Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

Conferences aren't always a great use of our time, but it allowed us a social escape valve, and it seems to me that just isn't the case anymore. 10 years ago, you'd go to a conference and there would be a massive group conversation about it on Twitter. Not just sessions, but people wanting to get together, eat, drink, and be merry. A simple hashtag search pretty much gave you a quick avenue to meet new people. Now that's pretty much dead, probably due to how people use Twitter and social media, but also the backlash toward it and its owner. Nothing has really replaced that, and most potential replacements either lack the network effects or are essentially restricted in access (requiring a signup or invite).

Since covid required/allowed/enabled it, people want to hide out in their houses. They get takeout or delivery and watch streaming and go online instead of getting out in the world as often. We've started down the path to being the Wall-E society.

As someone who likes getting out of the house, I don't understand the why.

As mentioned in the article, I think the single biggest reason was that Covid largely showed us that it is not strictly necessary to physically be together for everything.

Conferences, announcements, etc all happened virtually and things were largely fine. Sure things like networking were lost (and the associated drinking), and while that was valuable was not necessarily the marketed reason for the events.

We see the same thing outside of the professional space. Video Game conventions for example never really bounced back because the larger companies found out they can do things on their own terms virtually. Those conventions are still happening but they are not the same.

I do sometimes miss the free traveling but I also find it far more convenient (and less of an impact on my life outside of work) to do these things virtually.

I love conferences and talks and wish I could go to them more — what stops me is the sudden drop in corporate sponsorship of them. It’s been nearly impossible to convince leadership to spend money to train their employees or to socialize within their own discipline, and while I’d love to go to conferences, taking time out of my own PTO and my own wallet to see them isn’t worth it.

> I think the biggest value, and the reason I personally get really excited to attend local and regional events, is the ability to have casual, non-rushed discussions outside of the session rooms.

As someone who's been to many meetups and conferences but who's generally unable to partake in "the hallway track" because of a potent cocktail of social anxiety, impostor syndrome and whatever else is going on inside my head, this makes me quite wistful. I feel like I've missed out on so much of what these events had to offer and, as the post posits, that's largely/probably a world that I won't even have the chance to go back to and try again. That all combined with the rapid rise of "AI", "agents", etc. -- none of which interest me at all -- puts me squarely in the _just coast until retirement_ camp but ... I'm not in a position to do that. I'm actually quite concerned about what the future holds and I feel like a lot of the folks in tech who've comfortably kept their heads down are going to be in for a rough transition period over the next few years.

Perceived risk of being caught in a mass shooting is too great to feel comfortable at mass gatherings.

I see two things which may have an impact:

1. Conferences require travel budget, which in tech companies (from what I hear) is being repurposed to build out AI capacity. Really, everything is being squeezed like this it seems.

2. A lot of folks only go to cons to network - which also means finding better jobs. There might be some connection between cons and turnover.

> But after the pandemic, the release schedules slowed dramatically to once every 3 years, and the new features weren’t really groundbreaking, not requiring deep education to keep up.

This really seems to be the clincher here -- COVID surely contributed, but "post"-COVID if there's not much to talk about, why make the trip?

I'd be curious to hear how often newbies showed up to these SQL events pre-COVID. Was there interest from people outside the regulars? Were people truly excited to learn about SQL technologies?

In my social and meetup circle, COVID coincided with all the organizers of my favorite meetups reaching the age where one generally starts to slow down, have kids, and possibly move out of the city for more space and calm.

At that point they had all been running their meetups for 5-10 years, so they were also established in their careers and didn't NEED them anymore. So while keeping an existing meetup running pre-COVID was not exactly easy, it was doable and familiar.

But now, 5 years after COVID, all the longstanding meetups are long enough gone that people nearly have to start from scratch. It's starting to happen, but is a huge uphill battle. For the most part, I suspect it will be a new generation of organizers, but they'll be learning all the same lessons again, in a much less interesting and more hostile tech environment.

    * Noob goes to event to learn and network.
    * Journeyman goes for networking and hopefully learn a bit but mostly doesn't get much out of it. 
    * Expert learns nothing. Goes to network / advertise. 
    * Meetup is sponsored by local recruiting firm.

    * Work on the project you'd've done alone on your couch
    * Chat while you do it instead of alone on your couch
    * When you get stuck, group encourages and guides in real time.
    * Meetup is sponsored by the yarn and craft supply biz yer meeting in.

  * Come discuss problems you are having with your code

  * Join in a Hackathon to see if the group can make progress on a predefined issue or project.

