Developer Community And Conference Conversations: Mike Hall Interviews Kresten Thorup

Developer Community And Conference Conversations: Mike Hall Interviews Kresten Thorup

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🚀 Discover the journey of GOTO Conference from a small company's internal learning event to a global developer conference. Learn how staying ahead of trends and building personal connections are key to the success of any tech conference. Don't miss this! #GOTOConference #TechIndustry #DeveloperCommunity 🌐💻
The Interviewer

Mike Hall

Interviewer, UGtastic

The Guest

Kresten Thorup

developer community and conference conversations

The Conversation

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, it's Mike again with UGtastic. I'm still here today at GOTO Conference 2013 here in Chicago. I'm sitting down with one of the lead organizers, Creston Thorup. He is one of the leads here and he hasn't kicked me out yet so we're doing pretty good. Thank you for sitting down with me, Creston. Thanks for having me. I interviewed David Benaro when he was, if I said that correctly, anyway, I interviewed David when he was first here scouting out Chicago as a possible place for GOTO Conference. Well obviously a lot has happened between then and us sitting here today. Can you tell me a little bit about maybe some of the backstory about how the decision was to finally come here to Chicago? How did you make that decision? And then even more, how did you get involved in running GOTO Conference?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Yeah, I'd rather start with the last question.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Because we, so my company truck work that organizes these things have been doing conferences for many years. And we really started it as, you know, initially it was, it was basically a way to do our own continuous lifelong development learning experience and of course sharing that with our local community, which made it possible. So you imagine a little small company in a far way country that doesn't really, that can't really afford to send our employees to some fancy conference abroad. And actually back then there wasn't really that many good conferences. It was, I mean, this kind of industry, petitioner's conference that weren't that many. It was mostly either, either very academic conferences or, or these trade showy things, which were very like marketing. Yeah, here's how you use our products. So 15 years ago, the, the word really no conferences in this, in this middle, uh, in this middle space. Um, and that's what really the conference we wanted to, to go to ourselves. Um, and then after that, we didn't want to put all our employees on an airplane and find them to the U. S. or some other place where there was a conference like this. So we, so we figured we better make our own conference.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. Um, was that called go to or was it a different conference?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Well, the very first year it was called Scandinavian Java technology conference or something obscure like that. And then pretty quickly we, um, transitioned into calling it JAU, J-A-O-O.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Uh, because this was, most of what we did back then was Java and we were like a Java, uh, Java shop. And so kind of focused around the, uh, kind of the object revolution, uh, really happened in, in the mid nineties. Uh, people were really starting to use object-oriented programming big time.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
And Java, of course, was the big thing that pushed this. So, so J-O-O, JAU was, um, was a good name at that point. Sounds like there's a few pronunciations even here. Cause I've heard it called YAU, then you said JAU and JAU. Yeah, there's lots of, you know, we, when we opened up in Australia, uh, we also, back then it was called, uh, also JAU.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, and the Australians couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. So, so down there it was then later renamed to YAU, Y-O-W. Oh, okay. Um, this is really just a different spelling left out. Yeah, yeah. Um, and also more generic. Uh, and about the same time we decided, uh, to go with the, the name GoTo as, as a more generic, uh, well, and also has a nice, uh, play on GoToChicago. You know, GoTo wherever. Wherever, yeah. And it, and it makes me the GoTo guy.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Oh, you are the GoTo guy.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Or whatever.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
So, um, so what I find really, uh, conferences is, is it's a great way to meet people, you know, um, organizing conferences, uh, it's fun. It's a great way to meet people in a, in a positive, uh, vibe.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Uh, both, uh, customers, uh, business partners, uh, um, um, because you meet in this kind of learning environment where, where things are new and exciting, um. Seeing things you don't necessarily work on.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Exactly.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
You see things you don't necessarily work on is, um, it's, it's, it's a good way to kind of broaden your scope and be on, be on top of things.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
So, um, so, um, in, in, in many ways, it's, uh, there's so many positive things about it. It keeps, I mean, being the organizer, of course, uh, we, we put a lot of effort into figuring out what is, uh, the, what are new trends, what are interesting trends. It, it provides an excellent way to meet new people, uh, and, and of course, it's a challenge to continue to, to be, to be on top of something.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
So that's the, the big challenge in, in driving conferences like this is to, you know, we always have to be, like, a couple of years ahead of everybody else.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. How do you stay ahead of the pack in terms of what's, what's news and what, what's happening?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
And of course, you can't do that yourself.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Uh, so, um, so it's a matter of figuring out how to, how to make other people help you figure out what, what is the next big thing or what's, what, what's going on. Well, it sounds like there's a challenge because one of the things I noticed that's unique is you invite speakers. Other conferences will do open calls for speakers. And it sounds like it might actually be more burdensome to have to invite because you have to figure out, okay, you have to really de-knowledge about who's, who and what, and what they know in different domains. That's right.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
I mean, it's, it's, in that sense, it's very much, it's, it's quite a lot top-down conference, right?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
