It sounds like Monday’s DemoCamp 11 was a bit of a let-down for some people. I couldn’t attend (midterms are more important any day of the week), but I’m worried that the event might suffer as a result of this.
For those familiar with control systems, you’ll know about damping factors, and how they relate to system response. An underdamped system reacts too much to input changes, leading to minor instability. An underdamped system reacts too slowly to input changes, whereas a critically damped system reacts “perfectly”. Definitely a Goldilocks-esque scenario.
My fear is that making any changes because of one disappointing DemoCamp might constitute an underdamped response, leading to instability that eventually allows The Suck to reign supreme. And we must avoid the ever-increasing influence of The Suck.
Let’s look at some of the criticisms:
Martin Cleaver notes:
As for what went wrong with DemoCamp – well, for a start, its an open forum. No revenues means no one is paid to ask the qualifying questions up front. Or take the money out of the equation: no one asks the qualifying questions up front. And maybe the questions are insufficient. Maybe they’d need to give a demo in private up front.
It’s just a datapoint, not a trend. I’ll be at DemoCampToronto12 for sure. If for no other reason than I like meeting the people.
I see the purpose of DemoCamp as being to share ideas and meet people. The only people who judge how valuable the ideas or demos are, are the audience. The biggest risk of having some sort of filter is that good ideas will be kept out because the person filtering doesn’t “get it”. If the purpose of DemoCamp were to attract investors or hire people or whatever, that might be an OK tradeoff, but since we’re in the business of showing off cool stuff, sharing ideas, and meeting people, I’d say that that’s an unacceptable tradeoff.
Ryan McKegney wrote:
I’ve been thinking a bit about the demos that I have liked and disliked from past DemoCamps. I think there needs to be a philosophical discussion about DemoCamp to determine the direction it should take. A recurring event from the last few DemoCamps has been the announcement that such and such company is hiring and at least one or two demos from students or freelancers who are essentially auditioning for a job. Perhaps DemoCamp isn’t the best place for that. Maybe we could have an Un-Jobfair?
As for DemoCamp itself, perhaps it doesn’t need to be every month. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes it feels like they’re happening every week. Because there are space constraints, some sort of voting system for potential demos could be put in place.
I’m against his argument in the first paragraph for the same reasons as mentioned earlier: I think it would filter out good ideas. If the purpose of DemoCamp – a format that has worked well so far – is to share ideas, show cool stuff, and meet people – it shouldn’t really matter if they’re looking for a job or not, so long as they’re showing something cool.
As for voting for potential demos, I’m firmly against that. There have been a couple of demos that I didn’t think would be interesting until I actually saw them, and I don’t want to squander that chance in the future.
Overall, I’m mostly afraid of a few ill-prepared demos and a few demos people weren’t interested in bringing about change that destroys the event. The format has worked quite well for a year, and we should expect that every now and then there will be demos that don’t go over so well. That’s just the luck of the draw, not anything wrong with the event itself.
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