This was a rant from a long time gransroots tech conference organizer (currently event orga for mercari)

1. Future of Tech “Conferences”
Daisuke Maki (@lestrrat)
May 23, 2019

2. 10+ yrs organizing
Conferences

3. “grassroots” tech conferences

5. 2009 “grassroots”
Organizer:
• We’ll get the venue and sort out sponsors
• You bring the content!

6. 2009 “grassroots”
APendees:
• We have stuff we want to talk about!
• Let’s go talk some more about it aUerwards!

7. 2019 “grassroots”
APendees:
• Entertain us! Barrage us with informaXon!
• Give us expensive swags! Feed us!
• I’m here to listen to other great speakers

8. 2019 “grassroots”
Organizer:
• We’ll get the venue, food, hotels, entertainment,
speakers, really cool swags, booze, and we will
raise all the money required for this

9. Organizer:
• We’ll get the venue and sort out sponsors
• You bring the content!

10. I thought conferences were for ppl
who wanted to be heard…

11. What’s going on?

13. Simple: CommodiXzaXon

14. “Conferences” have
become common
This is a good thing!

16. ETOOMANYEVENTS

17. We are all fighXng to secure speaker
and aPendee Xme/aPenXon

18. Big Players
changing consumer expectaXons
• OSCON
• Google I/O
• re:Invent
• Decode
• etc

19. Big Players
• Big conferences need to gather WAY more
aPendees
• They bring good theme/speaker/content
• But most notably they bring….

20. GLITZor, “wine and dine”

21. “re:Invent Party” images

22. “Google I/O swag” images

23. “OSCON sponsor booth” images

24. Is glitz bad?
No

25. Truth:
To fight the war of “glitz” is to
fight the war of aPriXon.

26. Truth:
Glitz aPracts those who may
otherwise be uninterested (new blood)
(but also those who are there solely for the glitz)

27. Corollary:
Glitz (if handled incorrectly)
dilutes the core values of the
event

29. Where to go?

30. We’re planning a mercari-wide
conference in the future

31. We could reminisce of the old
days, but… the landscape has
already changed

32. • Focus on tech/engineers
• But provide the right amount of glitz
• To scale the event
• To make our engineers proud to be on
stage
Future Event
(this is harder than you may think)

33. What else can we do?
Where should we go?
Thoughts?
Let me know!