I ran my first developer conference back in 2007. It was called Flex Camp Boston and it was a 1-day, single track conference all about Adobe's Flex, which was growing in popularity at the time. I planned it in about 90 stressful days, but was fortunate that tickets were sold out weeks before the event.

Since 2007, I've run or been involved in running a lot of in-person developer conferences in Boston, Miami, New York, Orlando and even Sofia, Bulgaria. Some I ran independently while others I ran for my employer. I've been fortunate that, in all but one case, which was an event I ran in Orlando weeks before the pandemic shut down, they have all been successful, even if they didn't sell out capacity.

I've also been involved in running virtual events for developers since 2017 including a number of virtual conferences beginning in 2021. My most recent was just last week.

I share all this background because I hope that it lends some credibility when I tell you that I am concerned about the current state of developer conferences.

The pandemic (unsurprisingly) decimated developer events

As you know, events shut down worldwide during the height of the pandemic. Virtual conferences became a big deal during that time. I had been running virtual events for years already, but my attendance rose dramatically at this time.

In-person events slowly started to come back when restrictions began to lift but, understandably, many people were hesitant to return. Many events did not return, and those that did were often 40-50% of their prior attendance during their initial return.

Things in the broader economy have recovered, but unfortunately independently run, in-person developer conferences have, for the most part, not. Big corporate events like Re:Invent, for example, seem to be doing fine, with this year's audience nearly reaching pre-pandemic levels. But the "community" events run by independent developers or small companies formed for the purpose, still seem to be down about 40% from pre-pandemic levels.

To understand why this can be unsustainable, you have to understand how conferences make money.

How the developer conference business works

When you attend an event, it often feels flush with money. There's giveaways and drinks and flashy booths and attendee parties. Many attendees and speakers I've talked to over the years seem to think that this means the event organizers are making a killing. I'm sure that's true in some cases, but in most cases the looks are deceiving.

Unlike corporate conferences, which are typically money-losing marketing expenses, independent conferences have to make a profit to be sustainable. The two revenue streams for an event are sponsorships and ticket sales. In most cases, sponsorships are the majority of the revenue. In fact, sponsorship money typically defrays a lot of the cost of a ticket, which is almost always priced at less than the actual cost.

If you've paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket, you may wonder how this can be less than the cost. Well, think about the cost of the venue, speakers (who, at any decent conference, have their travel and lodging costs covered at the very least), food, A/V, swag, etc. If you're curious, the single biggest cost in their is typically food. This is especially true as an event grows and has to use conference centers and hotels that can manage the capacity. Your tiny, crappy cup of black coffee often costs the same as a latte at Starbucks at a conference venue. That doesn't even account for guaranteed room blocks (i.e. the venue requires I fill a minimum number of rooms) or guaranteed minimums for food/drink.

All of this means that the entirety of sponsorship revenue and a decent chunk of ticket revenue goes to covering costs. An organizer typically has to reach a minimum attendance before the event is profitable. Even a 10-20% drop in anticipated attendance can mean the difference between making money and loing a lot of it.

Where'd the audience go?

Which brings me back to my original point: independent, in-person developer conferences are hurting. Based on my own observation as well as talks with organizers and sponsors that I have come to know over the years, the average independent in-person event is still down 30-40% from pre-pandemic attendance levels. And often it seems to require massive discounts or even giveaways to get to this level.

Not only that, but many of these events that run at conference centers are still fulfilling multi-year contracts that they signed before the pandemic. These contracts usually allow the organizer to get lower costs and guarantees. Venues had been willing to renegotiate these to a degree when events were just coming back, but, based on what I am told, are now frequently unwilling to do so.

All of this means that many of these conferences are unable to be profitable while also finding it difficult to adjust to what appear to be new, lower attendance realities.

The thing is, these missing in-person attendees are not boosting virtual attendance, which, based on my experience, is also down around 40% from pandemic peaks.

Basically a chunk of the audience seems to have disappeared altogether, which is hurting the viability of both in-person and virtual events. I've already seen a handful of events call in quits in recent months.

I have a theory

So, I have a theory on what happened to the audience. I've shared it with a lot of organizers, who all seem to think there's some truth in it.

Pre-pandemic there were two noticably different segments of the audience: people who came for networking first and content second and people who came almost exclusively for content. As an organizer you could see these groups. The former group would be the folks who attended the social events and parties. In the past, this was typically only 50-60% of of the audience. The latter group would be those people who were often the first ones sitting in the session, well before the presentation started. They might sit by themselves or with a colleague or two that they came with, but, once the content was done, they'd leave, without participating in the social events.

Behavior seems to have changed at in-person events though. The audience, while smaller, seems more social. There's less need as an organizer to encourage people to socialize because they seem to do so much more naturally and participation rates in social portions seems higher. However, that second segment, the ones in their seat waiting for the session content, appear to be absent.

My hypothesis is that we've bifurcated the audience somewhat. The folks that were there almost exclusively for the content have decided that they can do so more cheaply and efficiently online via virtual conferences or recordings. The folks that went for the networking as a primary driver, on the other hand, are largely eschewing online events as not fulfilling their needs. This may also explain a behavior change I've noticed for online events where the audience that consumes the recordings has increased while the live audience (the ones that participate in the limited social aspects like chat or Q&A) has decreased.

So ultimately what we are left with is a lower in-person audience and a lower virtual audience. I've been giving a lot of thought to how we can adjust (while also personally avoiding the huge financial risks of running in-person events right now). In my opinion, it's clear that both in-person and online developer conferences need to adjust to new realities that no longer seem transitory due to the pandemic but what isn't clear is how they can do that.

Cover Photo by Harrison Haines: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-empty-theatre-12340871/