Over the last week, the first ANZCoders virtual conference was taking place, the conference that you can attend in your pyjamas! Fifteen sessions over five days by twelve speakers, all voted upon by the audience themselves.
The conference was live, but it was recorded also on Youtube; every session has its own Youtube video available for watching any time. So I hear you say “Why attend live if the video is going to be available later?!”…here is why:
- The live Q & A: after the session the audience was given the chance to ask the speaker questions, just like any real conference; which is something that is not available for people watching the video later.
- The live discussion: As the speaker was running through the session, the chat channel was humming with all sorts of different opinions, supporting stories, links to resources, and there lots of laughs that made the conference even more fun! although this might sound distracting a little bit for both the audience and the speaker, but IMHO the benefits overcame the drawbacks.
- The people: connecting with such intelligent and passionate people was invaluable! Enough said.
The only drawback I guess was the reliability of the speaker’s internet connection; I for example lost at least 6 valuable minutes of my “IoC in ASPNET5” talk, even with my best arrangements to have proper connectivity! (Yes, you need to skip past the minutes from 2:30 to 8:30). But hey, a speaker can have a flu in face-to-face conferences as well ;).
Will I participate in a live virtual conference again? Absolutely!
So big thanks to Richard Banks for organizing the conference, and big thanks to the sponsors, the speakers, and the lovely audience who made this event a success!