subtitlesalexmillerstrangeloop

good afternoon everyone after good  afternoon let's hear it good  afternoon right on my name is Nick Cowan  and um I've been on staff with strange  Loop since the second year and uh I've  been asked to introduce the illustrious  the genius uh that is my friend Alex  Miller  yeah so I first heard about this idea  for a conference when he and I were to  Gig at the pageant which was the venue  actually the second strange M was at and  we're sitting there waiting for uh for I  think Anie DeFranco to play and he says  Nick with his arms like this you kind of  the way that Alex sits sometimes and  says been doing all these meetups I've  got this land Lounge thing I think I  could get a couple hundred people to  show up to the conference I'm like you  know what if anyone's going to do this  man it's going to be you and he did that  first year was 300 then he brought me on  the second year that was 600 the third  year 1100 and then it's I don't know how  many thousand since since then and it's  been remarkable for me as a kind of an  outsider because I'm not a developer I'm  just a friend of Alex that's my official  designation for strange  Loop and uh to watch the way the culture  of this conference has changed and to  see how much more Focus has been put on  being inclusive and accepting and  hearing all the  talks  yes and this was a conscious decision  from him to do that this wasn't  accidental this was you know things can  be different we can make them better and  with him as the figure head he inspired  us and the rest of us us on staff and  all of you here to be better not just at  our jobs and our roles that we have in  life but also just as people so let's  put your hands together for Alex  Miller thank you sir you got it  man hi I'm Alex Miller I create a  strange  Loop the date was October 2nd  2009 it was a cool cloudy morning when I  packed an entire conference into my car  all the signs badges lanyards programs  shirts AV supplies I had enough stuff I  had to borrow my mom's car uh to carry  it  all uh I banged out a quick tweet before  I hit the road I was working remotely at  the time and had forgotten how much uh I  hated hot stop andg go traffic and uh I  was going down the road before I knew it  I was stopping the person behind me was  going and I was an offender Bender  uh oops sorry mom broke your  car so I pulled over we called the cops  exchanged info did all that stuff and uh  probably created a timeline split at  that point because maybe I wouldn't have  made it to strange loop I don't know if  something had happened differently but  uh uh I was on my way to the tiv theater  which was uh where we had the first  strange Loop and when I first con  conceived of this conference I tried to  imagine sort of my favorite time of year  my favorite places in St Louis and  uh I really wanted to do it at the tiv  in the fall and it was happening uh the  tiv opened in 1924 it was a wonderful  three screen movie theater in one of my  favorite areas of St Louis the loop uh I  paid them a thousand bucks to host the  event for a day and a half uh that  included free popcorn and our name on  the Marquee um so very cool right uh so  where did this idea come from uh for  that we need to go back a little further  uh December 4th 2008 it was a peak time  for uh meetups and early Tech Twitter I  hopefully some of you remember that I  think I I feel sad that we've lost some  of that um both of those uh and there  were all kinds of Buzz about dynamic  programming languages like Ruby and  groovy and new functional languages like  llang and closure and scal and fshp and  people were starting to experiment with  these crazy no sequel  databases um and after a long period of  Enterprise stagnation uh companies and  developers seemed sort of open to new  ideas uh and I was the member of a bunch  of little um sort of splintered user  groups talking about these ideas uh and  it seemed like we needed something that  was more of a big tent uh where we could  bring people together and really start  to Hash that stuff out and uh out of  that uh a local Meetup called Lambda  Lounge was born and uh immediately  brought people together from all of  these different groups and it was one of  the most vibrant Tech communities I've  ever been a part of uh in the first year  we had topics on uh Ruby en closure and  JavaScript and monads and FP and Factor  if you remember Factor uh Pearl 6 hll  Phantom if you remember Phantom uh Scala  and more so uh the first meeting was  December 4th 2008 uh the presenters that  first month were Matt Taylor he was  talking about groovy meta programming  and I'll talk about Matt later on in the  presentation and Ryan senior who talked  about o camel  um and Ryan eventually became a  co-organizer of strange Loop and he's  he's here today has been helping me run  it for a long time uh but that meeting  was the first time I met  Ryan um so stepping forward just a  little bit to February 5th uh  2009 um my Uncle Al passed away so bear  with me this will connect in a minute um  I could do a whole talk about Uncle  Al but I'll I'll try to keep this short  um Al was diagnosed with polycystic  kidney disease when he was a teenager um  and they told him he would likely die uh  he stubbornly refused to do so and  ultimately received three kidney  transplants and lived 64 amazing  years um  so uh I'll I'll pass on to you his plea  to me which was to sign up as an organ  donor  um throughout his life he was a wildlife  photographer and an activist and a  woodworker and a Furniture maker and a  teacher and many other things he did a  an amazing series of art Furniture  pieces called the dieters candy dishes  and there were all these tables that  made it very difficult to get things off  the table they had big spikes or they  were wobbly and you had they were like  really wide you need to lean over and  then it would you fall over and stuff it  was crazy he was a he was he was a great  guy  uh has anybody here from Portland OR  been to  Portland some people so Portland has an  amazing aabon Society up Northwest of  the city and also a wildlife sanctuary  Oaks bottom uh near downtown uh I don't  know if anybody here has been those  places but they exist um in a  significant part because of Al uh he  loved birds and wildlife and um was one  of the leaders of sort of an idealistic  group of activists in the late' 60s and  SE early 70s in Portland pushing to  protect those places um so he had did a  lot of different stuff so on March 7th I  went to Portland for a sort of  celebration of his life at the oton  society