How To Put On A Nerd Conference

[shanedanger]

I drew this at TechCrunch Disrupt today....

[jf]

It seems that there are people who are able to follow this model and make money by throwing "Nerd Conferences".

In my mind, the key differentiator between mediocre events and great events is who the target audience for the event is:

  - A great even is designed for the benefit of the audience.
  - Mediocre events are designed for the benefit of the sponsors or the organizers.

[shanedanger]

fantastic point. i've been to both, and the difference is quite clear

[chaosmachine]

While hanging around with all those nerds, be sure to ask them about the difference between jpeg and png.

[shanedanger]

I think the difference in this case is around 40kb, haha.

[chaosmachine]

Well, the main difference is you won't end up with blurry text and artifacts.

http://imgur.com/GkCbP.png

[shanedanger]

holy smokes, chaosmachine, you just changed my world! (not being snarky either, I seriously never knew that in all my days of amateur photodoodling)

[Scriptor]

A very general rule I learned is that png's are best for images with large areas of the same color (screenshots, logos, text) while jpegs are best for images with lots of color variation (real-life pictures, for example).

[kpreid]

PNGs are good at compressing gradients too, I hear.

[Charuru]

I don't get the joke, why is this relevant?

[chaosmachine]

The image was originally a blurry jpeg. Now it's a nice crisp png, and the joke is no longer relevant :)

[brianwillis]

Is it wrong that I've been to these sort of conferences and actually enjoyed myself?

Webstock (http://www.webstock.org.nz/) in particular is great if you're ever in my part of the world. Great signal-to-noise ratio, fantastic speakers, very little of the standard tech conference douche baggery ("10 tips to monetize your blog"; any panel comprised of commentators rather than people who make stuff; etc.) and an upbeat sort of atmosphere that's difficult to articulate.

[shanedanger]

Makes me wish I lived in New Zealand... :)

[CapitalistCartr]

The JPG is still there: http://www.televisionsky.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/nerd...

[manish]

and name it web 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 conference