Hector Martin

You know, I hope conferences continue to do the online thing from now on. Flying out to the other side of the world is a PITA, and the cost-benefit tends to tilt towards "nah" unless I really like the event. But sit at home in front of a camera? Sure, why not.

If you think about it, the whole "gather people in one physical space" thing is kind of... a relic of the past. It has its place, but it shouldn't be the expectation or default. We've all seen Snowden and similar special cases in the past. Make >50% of talks remote.

Right now it's kind of difficult to do the whole mingle and network thing unless you gather people in one physical space. Conferences are about a lot more than sitting listening to someone talk or watching them demonstrate a thing.

Have you ever used Discord? :-) Seriously though, IRC minus the tech barrier plus zero-friction voice channels with video presentation a click away does a *lot* for this use case.