Karma. Maybe don’t ban devs and gaslight about bugs in Xojo. Good job Geoff Perlman and Dana Brown! Pros left due to your actions…
Well, XDC has always been a ‘premium’ priced event. They host them in really nice venues with social events, and dinners. They are not targeting professional developers whose companies can afford to send them. This is coming out of the citizen developers pocket. So it does not surprise me that attendance is down.
Over the years I think the largest one I ever attended was ~140 people and it’s steadily gone down ever since. This is not an event that developers need to go to. And if I’m honest the last 3 or 4 I attended it was essentially the same people and a lot of the same sessions. We’ve seen Android ‘in action’ how many years in row now with the same ‘6 months away from release’ mantra. I expect the same this year.
FWIW, the conference I helped host in Atlanta (gosh, don’t want to figure out how many years ago - 12???) was held at a Holiday Inn not far from the airport. We catered lunch and did some social events, recorded the sessions and did it inexpensively. IIRC the cost to attend was $200. We even gave money back to the presenters but told them all up front that it was based on attendance and breaking even, etc., etc. To date it’s still been one of my favorite Xojo developer events not hosted by Xojo. The MBS conferences are fairly inexpensive as well and they don’t go overboard with the venue and events costs either.
Xojo could make them less expensive but choose not to. I can’t recall anyone saying that they’re glad they’re in a fancy hotel paying a ton of money. Most people say they’d be happy at a Holiday Inn and some place quiet at nice to talk about the product.
Oh well, I doubt I’ll ever go to one again.
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The things are going on. Xojo has many concurrent products which are more in use and discussed more and also: many of them are open Source and costing nothing. the makes it a bit complex when you choose many of the users. Last Meeting in Nashville was not so big that we could say. okay, more than 30 people. So I guess they are stopping while it will be too expensive when they organize it for a hand full only. And guess what: I guess I would also not go.
Of course not, must be the trolls 
Even REACT has at least 54 big conferences this year… 
yes and I am invited for 5 Conferences as Speaker so I guess: the Interest in Conferences is there. But not in Xojo Conferences.
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It’s a different way of asking people to sign up and not skip this year.
Or in other words: Try to get the US developers to come to Europe.
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$600 to attend. $1120 roundtrip (economy) from Houston to London. Hotel is $240/night and you figure at least 3 nights or more if you’re staying to do some sight seeing. Not to mention restaurants and shopping. That’s money I’d rather spend on a true vacation.
Edit: some discount on the attendance if you’re a speaker. In the past it was half off. But that’s not really the most expensive part of it when going over to Europe. Yes, I realize I could probably price shop and get a much cheaper airline ticket but that was first search on a a major airline.
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The pricy venue and the event’s price tag make a good excuse for not having young devs showing up…
And that’s the other thing. My last half dozen conferences I’d say the average age was in the mid-50’s. Pretty rare to see anyone under 30. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone younger than 40 doing a presentation and I think my first year going was ~2003 when it was still called Real World.
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One can only afford Xojo when retired and Xojo Inc’s moves cannot harm business and income. Young folks go the FOSS way - who would blame them.
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We stay in the hotel next door for half the price.
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I never, ever since I started consulting in 1983 loved the concept of in-person developer conferences. I went to a couple as a speaker when I was shilling my FoxPro books in the early 90s, but to me, apart from some factor like that, the opportunity cost was just crushing, which is all over and above the the substantial cost of the conference and travel / lodging expenses. Even back then it was a minimum of $5K in concrete and opportunity costs to attend a 3 day conference – probably $12 to $15K in 2023 dollars. Even in the 90s I kept in close touch with colleagues via CompuServe and while it was nice to see people face-to-face it just never was that worth it to me.
Disclaimer: I’m an introvert, which plays into it. Not shy or socially awkward, but multi-day schmooze-fests exhaust me. But even apart from that – I would rather spend some time with family while earning a few grand that week doing paying work.
In recent years, a combination of potent change forces, not least (but not entirely) the pandemic, have made virtual conference events much more popular. There are enough quality events that are free such that there’s only opportunity cost to absorb, that I just don’t see the point of an old-fashioned conference anymore. Not that I ever much saw the point.