there and for hours I heard  person after person describe how Al had  started some important group in their  life or even more frequently had  convinced them to start a group which is  like a extra level superpower um and so  he spent his whole life connecting  people through their  passions so um I returned from Portland  that year resolved to to do my own  version but I needed a  name so what do you call a conference  that's in St Louis in the loop area  about programming with things like loops  and weirdly I had this book on my  nightstand uh and I thought that seems  weird enough but also connected enough  that maybe that could be a good thing  that would you know maybe would stick  out in your mind a little bit so that's  where the name came  from so back to back to a strange Loop  October 2009 uh really planned for about  150 people but uh 300 people showed up  um the early bird ticket price was just  $75 and I think it went up to maybe 110  by the end of the end of the season uh  it was catered by Quizno sandwiches um  that was a bad  idea uh I did all the AV myself terrible  idea so learned that lesson uh but it  really was sort of like my Twitter feed  uh showed up and hung out for a a couple  days uh and that was awesome uh the  keynote speakers that year were Alex  Payne who was work who was sort of uh  well known at the time because he was  working on the Twitter API um and uh uh  the other speaker was Bob Lee who I will  talk a little more about  later um so we had an amazing party at  the Blueberry Hill duck room and that  night and we did sort of non-tech talks  with a borrow projector perched on a  chair um and uh there were a ton of  people packed in there and it was very  punk rock do it yourself uh and I knew  that that was we probably weren't going  to be small enough to do that again um  but uh it was it was a great  time so my theory of the case here is  that uh the three things that really  make a conference special and they  really sort of reinforce each other are  context content and people and so I'm  going to talk a little bit about each of  those uh context is uh largely about the  venues um but also about the fact that  we are sharing the same physical space  and we're all here together experiencing  this uh and importantly you're not at  your other places so um this notion of  the third place is a thing that c uh was  originated in a book by Ray oldenberg  and so the the first place is your homes  where you live and your second place is  where you work and work with your  colleagues and the third place is sort  of your the place where you go for sort  of public relaxation it might be  regulars it might have new people uh but  it's kind of that kind of place and I  think strange Loop is very much a third  place and I'm sure you have other third  places in your life um and I think the  pandemic really made us discover what  those were more so than anything else  because that's what we  missed um so choice of venue is really  important um I've always tried to find  venues that are beautiful and that histo  have historical resonance and are  interesting and just put you in this  Frame of Mind to really sort of open  yourself up a little bit and so  obviously I mean this is grade right um  but uh you know the Union Station was at  one point the one of the largest train  stations in the world and 100,000 people  a day passed through there it's a it's  kind of a a building with a lot of  history and and the tivy same way is  another great great old theater City  Museum obviously few of you probably  experienced that last night uh not  really like anything else um so and it  also is a little bit about format about  like single track versus multi-track and  things like that but uh that's less  critical so that's what I think about  context it's important to put people in  that in that zone where you can think  about things um if you talk to your  employer to get approval for a  conference you probably mostly talk  about content and that's sort of the  thing that drives a lot of um a lot of  things in the conference whether it's  you know sort of the bigname Keynotes or  the sessions or the Hands-On workshops  or the ad hoc sort of birds of a feather  kind of things uh over the years we have  had over 5,000 cfp submissions  um over a thousand talks and workshops  at the conference um that's a lot um  Strang lip has become really well known  for its Talks on YouTube uh certainly  that has been the best ambient marketing  channel we could have we could have  imagined um I love playing with uh  format and trying to figure out if  there's some different way to do do  things in the conference um it it ends  up mostly being sessions like this where  you've got a speaker talking to  everybody and that's because that's what  scales so when you get big that's really  the only thing that scales uh I did  create another whole conference called  Lambda Jam where I tried to explore sort  of long form interactive uh type  sessions and uh uh I gave up uh because  I could I could not figure out how to  make it work without losing money on it  uh it was it just doesn't scale in the  same way so you either have to make it  really expensive or um or not do it  which is what I did so um from the  beginning uh the goal of strange ship  really was to mix sort of uh people who  are you know hardcore industry people  working on you know important stuff um  with big thinkers from Academia and with  the hope that sort of those people got  to got to mix a little bit more and and  uh you know mix a little the chocolate  and the peanut butter together and maybe  they would both Come Away with some  interesting uh interesting things and  and uh I definitely think that we have  succeeded in that uh and I also really  wanted to combine sort of a dash of  humanities and interesting places that  software was going that were maybe not  obvious uh you know we've had talks  about you know knitting and origami and  all sorts of different things over the  years um the whole world is interwoven  with technology these days and and we us  as software people we're everywhere  every job is a software job right or  every business has a has a software  component to it these days and I think  it's important that we as the people who  are making that stuff um think about how  we respect digital rights and privacy  privacy and freedom of expression and  and sort of encouraged people to be more  human and not less human so  uh um so back in the early years I used  to collect speaker feedback uh or  feedback about talks from the attendees  after the conference and