  * Learn a new language, everyone pulls a language from a bucket and sees if they can make Game of Life. Limitations require that at least one person there that knows the language enough to help with getting someone going

Do you know the reasons why people (including you) don't want in-office jobs? Now multiply these reasons by 10.

Instead of 1 hour commute, have an airplane travel or a couple hours drive. Instead of hours in a cubicle, have an hotel. And now add more expenses and crappy food.

Sure, the "social interactions" in a pub might be more pleasant than the "water-cooler side chat" but they won't be much more productive.

Socializing is overrated.

I have seen some events doing very well and some doing very poorly. There are some factors not mentioned here.

The biggest is cost. Travel, especially lodging, is very expensive right now in major cities, especially in the US. People just can’t afford hundreds per night. If an event has a larger population density within reach of walking, driving, and public transportation then more people turn up.

Another is industry presence. Big companies have found that showing up at conferences and conventions isn’t really worth it. In the video game industry E3 died and nothing replaced it. Companies just post their own direct videos to make announcements. Apple even stopped gathering everyone in an auditorium and just does videos now as well. When the industry presence at an event, like maybe CES, diminishes, then that means there will be less attendees as well.

Also, a lot of events don’t offer attendees anything they can’t experience at home. If it’s a bunch of talks, just watch video of them later. No need to be in-person unless you really need to do some networking. Some events are able to offer attendees a reason to be physically present, and they still draw a crowd.

People are going to in-person events. The difference is now everyone and their grandmother just learned to code and there's a shitton of noise in tech meetups.

The only in-person events worth going to are those that have some kind of a filter on attendance, e.g. ones friends, investors, or employers invite you to.

I'm not interested in your Arduino project that detects pigeons with AlexNet.

COVID was a tipping point, but the decline was many years in the making. Meetups and conferences in my area were becoming less enjoyable year over year for several reasons:

- They became targets for networking and resume building. Meetups that were previously small groups of highly engaged people were now full of attendees who were looking for job opportunities because LinkedIn told them that was how to do it.

- Selecting good presentations became harder. Once speaking at a meetup or conference became a resume badge of honor, it became a competition to secure the speaking slot at all costs. The previously interesting local talks were getting replaced with entertainment spots, where presenters spent more time showing funny video clips, memes, or even performing live musical pieces to entertain the audience. Discussing the subject matter wasn't a priority.

- Conferences started catering to lowest common denominator attendees to broaden their appeal. Interesting deep dives into highly technical topics started disappearing. They were replaced with basic topics that have been covered to death, such as "How to supercharge your development process with continuous deployment"

- The people I most want to meet up with started transitioning to other activities. Instead of spending my evening on a meetup where the speaker isn't interested in anything other than adding a line to their resume, we now meet up for big group lunches or do outdoor activities together.

- Conference costs kept rising. Organizers realized attendees were expensing the tickets, so they tried to set prices based on what they thought they could get away with charging companies. It became a machine for extracting those personal development budget dollars, not for getting people together efficiently.

- Conference drama. Maybe this is local to me. Every conference seemed to attract a lot of drama: Someone's talk didn't get accepted and they turned it into accusations of bias or favoritism. Conference organizers would have a falling out and try to split into two conferences with a lot of finger-pointing to make people pick a side. Someone was bad with money and ran out of cash, so a conference would be cancelled at the last minute with drama around getting refunds. Someone would try to stir up drama with their presentation or an attendee would accuse someone of a code of conduct violation, turning in months of debate. It all gets so exhausting that I just don't want to be anywhere near it.

Just got back from an In-Person conference, as a vendor the cost was $8K, up from $6K for the same thing last year so a 30% YoY increase. The $6K last year already felt like we were being gouged. I may end up cutting back and going every second year. For 3 days if we rented a 30" screen and a stand it would have cost $2.2K and $350 respectively - I brought my own monitor and stand. Other vendors buy monitors each year and donate it to charity and there is a charity rep that goes around collecting monitors and other 'single use' items. It was a very large conference and I understand the need for an actual hotel / conference venue but the hotel costs were rough as were the built in food / drink options. Since these are often a bit out of town we have to get Ubers to leave and that costs at least $20 each way. I think next year we'll go grocery shopping first thing and avoid the restaurants. Vendors are expected to shout a round or two at the end of the day at the hotel bar. Simple cocktails like an Old-Fashioned were $25. It's likely that the conference will still be a net-positive for us but we're hearing a lot of other vendors complain about the costs and suggest that they too will switch to alternate years.

The world needs BBSs again. That was the best source of local meetups back in the 90s.

Because work from home has been normalized and it takes much more inertia to get people out of their homes to drive or take public transit to a work event than it did when they were held at some office nearby.

