandoned office buildings that are never gonna be filled out into sort of

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

A space where you can run a corporate event with, you know, different sizes of people and have it be both engaging and entertaining, you know, with a primary focus on on social team building, because you have to load up on that stuff. Right? And I I would figure, you know, you have you have, like, 5 or 6, 3 day events in a year, that are completely off-site, completely you're you're entrenched in the team you're working with. You're you're you're in the trench with them, working on stuff and doing fun activities and all of that kind of stuff. And then you work remote the rest of the time.

Theo Schlossnagle:

You don't have to go in the office at all. My hopes were destroyed, so I quit my job. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. I mean, it that's what what a great world that you're describing where all of this this this corporate real estate that is not gonna be used properly can now be wait, and we can take all of that money and we can actually invest it properly and having people that are remote, but then spending that money on bringing

Theo Schlossnagle:

them together. The crazy part is that we did that before in the from, like, 2,000 and, I wanna say, 7 to, like, 2015 with conferences. They didn't save any money, but they did send everybody somewhere, usually twice a year for a couple of days to go to some conference that they were working with. And it was an incredibly good experience. You know, you get to work with other technologists.

Theo Schlossnagle:

You get to share information. You get cross contamination of of mistakes and and, you know, good ideas. So so that stuff's missing. It's

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Well, I think that what you so I think that, you know, there are gonna be some new models. I mean, I think Rafael in the chat is saying, you know, sometimes the things are are too produced. It it just it feels too intimidating. Rafael, maybe I'm I'm putting words in your mouth.

Bryan Cantrill:

Maybe this is not what you're saying. What I think you're saying is, I love how underproduced detrace.com is because it tells me that anyone is welcome to present.

Adam Leventhal:

That's right. We have a

Bryan Cantrill:

we have a poor audio on your podcast.

Adam Leventhal:

That's right. Such low production values that nobody feels intimidated.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's right. You can't possibly have imposter syndrome around here because we clearly have got no idea what we're doing. But I think and then it but if you can do that, then you can maybe do more of them, you know? I mean, the I mean, I still think, like, this very podcast has been great for us. I don't know why more folks don't do these things.

Bryan Cantrill:

Or if they do, I can't find them.

Theo Schlossnagle:

The problem is is that the hallway track that's here just doesn't doesn't resemble the the spontaneity of the hallway track at at like a healthy conference. Right? I I I don't if I know who I wanna hang out with, I can go to a birds on a feather or jump in a channel, but

Theo Schlossnagle:

but,

Theo Schlossnagle:

you know, here there, like in a lot of these conferences, there's a there's a main channel where everybody can talk to each other. No one uses that because it's too much. And then there's a channel based on topics that presumes you know what you wanna talk about. You can do direct communication, but that's too intimidating. But you can't, you know, go into the, like, click on a random I mean, yes, you could.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Click on a random channel that you don't know anything about and and eavesdrop and then decide whether or not you wanna actually participate, which is sort of how the hallway track works is that you you're just near some sort of conversation, and it's either interesting or it's not, and you get either pulled into it or repelled away from it. And you're bouncing around and you you find some interesting stuff, and then it was unexpected. It was unplanned, and it's fantastic.

Bryan Cantrill:

I okay. So I would like to say that, like, the the shirt and and Adam, you were calling out that the shirt is an absolute banger. Kudos to Ben Leonard, our our designer. So that is so this is so I don't know if you saw, Theo, the the our shirt for teachers dot com 2024 is taking some of this inspiration from 08, and kind of reimagining it with the an actual, a gimlet there, an actual oxide compute sled. People are asking like, wait a minute, can I just get the shirt?

Bryan Cantrill:

Do I have to go to the conference? It's like an online conference for not taking attendance. So, yes. Like, you get, like, I mean, do you need me to spell it out for you? I mean, you can just, yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yes. You can get the shirt. And then, like, you can also go to the free online conference, but you can and then you can just, like, you know, lurk on the conference and get and you can get an amazing shirt. So yes. Anyone can get the shirt.

Bryan Cantrill:

We'll be, they will be packed by hand by my children. Not a they're my own children, so this is not before anyone busts out the labor law on me, which my kids do all the time. It's like, it's my own kids, all legal, I think.

Adam Leventhal:

So if you get a note in the package that says I'm being held hostage to

Bryan Cantrill:

a computer factory, it lets you know who is right. I know which one did it. I know which one did it. If you get a note okay. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

I this is a good point, Adam. I'm glad you're bringing this up. No one is being held against their will despite the the note that my 17 year old may try to slide in there.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I learned that I can I can have a a underage relative, underage family member, like my children, operate a band saw, which is only allowed to be operated by 18 plus, by by actually 8 employees? That's fucking crazy. Right? That's a good way to lose all your fingers.