uh I wanted to  share a few things out of that um that I  think are maybe not obvious um but are  interesting and I have no Place help to  share those things so I'm going to share  them now um so uh the first thing is  that I used to do this question where  I'd ask people just sort of open ending  question what were your like three  favorite talks and then you sort of you  know note those all down and and come up  with you know a list of them and I  thought oh I'll just come there'll be  some like obvious like favorite tracks  and you know I'll make a list or  something like that um and uh I did some  of that it wasn't interesting but like  the interesting thing was that every  single Talk of the conference was on the  list so uh that is not obvious  right um and I did this multiple years  and I had the same result every time so  um there is no best talk it is truly  subjective everybody here has is walking  into the room with some sort of problem  you're wrestling with some place where  you need inspiration or a decision or  information and uh you might go to some  talk and it's like you're like that's  the perfect talk that's my talk that was  the talk that was perfect talk for me  and that talk is different for everybody  um so I don't think that's obvious but  if you're a speaker I think that's  really encouraging to hear um because  you might think oh well you know I  didn't do as good as as good as that  other person did or whatever but be but  you connected with somebody I'm  absolutely sure of it um and then uh  another thing is that uh multitrack  conferences are sort of Choose Your Own  Adventure right um we all go to  different conferences right you go to  this talk I go to that talk talk you  know everybody goes to a different set  of talks and one person might say that  was the best programming language  conference I went to and they would say  I didn't go to any programming language  talks I went to all database talks or  whatever so um so the feedback that I  get all the time is 80% of the talks I  saw were great but the other 20% you got  to get rid of the bottom 20% but you got  to remember if you go back to the last  point there is no bottom 20% right it's  the talk that's right for you at the  right time so um so that's bad advice  don't follow that advice um you should  still try to get good talks that is  important but uh but don't follow that  advice um and then uh the other  interesting thing I found was if you  read all this feedback and and tried to  take take away from it like what's what  is uh what makes for a what what is the  reason somebody doesn't like a talk it  is 99% of the time this is very Buddhist  it's because the expectations that they  had for the talk don't match what they  got in the room and so it's really  important especially the title but also  the abstract to um to sort of make sure  that you're matching those expectations  and people are incredibly forgiving  actually uh if you are matching sort of  the content expectations but you know  you have slide issues or AV issues or  you know you're not the best speaker in  the world all that kind of thing um if  you're if you're actually matching the  thing that they were looking for that  might be the talk they need so um so  that's important to keep in  mind um I also wanted to talk about  we're still talking about about content  here um this is uh something I I I  really needed to talk about one of the  weirdest and wildest moments of strange  Loop uh was uh  2013 um so obviously the conference is  named after the book kind of uh kind of  the I am a strangely book and uh the  author that is Douglas Hoffer who also  wrote uh gerer Bach which was a Pulitzer  Prize winning book um and was very  important to me uh and thinking about  things and uh he joined us for a keynote  and um the way that happened is that  Daniel fredman had uh spoken previously  and they were colleagues at Indiana  University and so I asked Dan I said how  should how should I invite Douglas  hoffstead he's like a big guy you know  like and uh and he said you should write  him a letter and I'll give it to him and  I was like oh all right so I wrote him a  letter and invited him to the conference  so uh that worked so uh it's but  probably the hand delivery helped a lot  um and that same year uh I sent probably  the weirdest cold email that I've sent  and I've sent a lot of weird cold emails  um to a guy named David stuts and uh  David is a composer and he's kind of  interested in the overlap of mathematics  and programming and music and he has all  these interesting projects he's done uh  and in particular he had written this  album of music called IET which was um  uh sort of a companion work to uh Neil  Stevenson's book uh anathem if anybody  has anybody here heard the IET  album a couple people I see out there so  you should go check it out it's like  kind of like uh so anathem like has all  these um sort of uh uh Monastery like  things where people are are separating  themselves from the world for a long  time so there's lots of sort of sort of  Monkish Gregorian chant kind of vibe to  it and so the album is very much like  it's like a Gregorian chant songs that  are about an algorithm for approximating  the digits of pi stuff like that so it's  awesome it's really cool um so I didn't  really have a proposal for him I was  just like you do all this stuff and it  seems like it vaguely overlaps with all  of my interests and maybe there's  something we could do I didn't and I  didn't really even know what I was  proposing um but he he was immediately  very interested in in doing something  and I mentioned that you know hofste was  going to do the keynote and he's said oh  I love hoper and so he he knew you know  he knew all about hoper and and he so he  started started working on something and  he came back to me you know a month  later or whatever and he said so I've  been working on this and I think I think  we could do a theatrical piece about the  themes from Douglas Hoffer's books and I  was like that sounds amazing like I  don't know what that would be like but  sure go for it and so he kept working on  a little bit and he came back and he  said I need you know few thousand  dollars or whatever to hire people and  do stuff and I was like okay whatever so  um so we we worked that out and uh and  uh so he hired a cast uh and then he  contacted me and said uh is there any  way you could find me a brass band in St  Louis and I was like yeah sure so so I  found him the great Gateway brass  quintet fantastic group and uh and then  uh he was like uh if I had an aerialist  