A Few Thoughts on P99 Conf

I recently spoke at P99 Conf and watched a bunch of the other talks. I liked it! A few things stood out that I wanted to write down, mostly about the format and the kinds of engineering people were doing. More conferences should do this The talks were prerecorded, but the speakers were in the chat while their talks played. This was much more engaging than I expected, especially as a presenter. Usually, giving a talk and answering questions are separate activities. You present, people listen, and then there’s a time-bound Q&A where someone has to remember the question they had twenty minutes ago. I’ve generally found these sessions underwhelming. Here, someone could ask a question about what I was saying while I was saying it, and I could answer without interrupting the talk. I could follow the conversation, respond to things as they came up, and go deeper where people were interested. There was also a written record afterward. This felt like the most engaged I’d seen an audience…