Bryan Cantrill:

And as it turns out, like, labor law is pretty much all repealed for your own kids. I mean, god bless it. Otherwise, like, our our kids would all be, like, little attorneys. They'd have, like, what do you know? I'm like, I don't know.

Bryan Cantrill:

Why would I have to go through your lawyer to ask you to unload the dishwasher? What do you think this is not an ocean? Oh, come on. This dishwasher is alright. Maybe this one is, but, no, it's gonna be, so yes.

Bryan Cantrill:

Everyone can, the conference is free. The theater is not free because but, you know, it's pretty cheap, I think. And the social is not really

Theo Schlossnagle:

I'm not sure I saw that through the sign up process.

Bryan Cantrill:

I don't know that they will be I Adam, I think these things are gonna sell out. Oh, yeah. Not to not to

Theo Schlossnagle:

be too exclusive about it, but I do think

Bryan Cantrill:

I don't know. I don't even

Theo Schlossnagle:

hang for anything, but maybe I did. I don't know.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Somebody gave me offline and tell me whether or not I'm getting a shirt. Happy to pay.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm so

Theo Schlossnagle:

nervous if I did or not. Is it in the email?

Bryan Cantrill:

The well, yeah, we may we may have you and we have resisted. I have to say we have, like, we have this is, like, the first time we've made an oxide shirt kinda publicly available. So we're we're excited.

Steve O'Grady:

And it's a great chart.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's great. I think it's gonna be it's gonna be fun. It'll be an interesting experiment. I I I hope other things experiment like this. I would like to go to other experiments like this.

Bryan Cantrill:

So, if other, folks, the, in terms of when will the shirts be shipped out, when will the shirts be

Adam Leventhal:

shipped out? I don't even know when they're arriving in our office.

Bryan Cantrill:

I don't think they haven't I think we are still waiting for them to arrive. We have I mean, they are at their en route. Yeah. But

Adam Leventhal:

In other words, we've heard conference organizers talk about burnout, and we've been really careful to avoid that.

Bryan Cantrill:

Well played. Yes. We're very mindful of this burnout problem. And therefore therefore, first, my children will be doing the work. So just that's that's just preserving my longevity.

Bryan Cantrill:

At an undetermined

Adam Leventhal:

time in the future.

Bryan Cantrill:

At an undetermined time in the future. Exactly. So, wow. This is the, it's like, wow. This is the most thank God, this unproduced conference.

Bryan Cantrill:

I don't not only do I not have impostor syndrome.

Steve O'Grady:

I'm

Theo Schlossnagle:

getting a shirt.

Bryan Cantrill:

I know these guys won't get burned out because they don't seem to be doing any work. Yeah, sorry.

Steve O'Grady:

I'll just update you.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It's it's all safe. I am getting a shirt. Okay, good.

Bryan Cantrill:

Alright. There you are. Good. There you go. Great.

Bryan Cantrill:

I got it. People wanted the the that yellow shirt. That is a collector's item, Adam, and yours is in good shape. I do not, the the

Theo Schlossnagle:

Mine's a little threadbare for pretty good shape.

Bryan Cantrill:

I have a little sight.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It must have shrunk.

Adam Leventhal:

That's the only explanation.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's right. The shirt has gotten much smaller over the years. That's that's the only thing that makes sense. But it was it's a lot of fun. And this is gonna be so we're we're trying to, like, get it all.

Bryan Cantrill:

We'll see. We're obviously gonna drop something on the wait. We're not gonna you you can't get it all. You can't, you have to give up something, I think. That's the the and you have to kinda know what you're trying to go do.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I think for this, it's like we wanna talk about detrits, which is gonna be fun. So it, but, if you if folks do get the opportunity I mean, I assume, Steven, that you've not talking about conference burnout, that's surely, you must be, I mean, I know it's a lot of work to put on Oktoberfest every year. I'm sure every year, you're like, why am I doing this again?

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. I did. Yeah. I mean, the the yeah. The burnout is a real thing.

Steve O'Grady:

The thing that's helped the most is just that, you know, we've we've brought on people to sort of offload in a bunch of the heavy lifting. So I'm not dealing you know, so like I said, that 1st year, I did, like, way too much of it and slept for 14 hours or whatever. And these days, you know, there's entire portions of it where people will come up and say, hey. This was great and whatever. I'm like, I had no idea that was a thing.

Steve O'Grady:

Literally nothing to do with it. So, yeah, you try to offload as much as you can, but, you know, there are still pieces that are just sort of highly, just take a ton of time. Right? So, you know, speaker selection is all me. And, you know, there's a lot of communications back and forth.