who was hanging from the  ceiling is there anything that would  that work out okay and I'm like yeah I  think that would work so like they've  probably done stuff like that here uh  and so I asked him and then you know the  V he was like well you're going to need  insurance for that so so somebody could  could fall and land on somebody so it's  so I actually bought some aerialist  insurance or whatever the hell you buy  so I don't know it's one of the many  weird things you have to do as a  conference organizer so um I didn't  actually speak to him uh until uh right  over here where he walked on stage  basically um because they they came in  town they did a dress rehearsal but I  was off doing other you know conference  stuff or whatever and uh as as I said  hello to him for the first time before  he walked on stage with this Crew He  said uh he said you have to be the most  trusting person I've ever  met so that was fun so uh this is uh  almost almost 10 years ago to the day it  was like 10 years ago and two days ago I  was sitting right over here uh next to  Douglas hofstead are watching this  theatrical piece with a brass band and  uh he was he had a closure repple up and  he was like triggering things on closure  through closure all these images and  sound and there was a cast and and all  that stuff and it was like an hourlong  piece it's like a theatrical piece um  and it was totally original and and  funny and Incorporated all these themes  and and offset was eating it up he was  it was great um and uh I thought I just  I don't know how we ever beat this like  this is this has got to be Peak strange  Loop so um I think we've done some good  things since then but I don't know if  we'll ever if we ever be that but you  can go watch it online if you Google for  uh uh for a loop it's on Vimeo uh the  full recording we had the whole video  crew here we did a multi camera shoot of  it and so there's and he edited it all  and we we have a great uh video that  came out of it um so go check that out  some people really hated it so  and so but I you know art supposed to  provoke a reaction so I I'll take that  so uh and then finally I wanted to talk  a little bit about people um one year uh  it was the night before the  pre-conference and I ran into Rich  hickey in the lobby of the hotel hotel  and uh I've worked with well I had not  worked with him at the time but i' have  now worked with Rich you know almost  since then uh on closure stuff um and  and he said oh congratulations on a  great conference and I was like it  didn't even started yet we're just in  the lobby the night before you know and  uh and he said no you know look around  like there the people are here you know  this is it this is the conference so uh  and he was right he was right uh so the  content gets you here the contact sort  of sets the stage and you all do the  rest all right uh on the subject people  uh having had over a thousand talks  obviously we have uh lost a few beloved  members of the community over the  years and I wanted to talk about a few  of them uh just three of them um tonight  um the first is Joe Armstrong I'm sure  many of you are familiar with Joe  Armstrong so uh Joe is uh you know one  of the creators of erlang and the author  of of a really excellent book about  concurrent programming that I found very  influential um and he gave a keynote at  strange Loop in 2014 uh and I've had the  pleasure of meeting a lot of sort of  programmer royalty over the years and uh  Joe was just a joy to talk with uh he  loved learning and teaching and um uh  one thing that I've found to be common  among these sort of luminaries is that  they are really good at finding good  problems and Joe certainly was  that uh so I'm Miss  Joe um Matt Taylor I mentioned ear  earlier um I knew him through a bunch of  various Tech meetups notably the very  obscure St Louis Dynamic language Beer  Drinkers and Hell Racers club which  Still Still occasionally meets um and uh  he was he was an enthusiastic early  supporter of Lambda Lounge uh and he  spoke at that first meeting and spoke at  the first strange Loop and several after  that uh and he eventually moved out to  the West Coast and worked at Yahoo on  the Mojito framework and then um joined  Numa uh who work on uh the sort of model  of the brain stuff uh and he was a  really passionate member of that team  and and really sort of built a thriving  Community uh around that and uh he was a  really deep thinker and I always enjoyed  having conversations with him about life  and universe and the heavy metal all  sorts of things and uh I miss him a  lot uh and then finally Bob Lee I'm sure  lots of people in room nobob um he was  killed in a a shocking event earlier  this year in San Francisco and he was  well known for his work on Android and  Java libraries like juice and CTO of  square and but before all that he was  born in St Louis and he was here in the  local Tech scene and particularly around  Java which is kind of where I got to  know him he had a library called D aop  that was an early dependency injection  library that was uh that was really  interesting uh and he was a keynote  speaker at the first strange Loop and  gave several talks later on with people  like Eric Burke and Josh block and  people like that uh and he kind of you  know uh left St Louis but also came back  and left and came back and kind of  circled in and out uh and I always used  to run him in run into him in the  airport um going between San Francisco  and St Louis because I was working for  San Francisco companies too sometimes  but uh my heart really goes out to his  family and and uh I miss him a  lot  uh and uh this is the whole organizing  crew here here with uh uh Adam Savage uh  this is uh Crystal Martin who is  actually not here uh this year because  she just had a  baby um but she's been missing us for  sure and me Adam Savage Nick Cowen who  introduced us Bridget Hillier uh Ryan  Senor and Mario Kino  um  and I will I will bring them all up  later at the end of the at the end of  the day um but uh I know because people  have been telling me this non-stop for  the last few days that um strange Loop  has really uh had a big impact on a lot  of people uh whether it's sort of  meeting people meeting you know Twitter  folk onl in person or famous people or  finding a job or getting introduced or  inspired to do something um or just  getting stuck in a tunnel at City Museum  for me uh it was all of those and  finding this set of dear friends um we  we get together every year and get to  catch up on our lives and all that so I  don't know what else