scheduling, travelling to, and dining at speakerconf

Convincing 20 industry leaders to set aside 4-5 weekdays to come to a conference is not an easy thing, especially when said conference is also very hard to describe to the person (or people) who are approving the time off, travel, & expenses. With this in mind, Josh and I designed speakerconf to appeal to programmers who work very hard, and are often on the road.

Weekdays. I strongly hold the opinion that conferences should not be on weekends [more info]. Most of the people who attend speakerconf work very hard on an average week, and I don't want take a weekend away from them, their friends, or their family. I'm a very firm believer in work / life balance, and I don't want to be part of tipping the scales even farther in the 'work' direction. Additionally, it makes sense as a conference organizer. I want people showing up to speakerconf rested, refreshed, and ready for several days of intense collaboration. It's not enough to give a great presentation at speakerconf, you need to be on your game for 10-12 hours a day and you need to be able to do it for 3-5 straight days.

My opinion is not universally held - some people can't or don't want to be away from the office for that many days. While I see their point of view and note the benefits of switching to starting on Sunday, I simply don't believe that the trade-offs are a net win for speakerconf. Therefore, the best thing that Josh and I can do is ensure that speakerconf is such a "don't miss" event that people believe it is unquestionably worth being out of the office for a week.

Select an easily accessible location. Easily accessible has always been a requirement of mine for speakerconf. Like I mentioned, speakerconf presenters are often on the road - the last thing I want to do is require an additional connection or an extended drive. Aruba is a direct flight from many cities in the US, and the speakerconf hotel is a 15 minute drive from the airport. Aruba was great for the first few speakerconf events; however, when Josh and I created speakerconf we never anticipated that we would draw so much interest from people in Europe as well. Sticking with our ideals about easy accessibility, speakerconf now rotates between a location that is a direct flight from most US airport hubs and a location that is a direct flight from most EU airports.

Select an isolated location. Running a speakerconf in Rome really drove this point home - last February I asked if 2013 should be in Austin, SF, NYC, or Aruba. The majority preferred Aruba, and, more importantly, those that preferred Aruba were also the ones who were most excited about returning in 2013. Many presenters pointed out that if we were in an actual city they would be more likely to be distracted. The final dinner in Aruba proved their point. In Rome in 2011, 1/3 of the presenters went out to dinner* on the final night. Conversely, in Aruba 17/18 presenters went to dinner and all 17 continued their discussions at the hotel bar for many hours following dinner. The isolated location provided fewer distractions, and seemed to facilitate much deeper interactions.

Select a location with a concentration of restaurants. speakerconf takes a very different approach to dining. Josh and I aim to not only host an amazingly educational event, but to also provide the best dining experience of any conference. We don't provide conference center food for breakfast or lunch, instead we select hotels that are near great local restaurants that serve reasonably priced breakfast and lunch options. Dinners are done at some of the highest rated local restaurants - and we require the ability to select from several different options.

Dine well. Josh and I love food & wine, and our preferences definitely show in our dinner selections. The conference sponsored dinners at speakerconf are generally at restaurants that I prefer to take my wife to when we visit those cities on vacation. The dinner wine selections are usually done based on what Josh has loved drinking in the past. As an example, the conference dinners in Munich are at Boettners & Vue Maximilian, the number 1 & number 3 rated restaurants in Munich according to zagat.com. I could go on and on about the type meals that we aim to provide at speakerconf, but sometimes a picture truly is worth a thousand words - here are the 1,000 that describe a dinner at speakerconf.

Group dinners are better if you split to tables of 3-5. Many people loved being part of a large, group dinner table, but the conversations did suffer a bit. In 2011 we began making dinner reservations for "a party of 20, but we would like 5 tables of 4", and the conversations became longer, deeper, and more productive. As a side benefit, the restaurant staff seems to find this easier to manage as well - which means less issues with 19 people having their food, and awkwardly waiting for the 1 meal that didn't come out right.

On the surface it may look like speakerconf is a week off work, in a vacation location, dining like a king; however, if you look closely, each of those choices is based on a practical choice. The scheduling is a net win for everyone involved. The location facilitates distraction free, deep collaboration. The dining enhances the event by allowing the attendees to focus on collaboration while Josh and I worry about location selection, providing food that meets all dietary restrictions, and ensuring that the cost of dinner doesn't deter attendance. The result (or sum) is also greater than the parts - we provide an easily accessible, deeply educational, & enjoyable experience, which encourages some of the best of the industry leaders to attend, who's attendance encourages more of the industries leaders to attend.