Steve O'Grady:

Like, this year in particular, because of the macroeconomic, we had a ton of people who couldn't make it because they lost their job or changed jobs or whatever. And so, you know, you're trying to juggle all these talks and, you know, sort of make sure that you are, you know, sort of hitting the marks that you wanna mark you know, sort of make, you know, with respect to diversity of of speakers. And so, yeah, there's a that's that's a lot of overhead. And, you know, I I I frequently say that my my favorite time of the event is, like, 2 hours in, because at that point, anything that hasn't been done yet, it's it's just isn't gonna get done.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's a

Bryan Cantrill:

it's a lost cause. Yep.

Steve O'Grady:

It's like, yep. Yeah. We had one year where it was like we you know, I. I shouldn't say we. I forgot all the power cables.

Steve O'Grady:

I was like, okay. Like, we don't we don't have power. Sorry.

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick:

22 hours in is also when the beer, I think, is served at lunch.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, Kelly had a very important point. Yes. Yeah. No. I've noticed frustration.

Steve O'Grady:

But yeah. Yeah. You know, sort of organizer organizer burnout is absolutely awesome.

Bryan Cantrill:

Well, so all the more reason to be grateful for, and and I think you also have to be, like, you can never take these, these conferences for granted because they they don't go no conference is gonna go on forever, and Good. Which I'll be great grateful for them when we have them, and I certainly was extremely grateful for those years of surge, Theo, and very, very grateful for Moktoberfest, as I've told repeatedly, Steven, I think you've that I've given the talks that are most personally important to me at Moktoberfest, in part because you there are talks that that you explicitly asked me to give, which I would also really encourage conference organizers to do. Like, if there's a talk you wanna see, go find the person you wanna give it and ask them to give it, because they may not even certainly for the talks you've asked me to give, it has not occurred to me to give a talk on them. Okay. And they've ended up being really, really important.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It's one of the things that was controversial about Surge was the selection criteria on that, was not about the most interesting content. Because a lot of times you could find that online already. We wanted the content interesting and relevant, but we wanted the speaker to be engaging on stage. We wanted them to have Right. More people to go in and come out and be like, wow.

Theo Schlossnagle:

I'm really glad. That was that was cool. Right? And, and that took a lot of work, and it a lot of time took meeting those people in person, to figure out, like, what their energy level was. It was a lot of work.

Steve O'Grady:

Yeah. Well and and sort of we we do the opposite almost in the sense that I mean, we probably have 1 or 2 speakers every year who have never given a talk before. Right? And it's like, you know, maybe they'll be good. You know, sort of maybe they'll they'll, you know, sort of, you know, struggle, but they gotta learn.

Steve O'Grady:

And, you know, when when we give people that opportunity and as I've told people, you know, first time speakers before, I'm like, look. You're you're here. We picked you because of, you know, this this it's important that, you know, sort of we hear whatever the subject is. Right? And, you know, we we care about delivery.

Steve O'Grady:

We want the delivery to be as good as possible, but that, you know, for our audience in particular and that size of event and so on, that's not that's not a priority for me. I don't I don't really look at that.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. And we, we definitely in terms of, like and this is not a problem with the.com, but when you are oversubscribed I mean, Adam, like, we were with systems we love, where I had I talk about, like, a onetime bounty of, like, the old, like, we have unspent marketing dollars, just absolute music to my ears.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

So we're like, can you spend $40,000 on a conference? I'm like, a 100% absolutely. You've come to the right person. We can go to this.

Adam Leventhal:

Pause for a second? Because you put on a great conference. Like, a one and done that but that systems we love was just

Bryan Cantrill:

a phenomenal conference. That was that was so much fun. That was so much fun. And the the, that was it was like a one and done. I kinda had an idea of maybe we do an I I but it it did end up being one and done.

Bryan Cantrill:

That one, I I think, actually, the thing that I am proudest of there was how we selected talks, actually. We were, we were blind. I I thought it was really important to be blind and to have people just submit their proposals. And then we we got we were do we had a huge number of people who wanted to to talk, which is great. And then whittled it down to the point where we were we still were had 3 times the number of applicants or twice maybe the number of applicants as we had spots, and then we unblinded and and and looked at other things including like, we wanted to get some first time speakers up on stage and, that was, yeah, that was a lot of fun.

Bryan Cantrill:

Wasn't it? That was a that was a good day. It was great.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Incredible.

Bryan Cantrill:

And it was systems we love, and that was in, in 2016, I think. But, we kinda had the idea we'd take him on the road. We did systems we love in Minneapolis, which was fun. But then the the unspent marketing dollars problem, that kinda went away.

Theo Schlossnagle:

It turns out.