you could ask  for so I hope you've had some of those  experiences at stranger but I know that  you have uh okay now it's time for some  real talk um when you when you shut down  a conference you can tell that there  Secrets right um so this is our uh sort  of attendance over the years um uh as  Nick mentioned earlier we're started the  tiv with about 300 then moved to the  pageant with about 600 and then moved  down here downtown to the Hilton  Ballpark with about 900 and then um at  somewhere around there uh steifel which  was then the Peabody Opera House uh  reopened after a big rehab uh and I knew  that we had to be here because they had  this beautiful theater and there's also  four side ballrooms and so you could do  breakouts and it everything and and uh  we sort of uh you can see the the  attendance kind of crept up over the few  years and that's because we got better  at running it here and we were able to  sort of better balance um uh the rooms  and feed people better and do that kind  of stuff we just improved a little bit  but it was becoming increasingly hard to  get tickets and so like in 2016 I think  I sent one email and the conference sold  out in 5 minutes so it was which like  like oh that's awesome like it really  really is is uh I really hate being sold  out like that and having to deal with  weight lless and telling you just tell  people no for months on end that's awful  it's it's really horrible um so we took  the plunge in 2017 and split into two  venues and started using Union Station  for uh breakouts as well and that gave  us a little more  flexibility um so um 2017 uh was really  great that's the year we had Adam Savage  here and that I think drove drove a lot  of attendance and uh  2018 um icfp collocated with us the  International Conference on functional  programming and that was largely due to  Matthew flat and Robbie Findler who had  that had that idea and so I appreciate  that I think that was a really  interesting year there were just a there  was a lot of different mix of people  here that year that year uh 2019 was a  hard year so I know it doesn't look like  it's that that that line line on the  graph is much lower um but it's the  difference between losing money and  making money so it's um when you're  running two venues like this there are a  lot of fixed costs and so you and you've  doubled them you don't you don't uh you  don't get that uh that benefit of the  economy of scale benefit when you start  adding venues you lose that again um so  uh I really sweated that year a lot and  we I we didn't make any money that year  it was it was pretty much a I think  about I I'm I I'm afraid to go back and  look at taxes and see whether I actually  made money that year or not uh and then  2020 obviously was a pandemic and uh I  was already because after 2019 I was  already replanning the conference and  and probably going to do just Union  Station anyways uh to try to keep it um  sort of a uh something that was not  losing money um and then uh so I kind of  replanned everything around that and  then uh the pandemic started and I  thought well it I guess I you know  hopefully this will blow over in a  couple months and and we'll be able to  have the conference and but I replanned  the whole thing again for a planning for  a smaller event uh and then after a  couple months it was clear that that was  not going to happen so we cancelled the  event and and took a loss that year um  and uh I I canceled the event on my  birthday that year um and I remember  calling you know our captioners and and  video crew and and telling them that we  weren't going to be able to use their  services and I felt really bad because  you know they're that their businesses  are built out of our business so um that  was a that was a hard decision um I was  not able to cancel my hotel contract um  it would have been hundreds of thousands  of dollars to do that uh but they were  able to move it until this year so we're  actually using the 2020 contract this  year at Union Station um which is a  common  thing um but I really really going  through that period of 2019 and  2020 uh and and I was able to and so I  didn't do the conference that year in  2020 and it was it it was kind of nice  to be honest with you so it was kind of  a nice breather um but uh I decided that  I was not going to actively continue  signing contracts because usually sign  the hotel contract three years out so  like that that the contract we're on now  that was supposed to be for 2020 I  signed in 2017 so that just to give you  an idea of the what how this works um so  uh in 2021 it was obviously really small  and um it  uh it we had a ton of cancellations at  the end we're kind of right at the the  back half of the Delta wave for Co and  so we had a ton of cancellations a ton  of sponsor cancellations we had like 20  speaker cancellations it was just it was  like constantly like replanning the  conference on an hourly basis but we did  have it uh I only had I I think I only  had one reported case of Co that year um  and that might have been a false  positive even um so I think it was  successful in not being a super super  spreader event which was my first uh my  first goal uh and people were just  Overjoyed to be back talking to other  people so it was a kind of a special  year in that way um but didn't make any  money obviously oops uh and then in 22  um in 22 we we got bigger again and uh  everybody was trying to hire at the  beginning of last year so we had a ton  of sponsorship but attendance was really  low um because um people had not opened  up their travel budgets again just the  economics of the stuff changes uh and  then you know doing fine this year we  decided that uh we had to go out and use  the steifel again so brought that back  this  year um all right I want to talk about  diversity stuff a little bit um the uh  and before I get too much into this uh  I'm committing graph crimes here so I  will explain them I'm also committing  committing some diversity crimes here  and so I want to explain those too um I  know I hear you um if you have that  reaction to immediately so these are all  the numbers on here are percentages but  not of the same thing so graph crime I'm  sorry but I'm trying to put things  together um I will explain a little bit  uh and then the other aspect of it is  there's a bunch of things on here about  women and that's because that's what I  can uh easily infer proxy statistics for  for some things um and so uh but uh I  know that diversity is not just about  women it is about the full awesome  intersectional you and I see