For a few years I’ve been thinking about how conferences and meetups can start shaking up a few things. I still think that they are worth-while experiences and are places where programmers new and old can go to be inspired by things, but at the same time they could do with trying something a little bit different and maybe evolve into something new altogether.
EdgeConf kind of does this amazing job of having panels and Q&As rather than a traditional conference talk and I think it’s a fantastic way to draw out more knowledge than the attendees might have normally gotten from a 45 minute talk. I’ve also been seeing some fringe events and ‘unconfs’ pop up around conferences that happen and that too is something that I think might begin to drive more attendees to the yearly staple of conferences.
But I’ve had this crazy idea in my head about a different kind of conference/meetup for a while and I’ll never ever have the resources to actually make it work so I’m putting it out there on-the-line for anyone to do it, because whilst I would love to be the person that executed this, I would also love to actually see it being executed.
A touring conference/meetup.
Some sort of cross between a Circus and a Band.
When I was younger there was a BMX Magazine called Props, but this was no ordinary magazine — no, this was a video magazine.
This was the shit. It had all the traditional magazine stuff, Ads, Interviews, features — just in video format. I think it was way ahead of its time.
Every year or so Props would do a tour called RoadFools. RoadFools would take a bunch of popular BMX riders on a tour and every stop they would get out and ride at a local skatepark or just through the streets and capture all this on film. Of course there was always shenanigans, but that was to be expected.
So, the traveling conference would essentially be the same thing. Take a bunch of developers and do a tour — stopping in towns each day and holding a mini-conference/meetup and culminating in a 1-day panel based / unconference.
I thought that it could start off small to begin with — in the first year maybe just do a few major towns and cities in England (Glasgow, Liverpool,Manchester, Bristol — ending in/near London). Take 8 speakers and at each stop 3 talks given by 3 sets of speakers (I’d like to see paired speakers) with one slot held open for a local speaker/s. I think it would be interesting to see talks being developed on-the-move so maybe make attendees of the following event pick the subject and NOT the speaker.
It would be great to have all the speakers travelling in a giant band-esque coach. Living and traveling together for the duration with it all being captured through film and photos. I could also see sponsors wanting to get some vinyl stickers on the outside of that coach.
If successful, the next year could be a longer tour across Europe with more stops and more speakers — maybe some get off and new ones join as the tour goes on. Tour of the Americas, the Route66 tour, the Aussie tour. I think that there are a fair few combinations and opportunities to be had with the idea.
So there it is — take some speakers, stick ‘em in a coach, travel, drop knowledge-bombs, create, inspire and move on. If you do it or intend on doing it, let me know because I’ll be the first one buying tickets for your closest stop to me.