Bryan Cantrill:

Turns out

Bryan Cantrill:

if you spend the marketing dollars, you no longer have the unspent marketing dollars. And then, of course, everyone adjust their budgets next year to make sure that doesn't happen. So, that that's that's kinda what happened there. I will say actually a problem with, so was a briefly a problem with systems we love, the talks, we had lost the videos for a bit. And because when you have they were on Vimeo and they were on kind of a corporate account and then a bunch of us had left and they, you know, changed to a free plan and then Vimeo started deleting stuff, but we there were some terrific folks inside of Joynt.

Bryan Cantrill:

Thank you very much. You know, you are who rescued those videos. But then we did not do that for detrace.com 2016. So the detrace.com 2016 videos were lost, unfortunately.

Theo Schlossnagle:

Oh, god.

Bryan Cantrill:

Does that suck? Yeah. So I would say it's really important when you, please upload those videos to YouTube, and make sure that they they've got and and please, if you haven't, donate to the Internet Archive, which I have more than once, where I I have has saved my bacon. When somebody has deleted Can I just say, actually, may I make a quick PSA, Adam? Because this has happened to me a couple of times.

Bryan Cantrill:

If you record a talk at a conference, you are engaged in a social contract with the person who you recorded. And you, this is Mike.

Adam Leventhal:

You're asking me to, as your lawyer, you're asking me to vet the statement.

Bryan Cantrill:

As my lawyer, I want you to, well, I have had this happen a couple of times where people have have deleted the only recordings of talks that I gave. And it's real because I don't give the same talk twice, and it has been the Internet Archive that has absolutely bailed me out and has allowed me to restore those talks. And in some cases, those talks were really personally important. And I, you have a responsibility to a speaker when you've got like a part of them that they've given you as part of that talk, and, you just just you can't destroy someone's art, and you can't just anyway, that's all I have to say about that. So okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

I feel better. I got that up.

Adam Leventhal:

Good. Good.

Bryan Cantrill:

Just, also, Vimeo. If you if anyone works for Vimeo and can help us restore to the I, but I think these things are lost, unfortunately. You should've stuck up

Adam Leventhal:

to 16. Just to go on the way back machine, the, Java one keynote that I got to participate in was in

Bryan Cantrill:

real Yes. I can't get out of here without talking about that. Yes.

Adam Leventhal:

It was in real media format, and I haven't downloaded it. Don't worry.

Bryan Cantrill:

Did you do you have it?

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I have it. I have not

Bryan Cantrill:

watched it. Okay. I think that the in in terms of of extremes, in terms of, like so Theo, you gave a talk to was it 4,000 people, 2,000 people, Apache Con, big a lot of people drinking Mai Tai. The and I feel I've given talks with in rooms of like 1,000 plus, but Adam, I think you you you take the you take the crown, at least among the 2 of us, certainly. You It's

Adam Leventhal:

not really fair. Not really fair. I I mean, I I gave, like, you know, 5, 10 minutes at Java 1, and it was kinda hyperventilating when they were talking about the, whatever it was, 30,000 people in the room and then even more so on the, like, 200,000 people online. But it was a big room.

Bryan Cantrill:

It was in it was a very big it was like the biggest it's the biggest possible room in Moscone, and it was packed to the rafters. I mean, there were 10,000 people in the room. Yeah. More, I think. And you chose that moment to have the longest hair that I've I mean, it was like, it was singular.

Bryan Cantrill:

It was it was, it was amazing.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. It was a choice.

Bryan Cantrill:

And then you gave an amazing demo, an amazing demo, showing a code flow from Java into the operating system library and into the operating system kernel in like one unit. It was just amazing. It's great. Underappreciated by the sense of 1,000 perhaps, but I appreciated it. I Well everyone else fixated on on this wild man hair that you had.

Bryan Cantrill:

But he I mean, you had such mad scientist vibes. It was great. I mean, it really was. It was great.

Adam Leventhal:

I could've really parlayed that hair into something.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's right. So that's you know, I I think that, I I'm I'm hoping that you're gonna have a new hairstyle you're gonna reveal here at dangerous nonconf. I'm looking forward to it. Stay tuned. Well, really appreciate it.

Bryan Cantrill:

Theo and and Steven, Kellyanne, thank you so much for helping us talk about about the conferences. And I think that, you know, Steven, I like your way of of phrasing it. The conferences either need to kinda be small and tight and intimate or online or huge. I think that those are the, conferences are changing, but, the the the need for them has not gone away. They still, we're looking forward to our online conference.

Bryan Cantrill:

You can kinda join us, get a get a banger of a shirt, and watch our watch our trust fall here, stage dive. But, looking looking forward to it. And Adam, can't wait to see the new hairstyle.

Adam Leventhal:

Should be fun.

Bryan Cantrill:

Alright. Thanks, everybody.

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