Conferences should find more practitioners vs preachers. EOM.
This struck a nerve (125 likes, 27 comments). The structural barriers are real: David Sandilands noted enterprises don’t allow their people to talk about what they’re working on, resulting in vendor-dominated lineups. Sasha Czarkowski captured it perfectly: “The practitioners are too busy practicing.”
Solutions exist: DevEx Connect focuses on practitioners and local stories. ProveIt! Conference is exclusively practitioner-focused. And the devopsdays model — which I know well — gets its value from open spaces where everyone participates.
The nuance: it’s not that vendor speakers can’t be good. It’s that the best conference talks come from people who’ve done the thing, not people selling the thing.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.