Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

I mean, there are so many factors. The piece covers many but I think there really are a few more that I've personally noticed:

- Companies have generally tightened belts on discretionary spending, which means fewer people are being paid to go to conferences and events. Many workplaces offered a relatively free hand when it came to company-sponsored conference trips, but now you're not only looking at paying your own way but taking PTO to do it!

- As someone who still makes an effort with in-person meetups: space is so hard to get unless you're well-funded. There used to be a plethora of startups around here that were happy to let you use their office after hours, but the end of ZIRP and the ensuing belt-tightening has taken a lot of these places off the list.

- AI has sucked so much air out of the room. AI-related meetups around here are still pretty common, lots of VC-funded AI startups lending their space to AI-related meetups. Heck, many even have a food and drinks budget. But if you're in any space that isn't AI this kind of support is basically completely non-existent.

Also, I think a major factor that can't be discounted are incentives for speakers. For the same reason most companies have switched to recorded announcements vs. live stage announcements, speakers are incentivized towards remote/recorded events vs. in-person since the content has much wider reach. It may be less useful for the in-person participants but you're optimizing for the long tail of people viewing remotely/viewing later.

> while I’d love to go to conferences, taking time out of my own PTO and my own wallet to see them isn’t worth it

I’ve been using PTO and my own dime for conferences this whole time! It’s been super worth it career-wise especially as a speaker. Lots of fun, meet great people, have a bunch of “sawdust” to show for it.

The biggest impact has been that people in the industry generally know of me and that lends itself to creating opportunities / opening doors that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

To the contrary, when all the good New York meetups (Papers We Love, Linux User Group) didn't come back, and inspired by the continuously running Munich Database Meetup and TUMuchData, I started the NYC Systems Coffee Club and co-started NYC Systems (talk series) after which came Berlin Systems Group, Bengaluru Systems Meetup, San Francisco Systems Club, Systems from HEL, DC Systems, Vancouver Systems, South Bay Systems, and Seattle Systems.

So I think people are really eager for high quality talks and chances to gather with smart people.

What's more I think there are not enough meetups in almost any major city to satisfy the demand of speakers or attendees. For example, NYC Systems gets hundreds of people asking to speak (we have 12 speakers a year) and gets 2-3x as many attendees wanting to come as we have space for.

> Conferences, announcements, etc all happened virtually and things were largely fine. Sure things like networking were lost (and the associated drinking), and while that was valuable was not necessarily the marketed reason for the events.

I haven't heard anyone say that things were fine. I and colleagues have participated virtually in ML conferences during covid and people almost unanimously said it was mostly useless. You can't compare zoom rooms to poster sessions, real social events with GatherTown etc. For papers you can just follow arXiv and configure alerts or browse the conference website. The networking and shared fun is core. People make friends/acquaintances, have discussions about how it is to live in another country, their job, their takes on events, gossip, and just general human exchange over beers etc. I know many of us here are introverts, but I'm still seeing it like this. It can be a bonding experience with colleagues to go to the same conference for a week, multiple times a year, you can become friends that will last long. Or it can be hell if you hate them. Two sides to the coin, I admit.

There are many things that can't be said fully openly, e.g. that the main purpose of such conferences is social. Because fun can't be reimbursed, the cog in the machine must be productive and efficient and serious. Except if it's structured like daycare activities mediated by a primary school teacher, i.e. "team-building workshops", whose concept already makes my stomach turn. People can socialize much better if it's not some structured forced activity but happens naturally alongside some other (non-made-up) activity, such as going to a conference and listening to talks etc.

Another thing is that you change your location and life a bit for a week (or a few days), shift your working style. If you stay in the same home or the same office and tune in virtually, most people just going to be multi-tasking. That's already the case for many meetings. People turn off their cameras, their mics, eventually even attendance dwindles. Then if you propose in-person events again, people are disinterested because they associate it with that low-engagement boring stuff, except they now also have to travel to it etc.

I can't imagine wanting to go to even a local conference unless it's a paid alternative to doing real work in a shitty office. Like sure, it's better than that. But certainly not wanting to travel for it. Like if it's just "getting me out of" WFH, lol, no, I'll pass.

I like social events well enough, but Christ, I'd rather go to some other profession's conference than a tech conference. If I started showing up at them it'd be a sign of distress, that I was desperate for a job and my existing network had failed me.