102 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
102 lines
7.9 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 really optimistic for what's on the horizon, but in this post I need to be blunt about reality.
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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; maybe 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. The hour-to-hour schedule should be on the Boston page by tomorrow.
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Ticket holders disappointed with this change can email me directly at abner@handmadecities.com and we can negotiate refunds. I’ve got sunk costs, so refunds might take a few weeks. However, I'm processing them as fast as I can, and I appreciate the folks letting me keep their contribution.
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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 Reasons**
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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 species 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 Trauma**
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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 (read: their right to speak their mind unencumbered) 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/).
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I received a barrage of vile essays in my Inbox and Discord DMs, calling me a communist (what?) for platforming Andrew's message. I lost good friends, including Ginger Bill, the creator of Odin:
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{{<youtube eoNJfoFR2CE>}}
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Warning: This is very dark stuff, and he torched our relationship. Criticism is one thing but this is something else. A lot of people inexplicably saw it before me. Here was my 1-minute response to his half-hour video:
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<div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;">
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<iframe
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src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/1033767315?h=f97bb867ce"
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style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;"
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allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture"
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allowfullscreen
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title="Dear Ginger"></iframe>
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</div>
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To which Bill never responded. A few days later, he was announced at the Better Software Conference (BSC). This sudden loss of friendships rewired my brain to such a degree that I don't give a f\*ck about anything anymore [1].
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These days I just dish out cold comebacks. I do it in person to anyone who is repeatedly uncharitable. *"When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?"* I asked someone this last week, who recognized me because he follows everything I do online, hated the last conference , and I seem to live rent-free in his head. *"I worship the quicksand you walk in,"* I concluded before leaving the grocery store.
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Transforming into a combative individual has become incredibly useful, but there's this lingering depression, and I just can't give it my all. I can't use this trauma as justification for running half-hearted conferences, which is an important reason for ending them.
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#### Nature is healing
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Handmade meetups are generally awesome and keep growing. 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 friendships with me have apologized. A couple of examples follow (you may need to open them in a new tab):
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{{< image src="images/hmc/close_friend_apology.png" caption="Close Friend Apology" alt="Close Friend Apology" height="1114" width="255" position="center" command="fill" option="q100" class="img-fluid" title="Close Friend Apology" webp="false" >}}
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Even a speaker from BSC wrote to me before their conference:
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{{< image src="images/hmc/bsc_speaker_apology.png" caption="BSC Speaker" alt="BSC Speaker" height="956" width="305" position="center" command="fill" option="q100" class="img-fluid" title="BSC Speaker" webp="false" >}}
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He went on to say later:
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> I only send this because I want you to be happy and healthy with a positive attitude. It's all too easy to fall into a victim mentality and focus too much on social change that isn't even necessary because, again, we're winning. You're obviously very competent and skilled.
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Regardless of what you think of this, I forgave both of them and I'm opting to protect their privacy. A handful of the latest apologies come from community members who lost their income and I'm helping them find new jobs.
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#### Could things have been different?
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Maybe. Without social media or perverse incentives for online drama things could've gone differently. A meetup member in Seattle called me a “young grasshopper” as a community organizer. That caught me off guard until I looked around. Important events 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. Wrangling humans 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 won’t play. I’m opting out. I’d rather build stuff that gets people offline: better meetups, our own server racks, and self-hosted tools for programmers making a living 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.
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See you offline,<br>Abner Coimbre
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---
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**Footnotes**
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[1] I do give a f\*ck about a few stuff: real friends and loved ones and my new work.
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