all of you  out there and that's awesome uh I just  don't have any numbers that I can put to  any of that  so  um and the way this is calculated is  based on looking at like first names and  t-shirt selections and the fact that I  know a lot of people at the conference  and and so there are error bars  particularly on that uh Green Line uh  for sure but I think it's still uh you  it's correct enough accurate enough um  and calculated the same over the years  that the trend line is is useful so uh I  decided it was worth showing this so  don't cancel me  um uh so explaining these a little bit  the sort of Top Line is really uh the  percentage of talks that have women  speakers and and uh you'll notice that  in 2009 that number was zero so the  first year of the conference there were  no women speakers uh this was not  something that I thought about at the  time so uh it was a different world then  uh and I think if I if I put that  program I'm out today I would be  pillared and rightly so so uh I think  the world has has definitely changed for  the better that way um and it is  something that I sort of uh became more  aware of quickly and then it became a  priority really uh for us and you can  see that um on that graph that there are  there was a big jump there and uh it is  very it has been very easy at strange  Loop for years to go to a conference and  if you're in that multitrack thing if  you if you wanted to you could just see  only talks by women so for example so uh  I think that we have um and that's not  accidental we've put a lot of  intentionality into that as we as we  choose speakers and invite speakers and  all that kind of thing and I'm really  proud of what we've done there um to to  promote that uh and then the bottom line  the yellow line is about Grant grantees  so we' have this opportunity grant  program uh that we've been running since  2015 and I had some ideas about this in  you know sort of a year or two before  that um that it would be it would be  great if we could you know really sort  of encourage more people by you you or  just bringing people to the conference  uh and encourage a lot of different  kinds of of diversity that way um and uh  Bridget Hillary who had been to the  conference a bunch of times and who I  knew uh came to me and was interested in  doing something like that and I said oh  yeah like I'm interested in doing that  so um we got together and sort of  designed this program and there weren't  a lot there wasn't a lot of precedent I  don't think at the time um for that in  the tech industry at least um but we we  so we fumbled our way through it got a  lot of recommendations from ashren and  other people and and uh tried to to do  our best to make a uh to make a program  that would that would uh just just sort  of change the the way the conference  looked and and felt uh so being  welcoming to everybody and bringing more  people in um and so we ran that for a  couple years um and then uh there's a a  organization called project alloy that  uh was interested in doing the same kind  of thing but more on a cross-conference  scale so like getting much bigger  donations uh from PE from companies and  and building sort of a bigger program  and so they kind of took over the  organization of it for for a few years  uh and that was kind of an interesting  learning perspective and we I think we  learned from each other on that um and  then post pandemic we've sort of gone  back to doing it our elves and um one of  the things that has always been a we  from the very beginning Bridget and I  talked about this being not a thing that  was going to exist forever like the goal  was really to change what was happening  here um and provide that support and  then eventually we wouldn't need it as  much and we have really step things down  a lot um and it's a little hard to see  from this because um because the  grantees is uh is a percentage of  attendees and you have to remember the  last graph where the number of attendees  was going up rapidly so  um in those Peak years of like 2017 2018  we were bringing you know 140 150 people  and paying all their hotel and travel  and uh so it was a I mean we had a lot  of sponsors and I kicked in a lot of  money and uh we really made it a  priority of the conference it was a a  big chunk of the budget um so I think  but I think that what we've seen is that  uh the result of that grant program is  that those people who came on the grants  um are amazing people like these people  submit these you know we submit forms or  whatever and tell us about themselves  and it's just like oh my God like this  this person is so much more capable than  I am in so many ways uh but they just  couldn't afford to go to the conference  so I'm so glad that we were able to make  that happen for them uh and we what we  see is like a year or two later we see  them coming back uh and they've been  hired and they're bringing their team  with them or they're they're convinced  their company to sponsor or they're  submitting talks and speaking and which  has happened a whole bunch of times um  so it definitely was really good for the  people that attended it was really good  for the conference it was really good  for um for all of us for that to happen  and so that it it repay all the money  that we put into it I feel like uh came  back to us with a multiple uh for sure  uh and then the green line in the middle  here is women as a percentage of  attendees and so this is I I think so  the other two lines I think are places  where we're doing stuff right and the  green line is sort of a a metric of one  of many possible metrics of you know how  are we doing on this and I think  definitely you can see that that has  changed over time uh and so I'll take  that as a as a measure of success it's a  little bit of an indirect proxy but um I  think we definitely have uh have moved  the needle on that for sure  um and then this is kind of an  interesting graph that I've been using  internally for years I've never shared  this with anybody but um I use this for  sort of tracking ticket sales over time  and so the the x-axis here is days on  sale and sort of the event is at the  right B at the right margin so um so  you're sort of accumulating ticket sales  over time uh and there's a lot of  interesting stuff you can get out of  this um the Blue Line there which goes  straight up and then over that was 2017  so we had all this that was the first  year we were here at steel we had all  this pent up demand and people were used  to the conference selling out in five  minutes so they all showed up the day I  went