Are conferences less important these days?

Dave Sherman dave at utcsrgv.UUCP
Mon Dec 12 04:09:45 AEST 1983


Are there other people out there who think the value of live UNIX
conferences has gone down somewhat with the advent of the net?
Oh, it's nice to meet old friends and get together with net
correspondents, and all that, but I tend to feel the net serves
all my UNIX information needs quite well.

I remember the Toronto summer UNIX conference in 1979, before there
was a net. I learned a tremendous amount that I hadn't known. But
nowadays I can peruse net.bugs.*, net.unix-wizards, net.lang.c and
net.micro at pick up every week information which is comparable to what
you get at a conference.

I'm not suggesting the conference shouldn't go on, or anything like
that. I think it serves a valuable function, especially for people
who are deeply into and concerned about the latest developments. But
for someone like me, who just needs to keep generally abreast of
where the state-of-the-art is and what's available, it's no longer
that important.

Comments?

Dave Sherman
Toronto
-- 
 {allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!dave



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