Here in the US, there are still 300-400 people dying every day from Covid which extrapolates to probably around 6 to 8,000 cases which extrapolates to probably around 1,000 “long covid” cases, of which likely about 300 or so will be long term to permanent disability. I’m 65 (for a couple more weeks!) and have diabetes so I’m in a higher risk category. So the notion of sitting in a tin can for a minimum of 7 hours (one way) with a bunch of mostly unmasked people and then in a stuffy conference venue with, again, mostly unmasked people seems frankly kind of dumb to me. I’d “probably” be “okay” for some given value of “okay” but who needs the distinctly nonzero risk of serious complications?
So yeah I definitely talked myself out of this conference, even if I were committed to ongoing Xojo projects, which I no longer am.
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I don’t know about it outside of Europe, but the Greta thing, at least here, is an aspect that seems to be becoming more and more important. Not so much for us over 50s, but also in this group people seem to be rethinking their lives more and more, at least in Germany.
A certain awareness can be seen in many. Or maybe it’s just a “cool and popular” excuse. But I do believe that there is simply an attitude to critically question what makes sense and what doesn’t. And developer conferences are definitely part of that. “People prefer to fly on vacation and compensate their CO2 footprint and calm their conscience with an online conference”.
And London has probably also become sub-optimal post-Brexit, as even Europeans now need a passport. I naively assume that everyone has one, but that’s not the case, or it expired during the pandemic, you don’t have any other travel plans at the moment, so another extra step that you might not feel like doing right now.
After all, Xojo sounds honest, in Germany it would most likely be packed in a “we are a green company” cotton cocoon.
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I went to the Xojo conferences and spoke at most of them. Mostly I was there to be a consultant as many years there were three or four people there looking for a developer to help them. We had 4 consultants and could usually pick up a client every year. So it made sense to go from a financial standpoint. I also blogged about the conference and the keynote messages.
I’m an introvert too but I can play an extrovert for about three days and them I’m maxed out. My wife would understood that after a conference I wasn’t going to talk much for a few days.
So yeah, I finally moved my last consulting client to other developers. My full-time job is now 100% goLang. There might be some Xojo in the future, but my company will not go back to Xojo for major development. How many times can you get burned before you say enough is enough?
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Orlando was a blast !
Very much so - to the point I spent 99% of my time talking with people over code and not in sessions
More than 12 
is was still in the single digit 2000’s 
MBS does a great job without costing an arm & leg
Yes - its their choice of where they host them that drives the prices up
Notice London is fairly expensive but there are less expensive hotels nearby
Ditto - London was one I & a client discussed but decided not to go to
Instead I’ll just pay them a 2 week visit
Can count them in at least one photo
30 seems to be the TOP #
They invited trolls to the conferences ?
FM has conferences (multi day in Berlin https://dotfmp.berlin)
MS has 80+ “in person events” Microsoft Events Catalog
And of course WWDC from Apple which is both in person & online
OK these ARE all giant businesses
Livecode has moved to online conferences - they did that a few years ago but I suspect some of it was financially driven. They have been having troubles
Not sure if DelphiCon was not also online
Don’t know about the times, but almost 17 years in my case. At least not with a company relying on xojo, nor doing Xojo exclusively. But nevertheless a very sad summary. On a side note: never attended a Xojo conf, but always enjoyed your transcripts very much. Thank you.
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Thanks! I tried to be fair in my coverage of Xojo. Probably too much of a cheerleader in many cases but I felt it wasn’t worth biting the hand that helps feed me. I’m sure Marc Zeeder probably feels that with the magazine at times too.
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yep, but as mentioned by others: if you know you will get something new out of it (and not the known mantra, Android will come soon), or if you are attending a big conference from SAP (where there used to be almost as many employees as attendees, and you had the chance to really get insights to buring issues you had, etc.) and if you have the chance to meet customers and partners … then, and only then a live conference beats of course any online conference.
When I look at the past XDCs videos, I can’t see how i would have benefited to have attended them in person, other than meeting some nice people. But as I am not nice and an introvert too (who has to play the extrovert like Bob … I prefer to be called a “dude” online, I don’t need to hear it in person
Haha yes exactly. And this kind of stuffs are one thing, the quality of the last event another. Looking the videos I can’t see any real news except for citiWn devs which are getting informed about possibility of things. Also driving medical devices is for nothing new I have many of them. So I guess it would be nice if they rethink that and start to bring new stuffs and less bugs. Ahhh, Nas I restart dreaming of a perfect world.
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