* The final dinner is neither required, nor sponsored - thus it's completely fine for people to opt-out.

Clojure: name function

The 'name' function is a clojure function that returns the string for a keyword, symbol, or string.

name - function
Usage: (name x)
Returns the name String of a string, symbol or keyword.

At first glace this might not seem that interesting; however, it's good to know 'name' if you've ever been surprised by (str :foo) => ":foo". If you have a ruby background (as I do), you probably expected the result to be "foo", spent a bit of time looking, and found that (name :foo) was actually what you were looking for.

That's helpful, but not particularly exciting. Perhaps a more interesting application of name is the ability to normalize all keys as strings and destructure. For example, say you're designing a library that monitors threads and you want to be able to pass in warning and error thresholds. Usage of your functions may look like the following examples

(monitored-threads/create :warn-threshold 100 :error-threshold 200)
(monitored-threads/create "warn-threshold" 100 "error-threshold" 200)

Assuming a simple function that updates keys:

(defn update-keys [m f]
  (reduce (fn [r [k v]] (assoc r (f k) v)) {} m))

You can now write your create function as:

(defn create [& {:as m}]
  (let [{:strs [warn-threshold error-threshold]} (update-keys m name)]
    ; do work, son
    ))

speaking at speakerconf

Speaking at speakerconf is nothing like speaking at a traditional conference. It took us a few years to tweak our ideas around presentations - and this blog post is about what we've come to consider 'the speakerconf way' (with respect to speaking)

There are no abstracts or pre-announced talks. From the beginning Josh and I have believed that we want people to be able to speak about whatever is most interesting to them. Too many times in my career I have had a talk accepted to a conference, and by the time the conference comes around I'm on to something new. I honor my commitment and give a talk on the accepted abstract, but I always feel a bit guilty for presenting information that's already somewhat dated. speakerconf completely avoids this issue by neither requesting nor accepting abstracts. In fact, many presenters prepare a few different presentations and just-in-time choose whichever presentation they believe will be better received.

Prepare only 10 minutes of content. speakerconf began with 20 minute time-slots exclusively. Over the following few years we toyed with 5, 15, & 30 minute talks. In general, the 5 minute talks turned out very well, the 15 minute talks turned out well most of the time, and the 30 minute talks always seemed to stretch far too long. Each year Dave Thomas recommended that we give each presenter 10 minutes. We finally made the 10 minutes of content rule change in 2011 and have never looked back. 10 minute talks are perfect for speakerconf. If people are into a topic then the questions end up stretching the session out to 30 (deeply engaged) minutes, if people aren't into a topic then you're off stage before people get bored. Since we've made this rule change, people have been generally happy with the presentations as a whole, and we've yet to have a presenter give a presentation that wasn't enjoyed by the majority of the audience.

Presentations go on as long as they have to. John Hughes inspired this one. Like I mentioned in the last paragraph, we give everyone 10 minutes for content, but let the audience drive the actual length of the presentation with their questions. The speakerconf audiences are inquisitive, so we still need to put an upper bound of 30 minutes on a talk. Still, most talks manage to create plenty of deep discussion in their 30 minute windows.

Presentations first, unstructured conversation second. A few years ago we switched things up by splitting up the presentations, and it didn't work well - people couldn't get back in the mood for presentations. Now, each day starts with presentations that spark ideas and then goes to unstructured conversation about those ideas.

Alumni speak first. Originally, we allowed speakers to request their speaking slots. In the 2nd year Matt Deiters requested and spoke in the 2nd speaking spot, and quickly regretted it. Speaking at speakerconf requires a bit of calibration. The audience at speakerconf isn't like the vast majority of conferences, and you do need to alter your presentation style a bit - go faster, take out filler or elementary slides, expect frequent interruptions. After a few days of speakerconf it's easy to fall in the groove; however, Matt didn't get that luxury. Based on his suggestion, each speakerconf since then has scheduled all alumni ahead of new-comer presentations.

