72 lines
5.9 KiB
Markdown
72 lines
5.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Winding Down"
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meta_title: ""
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description: "Our conferences are coming to an end"
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date: 2025-08-12T12:00:00Z
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image: "/images/hmc/out-of-order.jpg"
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categories: ["Press Release"]
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author: "Abner Coimbre"
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tags: ["meta", "hmc"]
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draft: false
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---
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Our conferences are coming to an end. I am re-evaluating how we socialize.
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Dear Handmade folks,
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This shutdown isn't the end of Handmade Cities, but it does mean we're ending our conferences in favor of local meetups. I'm officially collaborating with [The Offline Club](https://www.theoffline-club.com/) in the future, since we both agreed we admire each other's efforts.
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Personally I'm optimistic for what's on the horizon. However, in this post I need to be blunt about reality. Stand strong.
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*REMINDER: Handmade Cities is NOT affiliated with Handmade Hero nor the Handmade Network. We share the brand and that's it.*
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#### What does it mean for the conferences in 2025?
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The [Boston](/boston) and [Seattle](/seattle) dates stay on the calendar, but they’re meetups now; likely bigger than usual, just not a traditional tech conference. I expect the lectures and demos to remain exciting but in smaller packaging.
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This change is reflected in Boston already, which is coming up this weekend. We changed the venue from the increasingly expensive JFK Presidential Library to the Boston Public Library instead:
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{{< image src="images/companies/bpl.jpg" caption="Entrance to BPL" alt="Entrance to Boston Public Library" height="806" width="605" position="center" command="fill" option="q100" class="img-fluid" title="Entrance to BPL" webp="false" >}}
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I've disabled the [tickets](/tickets) portal and, if there’s room, new folks can join free. E-mail me to RSVP: abner@handmadecities.com. We'll meet in front of the library Saturday at 2PM: plus ones welcome.
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Ticket holders disappointed with this change can email me directly at abner@handmadecities.com to negotiate refunds. I’ve got sunk costs, so refunds might take up to a small number of weeks. However, I'm already processing them as fast as I can, and I'm deeply grateful to the folks allowing me to keep their contribution.
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These upcoming events will be delightful all the same.
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#### Why I'm doing this
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This story has two parts: financial and personal.
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1. **Financial**
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I hinted at economic trouble at the beginning of [this](/news/summer-update-2025/) summer update and in the bottom section of my Terminal Click [announcement](https://terminal.click/posts/2025/07/open-beta/). It's common knowledge profitable conferences are a dying breed and I'm surprised I've lasted this long: Deconstruct, Strangeloop, Bang Bang Con, XOXO and other small-to-medium sized events vanished. Even corporate-backed conferences are no longer around: O'Reilly, Xfest, E3 and so on went away.
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2. **Personal**
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In the last Handmade Seattle I made a mistake with the balance of content. It was definitely jarring to have little in the way of old-school technical presentations. This caused a 50-50 split of positive versus negative feedback: the positive commentary came largely from newcomers, while the negative came largely from veterans. The reader can visit [older](/news) blog posts where I apologized and asked for feedback.
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However, I stand by all my speakers and refuse to add disclaimers/warnings inside published recordings. It is obvious giving speakers air time doesn't mean I endorse all their views. In any case, the most controversial talk by far was Andrew Kelley's keynote on [Day One](/media/seattle-2024/hms-day-one/). I received a barrage of vile essays in my Inbox, Discord DMs, and unlisted YouTube videos calling me a communist (what?) for platforming Andrew's message. I lost genuine friendships from people who were caught up in the heat of it all.
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This was personally traumatic, and I can't use this trauma to justify running half-hearted conferences, which is an important reason for stopping them.
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*UPDATE 8/18/25: In my original post I aired dirty laundry, which feeds into online drama I'm supposed to denounce. It is now removed.*
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#### Nature is healing
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The Handmade meetups are awesome and they keep growing. We nerd out with demos and side projects. We help local programmers find work or make new friends every month. I train and mentor hosts, then they take the reins, so the scene is decentralized and self-sustaining. Meetups are cheap or free to run so I don't have to chase big revenue. Meanwhile, building [Terminal Click](https://terminal.click) as an indie dev is therapy compared to wrangling humans for a living!
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An impressive number of people who ended their relationship with me have apologized as of late. I've forgiven them.
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*UPDATE 8/18/25: In my original post I posted examples of private apologies, which is unfair to those friends. These are now removed.*
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#### Could things have been different?
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Without social media or incentives for public scandals we could've had more perspective: in the end this was just one event. In fact a Seattle meetup member called me a “young grasshopper” as a community organizer. That caught me off guard until I looked around. Important things take time indeed: TED Talks have existed for four decades; DEFCON is thirty years old; many open-source conferences spent twenty years figuring things out. Herding cats is slow and messy.
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I’m done running conferences though. Besides the reasons above, they feed the egos of a few “anointed” speakers and require a social media hustle I just won’t play. I’m opting out. I'm excited about building stuff that gets people offline: better meetups, our own server racks, and self-hosted tools for indie devs with serious Handmade projects.
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I’ll keep publishing newsletters [here](/news) and on [Terminal Click](https://terminal.click/posts), and occasionally on my [personal](https://abner.page) website. I'd still love to see you at our upcoming events, even if they're not fancy conferences: meetups are a powerful means to connect.
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See you offline,<br>Abner Coimbre
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