Because companies used to host event spaces for Meetups, and between them scaling this back (my opinion) and event space being expensive, it's harder for work-related Meetups to meet. (Non-work-related Meetups seem to be doing okay though!)

Because companies are also getting stingier about flying rank-and-file engineers out to events, even if it's part of their training budget.

Because --- and this might be a stretch --- free food and drinks was a major draw for these events, and people (especially the youngs) are drinking less.

Saying that COVID was simply "a factor" in causing this is a dramatic undersell. COVID was THE factor. It opened peoples' eyes to work from home. That changed literally everything.

As for me: these events were all about the drinks and late nights _after_ (and sometimes during) the event. I don't enjoy drinking late at night, I'm usually on a meal plan and prefer to stick to it, and I generally go to sleep earlier these days. All of these things have made tech events harder to enjoy. Also, everything's about AI now, which couldn't be more depressing IMO.

I mean, there are so many factors. The piece covers many but I think there really are a few more that I've personally noticed:

- Companies have generally tightened belts on discretionary spending, which means fewer people are being paid to go to conferences and events. Many workplaces offered a relatively free hand when it came to company-sponsored conference trips, but now you're not only looking at paying your own way but taking PTO to do it!

- As someone who still makes an effort with in-person meetups: space is so hard to get unless you're well-funded. There used to be a plethora of startups around here that were happy to let you use their office after hours, but the end of ZIRP and the ensuing belt-tightening has taken a lot of these places off the list.

- AI has sucked so much air out of the room. AI-related meetups around here are still pretty common, lots of VC-funded AI startups lending their space to AI-related meetups. Heck, many even have a food and drinks budget. But if you're in any space that isn't AI this kind of support is basically completely non-existent.

Also, I think a major factor that can't be discounted are incentives for speakers. For the same reason most companies have switched to recorded announcements vs. live stage announcements, speakers are incentivized towards remote/recorded events vs. in-person since the content has much wider reach. It may be less useful for the in-person participants but you're optimizing for the long tail of people viewing remotely/viewing later.

Imho the reason is that the value of the events has reduced.

Attendance costs keep rising (including commute and stay).

The content will be on YouTube within a few weeks.

With the popularity of zoom, discourse, discord, slack, I’m socializing with the community more regularly. Also where you’d see a lot of content early.

If I need to network, I can organize a much cheaper dinner and drinks instead of paying for larger events.

International conferences make more sense from a business ROI to intermingle , but local ones are a losing battle of value.

No corporate travel budgets any more ever since the Russians sent the worldwide economy tanking. If you're not a C-level, you're on your own. Same for "20%" agreements and the likes - companies across the board have fully gone on to "squeeze mode" when it comes to staff. Everyone and their dog is cutting expenses where they can.

Oh but they are, Mr Bulver. They are!

Why would we? they're all so bland, moderated and corporate you might as well just hang out online. Everyone's so very "professional" and "polite" it's a complete waste of time.

Cost. I run a small Chicago area “private” meetup (in the sense that one needs to be invited, it’s not publicly advertised) for small business owners. We do workshops on how to advertise using Google ads, do basic web analytics, etc. The skyrocketing cost of meeting rooms and basic catering have gone through the roof. I’m not talking about catering as in lobster and steak; even just getting Panera Bread level food has been ridiculously expensive.

For a meetup hosted in my city, I used to stay in the city after work one day a month to attend. Now that I work from home, there is zero chance I am commuting into the city at rush hour to go to a meetup.

I'm in several local groups. The hardest part to keep a community going is that someone needs to step and be the consistent force to keep engaging in conversations. At some point, it ends up being a full-time job.

To the contrary, when all the good New York meetups (Papers We Love, Linux User Group) didn't come back, and inspired by the continuously running Munich Database Meetup and TUMuchData, I started the NYC Systems Coffee Club and co-started NYC Systems (talk series) after which came Berlin Systems Group, Bengaluru Systems Meetup, San Francisco Systems Club, Systems from HEL, DC Systems, Vancouver Systems, South Bay Systems, and Seattle Systems.

So I think people are really eager for high quality talks and chances to gather with smart people.

What's more I think there are not enough meetups in almost any major city to satisfy the demand of speakers or attendees. For example, NYC Systems gets hundreds of people asking to speak (we have 12 speakers a year) and gets 2-3x as many attendees wanting to come as we have space for.

I miss going to some conferences, but I dislike being "on duty" as a representative of my employer, and the travel / hotel / away-from-home hassles just aren't worth it any more for going on my own dime to attend presentations.

Personally, as a former meetup organizer, my health has not been good post-COVID. I have a lot less energy to do extra-curricular work or go out and socialize after work.