> I’ve now been once. Everything is off the record, but I’ll just say that it is nothing like the ordinary conference where there are keynote lecturers you barely get to meet (if at all), or where you listen to some pre-packaged lecture.
> There are no speeches, presentations, panels, or anything like that. Everything is geared around small-group discussions with 6-10 people in a session or a lunch/dinner. You repeatedly find yourself in deep conversations about life/death/family/career issues with a handful of other people who happen to have great professional accomplishments (although none of that is even mentioned). The experience was both intense (lots of intense conversations) and refreshing (i.e., no hierarchy or status-signaling).
Optionality. The power available to any one person to do anything in society is directly proportional to their genuine connections to others, even if brief.
Meetups in person with real connections happening (even if brief) create so many new possibilities for those in attendance.
The disappearance of in-person meetups (especially among developers) in the US after Covid is a tragedy - so much could be happening that is not.
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development only happened because a group of developers met up in person. They disagreed about nearly everything, but what they agreed about changed the industry.