Dynamic speaking order. Each speakerconf does have a suggested schedule; however, we also offer the opportunity to 'get next' at any time. At speakerconf Rome 2011, Francesco Cesarini noticed that his presentation would go very well if it followed Scott Farquhar's. Unbeknownst to the presenters and organizers, some people end up presenting on very similar ideas. Once the audience gets into a subject, it makes sense to allow presentations with complementary ideas topics to be grouped together. Therefore, at speakerconf any presenter that believes their presentation will nicely expand on the current presentation can simply let the organizers know that they've 'got next' and they'll be moved into the next speaking time-slot.

Everyone speaks. For the first few years we had attendees and presenters; however, we found that there were a few issues with non-speaking audience members. First of all, when you speak everyone knows a bit about who you are and what you do; conversely, the non-speaking attendees were always a mystery. Additionally, speaking audience members always participated significantly more, as they had given people a topic to approach them about. Lastly, we often had non-speaking attendees who the other speakers actually wanted to hear from. In the end it just didn't make sense to invite very talented people who were only participating in the open discussions. Now, and in the future, there are no attendees, if you attend speakerconf, you present.

The speakerconf way is very nimble. We don't know what people are going to talk about, how long they're going to talk, or when they're going to give their presentation. In fact, the only thing we do know is that you are eventually going to speak about something. Obviously this isn't something that every conference could adopt, but we've found that it greatly enriches the speakerconf experience. The speakerconf way provides a quick exit for anyone who's idea isn't going over quite as smoothly as they'd anticipated, but, more importantly, it allows the good presentations to reach their full potential.

a typical day at speakerconf

At this point, speakerconf has run 5 times in 4 years - in Aruba and Italy. Josh and I are happy with what we've created, and a few follow up entires will list the attributes of speakerconf that make it a unique and successful event. This post, however, should serve as a quick view into what a typical day is like at speakerconf.

the morning
Each day begins unofficially at breakfast. There's no assigned meeting time, but people generally start appearing around 9:00am. There are no assigned tables, and people usually just break off into small, ad hoc groups of 3 or 4. It's rare to find one of these tables not talking about what interested them from the day before, or what they're looking forward to discussing that day. Following breakfast, people begin filling into the conference room, and presentations begin at 10:00am sharp. Each presentation generally takes between 10 and 30 minutes. There's usually a ton of questions that go with each presentation, thus the variable talk time-slot. We attempt to get 4 presentations done each morning, and usually end up leaving 'late' for lunch.

the afternoon
Lunch generally lasts an hour, and is done at one of the local restaurants (not in the conference room). Attendees break into small groups and go to different restaurants. Most often, people go to lunch with someone they want to discuss a specific idea with, or someone they haven't previously dined with. After lunch everyone makes their way back to the conference room for 4 more presentations. On a good day, we'll be done with presentations by 3pm; however, (due to the q&a for each presentation) we're usually done with presentations between 3:30pm and 4:00pm.

Once the presentations end we move out of the conference room and into a space that allows us to have many smaller discussions. The split is ad hoc once again, and, just like lunch, is often based on digging further into a presented topic or meeting a new person. These discussions often begin with most of the presenters in attendance, and people only seem to leave if they have personal or business matters to attend to. These smaller discussions end (or rather, are put on hold) at 6:45pm at the latest.

the evening
Dinner is always at a local restaurant (outside of the hotel), and usually begins around 7:00pm. Just like every other meal, attendees break up into unassigned, smaller groups of 3-6 people. Dinners are usually at least 3 courses, and offer plenty of time to dig deep into whatever subject drove you to select your dinner companions. Once dinner is complete everyone heads back to the hotel, and those that still have the energy to have further discussions generally make their way to the hotel bar. It's not uncommon for those that have already completed their presentations to stay out past 2am - and still get themselves to the 9:00am breakfast the following morning.

That's a pretty typical day at speakerconf. If it doesn't sound exhausting, then I haven't done a very good job of describing it. However, it's equally exhausting as it is inspiring, and the days at speakerconf are some of my favorite days of the year.

Clojure: expectations & with-redefs

In general, when I'm writing tests, the pure functions end up as bare expects and the impure functions end up as scenarios. The following contrived namespace keeps a list of users and allows you to get the full name of each user.

The tests for this namespace would often look something like the following code:

It feels natural to put the with-redefs in a scenario, since scenarios also support (and often make use of) stubbing, localize-state, & freeze-time. However, there's really no reason that you need to use a scenario if you're simply looking to redef a var.

The following test provides the same level of functionality verification, without needing to use expectations.scenarios:

scenarios are great, but these days I try to keep things simple with bare expectations whenever possible.