on sale and bought a ticket and we  sold like I don't know 1,500 tickets  that first in the first you know few  hours and uh then I went and had a beer  so that was a good  day uh that felt great U and then the  next year the green line you can see  that it kind of uh few people realized  they didn't have to buy it right away so  they showed up the first day but then  after that it kind of Trail off and the  yellow line same thing that was 2019 the  year that we had uh that was a rough  year uh and not not enough people bought  tickets that first day for sure uh and  then it just kind of percolated along  and you can kind of see if you look at  those in particular uh I think it's  remarkable how even what how even the  slope is on ticket sales after that  initial buy like that that's not obvious  to me that that it it wasn't obvious to  me I've been watching this data for a  long time but so um you you sell like  some number of tickets per day like and  that's just math you can calculate how  many tickets you're going to sell you  know so um that's actually incredibly  useful information I find this really if  you're organizing a conference or an  event and you can track this kind of  thing uh it's really  useful um and then you could you can  make decisions the problem is it's hard  to there's some decisions that are hard  to make late uh so if you can make that  decision to to uh fundamentally change  the conference in a way that changes  your budget um you know on the first  week tickets are on sale you can do a  lot of different things that you can't  do you know the last week so uh so that  that's a really important lesson for me  um another thing that's not visible in  this is that uh well two things where  this is kind of a a little bit of an  indirect metric and I'm used to looking  at so I know this but the uh tickets  here is really anything that we sold  through the registration system so it  includes like you know a a what if book  or a pre-conference workshop or  something like that so it's not exactly  just tickets uh and then the other thing  is that cancellations aren't shown in  here it's just sales so like uh the 2021  line had a hundreds of cancellations so  the real number is much lower than than  what you see here so those are the two  pieces of context there uh so uh the  black line is this year so it's  interesting if you sell a constant  number of tickets per day then you could  be open longer and sell more tickets  right  so um and I think that's true I think  that is a true thing but may maybe they  would buy tickets later but I don't  think it's true I think like people just  show up and they they for whatever  reason find the conference and if they  could buy a ticket right then they will  so if you open earlier you can sell more  tickets I don't know so if you're doing  an event think about  that um there are a lot of risks  involved in running a conference like  this um and most of them are out of your  control so um there are ways to manage  some of these kinds of things um but  really you're just sort of rolling the  dice every year and hoping that you make  it through without some catastrophy  happening um and there are you know you  can you can you can respond to some  things  uh and all of these I to some degree  have happened to us over the years um  but you don't you never know when the  one's going to happen uh if you look at  that last gra the one thing I didn't  mention is uh you get profitable in the  last like centimeter or inch of this  graph you know like you don't get  profitable until till maybe the last few  weeks of the conference um so the bulk  of the time you're just paying down your  fixed costs for that kind of thing uh  which leaves you big oceans of time to  have something bad happen um that you  can't recover  from uh so it it has and this is I would  say generally has gotten worse over year  or maybe I'm just more aware of it I  don't know I'm not sure which one but uh  it did that's definitely a thing to be  aware  of uh so what is the future of  conferences uh I think it's  irresponsible at this point not to  consider the climate impact of what  we're doing here I think it's really  valuable obviously um and Christal Lopez  did a keynote about this in 2021 um if  you want to go look at that she talks  about a bunch of other things mostly  from the academic conference side um but  we have a big carbon footprint all  flying here to talk to hang out like  this um we've looked at Carbon offsets  uh and thought about that um I'm not  convinced they're not a  scam um tell me tell me if I'm wrong um  but I even if they're not a scam I think  it's definitely much better not to have  the impact in the first place uh for  sure um and we sort of you know we all  lived through the pandemic and and did a  lot of zoom and virtual conferences and  and really uh I I've done a bunch of  virtual conferences and and you know  just generally they suck so just if I'm  going to sum it up um but I think it is  important to think a little bit why are  they not as good uh and there are a  bunch of things so let's go back to my  Trio of context content and people so  context um the this idea of a third  place is really important so when you're  at a virtual conference where are you  you are probably at home in your first  place or at work in your second place  and other people are in those places and  they expect you to do the things you do  in those places like you know go change  empty the dishwasher or you know go to  this meeting with your boss or whatever  and so uh you do not have that that  really critical aspect of uh the third  place with a virtual conference you're  just stealing time from one of the other  ones and that is really hugely important  uh and then the another big thing is  time zones which wreck everything about  virtual conferences so they make  everything harder uh the content is  better in some ways like I think you're  actually able people are sitting close  to a screen they can actually see code  and certain things I think better than  they can on a big screen like this so  there's some some things about that and  you have all these things like polls and  and Q&A and things like that so you've  got um you've got some things that some  tools that are different um  so in some ways that's better but doing  talks is hard and doing remote talks I  I've found is just 10 times harder um so  that's uh that's definitely not great uh  and then people I find it's just way  harder to connect with people you don't  know through these virtual conference  things and I know there's these ones  where you're like in a little town and  you're walking around and you meet  somebody or I don't know I I'm I'm  unconvinced um I'm sorry if somebody  here works for one of those companies  but um I've I I haven't had a the only  virtual conference experiences I've had  that were really good were people that I  knew well beforehand so if you're in a a  a good sort of uh community that is you  know relatively where you know a lot of  the people at least by reputation um I  found that that that can be okay uh  because you don't need as much of that  sort of context making um thing uh so  maybe VR is eventually the way out of  some of these problems um I certainly  believe that five 10 years from now that  you're going to be able to attend a  meeting that's it's not going to be you  know like sitting at a zoom call it's  going to be more like closer to sitting  in a room with somebody um I don't know  exactly what that's going to be like or  whether you have to have something  strapped to your face or not but um I I  do think that is going to be improved  but I don't think that solves anything  about that third place problem you're  still sitting somewhere probably at that  first or second place um so is there  something that is not a virtual  conference and not a physical conference  but is somewhere in between and this is  something uh I have spent a lot of time  sketching out because I thought really  hard about doing this and um there are  some hybrid Alternatives that I think  are actually pretty interesting um you  want to go somewhere but what if you  don't go far away what if you go  someplace close what if you go to  someplace in your city or somewhere in  your region uh and you could go hang out  with people that you don't know  necessarily but that are there for an  event um but not get on a plane  uh a lot of there's a lot of places  these days for medium-sized groups to  meet a lot of companies now have  fantastic places you know meeting rooms  that are you know remote enabled and  everything um movie theaters are  marketing things like this to companies  now so that's another whole uh  possibility for contacts that hasn't  existed and that's a place we already go  for third place contacts so um I think  that's that's interesting um I think if  you think about sponsor things sponsors  who fly fly to a different place to then  meet people who have flown from some  other place and try to hire them is uh I  think there's some problems with that  model so um it is not obvious to me that  that's a great model it with remote it's  it maybe it's better than it used to be  um but just imagine the experience where  you you as a sponsor were able to host  people and they came to your company and  hung out in your conference room and  talk to the people that worked at you  your company like that seems like a way  higher value type of event um um for a  sponsor uh and and the people are by  definition probably close to that  company already um so and speaking  Talent is all over what if instead of um  presenting remote talks you just you got  together and presented talks locally uh  in the room and then sort of voted  recorded them voted on which ones were  the best ones and then the next day you  came back and watch the best talks from  someplace else uh you're never all  synchronously together you don't have  the time own problems um I think there  are I'm not I'm not solving all the  problems here but uh I think there are  interesting ideas here that could be  could be used to make something that's  different than what we have now and and  I hope that uh I hope that someone here  in this room or somewhere else uh  somebody makes something like  that uh and then finally uh I wanted to  talk a little bit about um the ending  right so many people have asked me why  strange Loop is ending um and uh it  really has has achieved every goal I  ever possibly imagin and Way Beyond  so uh so I I really wanted a place that  we could talk about these new languages  and databases and stuff that I thought  was interesting uh I think we checked  that box and uh we I wanted some way to  mix sort of industry and Academia and  and Humanity stuff together and I think  I check that box and bring bringing  people together um talking about cool  stuff and our passions I think  definitely check that box uh and then uh  you know this idea of of improving  diversity in Tech was another thing that  we sort of picked up along the way and  and I think we've we've made a lot of  important uh things that important uh uh  improvements there uh at least in moving  what's expected of conferences in the in  the community um uh also as I talked  about earlier it's gotten harder and  riskier to do these events so uh every  year I think is this a year that  something happens and I go bankrupt and  and just fold it all up and we I've been  close two or three times uh it has we've  been there so um and then a lot of  people have asked whether somebody could  take over strange Loop and um and I've  had lots of people ask me and um the  thing is that uh this one of the reasons  that I think people sort of vibe with  strange liop is it has a point of view  uh clearly I it's a lot of it is my  point of view and the the other  organizers and all that um and uh I  think that if somebody else was going to  pick it up and and do the conference  then they would be sort of cosplaying  strange Loop uh and cosplay is  cool but I don't think it would be the  same I think it would be I I don't think  it would be I I I would much rather see  somebody uh Embrace their own idea and  be 100% uh themselves and putting  together an event that uh talks about  their values and their interests and  things like that um so if you want to do  something like that you need advice I'm  happy to tell you what I know so I I've  done this many times on you know gotten  together with people on zooms and and  talked them through event stuff and and  uh I like the sort of business nuts and  bolts of it so like oops I'm happy to uh  to do that if uh if you're  interested and then uh finally uh I  think it's okay for things to end so um  big big trees in a Forest sort of  compete for their chunk of sky and all  that corresponding Life Energy and uh  big big trees protect some young trees  Under The Canopy and and when that big  tree falls the sky opens up those young  trees race up to fill it um I hope that  uh strange Loop ending creates space in  your life and mine uh for other things  to grow so thank you for being here with  us all these years and I hope it's been  as important a part of your life as  mine