So we have every, uh, once a year we have a meeting where, um, where we bring together kind of an advisory board or program committee, uh, for, for all our conferences. Um, so we have, like, different people coming every year, but typically we'll meet between, between eight and ten people, um, over a weekend. Um, and basically just brainstorm on new topics. And the people we bring there are, you know, speakers that have been to our conferences for some years. And then that kind of forms, uh, a pool of ideas or topics and speakers that we can, we can draw from, um, over the next year. So you, you lean on a lot of, you've built a conference and then you start to build up a network and then you start to tap that own network to find out, hey, what are you guys interested in? And let's, let's curate a nice list of speakers and topics. Yes. So, um, so of course that's, uh, you have to kind of renew that. You have to, uh, figure out a way to, you know, not always invite the same people to organize that without offending the ones that don't get to go.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Uh, and, um, at the same time keep some continuity so that, you know, there's kind of a shared understanding of the level, uh, the angles we want to push. And we, and we tend to, you know, really like, uh, uh, like deep technical things, uh, things that have, uh, like historical root and value. We often bring in like, um, old guys that invented stuff many years ago, uh, historical perspectives, um, uh, practical applications, but it's, yeah, so it's, there's a lot of different things that kind of weigh in, uh, on, on, on that kind of decision making. Um, so, but yeah, it's, uh, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's surprisingly challenging to, to, to keep pushing the envelope, right? Uh, and to keep finding, uh, finding interesting stuff. But of course, it's, it's a lot of fun to be in the middle of a game like that also. And also, I, I think it's funny when you mentioned that you wanted to have a conference that satisfied what you wanted from a conference. You didn't want to have to ship people off overseas to be able to attend a conference. Now you have a company that runs conferences and you're shipping those people overseas to run the conference. Hey, is, it was, uh, is that been like a, did it, has this, has this taken off in a way you didn't expect it? I mean, has a couple of things about running conferences. One is, um, you know, the, the, the, the really good speakers, uh, you know, they have something interesting to say and they typically go more than one place to say it, right?
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
So, you know, we, we find some really good speaker, they would, and they put a lot of effort into doing a nice presentation. Um, they would most likely want to go in different places and give the same presentation or similar presentations.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Um, and, uh, you know, so why not those other presentations also happening on, on one of our conferences? Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
I mean, that kind of makes sense. Um, uh, the other thing is the audience for conferences, that's what we find, tend to be, uh, fairly local. Uh, the typical would see, um, like between 60, at least 60%, an order of 60%, of course it varies, uh, but an order of 60% local attendees.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, and that's, of course, because it's, it's much, uh, less expensive and more flexible to go to a conference near to where you live.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, So, um, you can go home and sleep at night. If your employer suddenly needs to, you can get back, you can get back, uh, fix an emergency. It's not the same as youth commitment. It's not, you know, travel and hotel and all kinds of things, uh, going on top. So, um, so attendees tend to go to their local conferences.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, so, uh, so that was, then there's also, it's kind of an economy of scale and, uh, in running more than one conference because, uh, to turn it into a professional organization, you need, you need work to do around the year.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
If you only, only run one event, uh, a year, maybe that's, um, that's not enough work for, for somebody to do all year, or, uh, at least not, you know, because when you actually run the conference, you need, I don't know, five people to run a conference.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Uh, to organize it and like, like here, I think we're in that order of number two people. Um, but you can't keep five people busy for an entire year to, to the conference. So you, so it makes sense to have more conference. So you kind of have a professional team that does that well.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
You have a core team that goes and runs all the conferences across?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Yes.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
And so, so you have, what, a central office somewhere and they work from there and then they just travel around as conferences occur or how does, how does that planning happen?
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
How did, how do you?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Well, we have, well, we have a number of offices, um, and typically, you know, we have people working in, in different offices that are, that are part of the two. So we have, um, uh, there's people in, uh, in, in the Aarhus, Denmark office.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Uh, London, Amsterdam, Zurich, uh, and in San Francisco that are kind of part of the conference team and, um, and Poland also. Uh, and they, you know, travel to, they all, they don't all go to all the conferences.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Because there's so many going on. If you see our list, there's, yeah, you're all over the globe. We're all over the globe. We have, I don't know, an order of 10 large conferences like this a year. And then, um, and many like one day events of various kinds. We also, have a go to nights.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
There, there's lots of, like, tech nights, go to nights. Uh, but there's also one day, one day conferences on specific topics. Kind of similar to a track at one of our conferences. Oh, okay. Like one day conferences. We, in Europe, we're doing these no SQL days. It's just a single day with, like, various no SQL topics. Single, single track, smaller conference. Smaller conferences. And we also, um, use the organization to run conferences for other companies. Like, we're, uh, we've been doing, uh, we've been doing some of the Spring Source conferences, uh, the Neo4j, um, new technologies conferences.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh, so you work with some specific technology vendors to help run their conferences?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
So you, you have, and this is more of a question, you know, it sounds like a statement.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
You, so you have, uh, GoToComp, but also Triforce does some basically conference organization?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Yes. As a, like, as a business.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
So we also do that. And then, and then there's a number of different brands, which really, they, they different, really reflect different partnerships that we're doing. Uh, so we also, uh, part of the QCon conferences, uh, that we're doing with, uh, InfoQ. Uh, so that's kind of a partnership with them. Uh, we're involved with, um, um, Dave Thomas is at the LA conferences.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, so there's a number of different things going on. And that, that really means that we can keep a professional organization from running conferences. Um, you know. So you have things just going on all the time with conferences. This is, you know, that a lot of times when we look at a conference, we're thinking, oh, it's just a once a year thing, but really when there's a company like yours behind it, that's kind of just running, you're, you're more like an events company than, you know, just. Well, but it's, and yeah, well, conferences is, um, is the lesser part of our business.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
You know, and, and, and, you know, what I think part of what makes our conferences unique, uh, I think is that, um, is that we're really a software company and, and we, you know, the, what drives us, uh, to the topics and, and to the content in general is what we would like to see as, as a software company.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, so my, my day job is, uh, as a CTL in the software shop. Oh, okay. 300, we have 300 people, uh, and there's, there's going to be, I don't know, 300, there's 10, 15 doing conference organization.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, that was what I was, uh, one of the things I was going to ask is when you first started saying, oh, I want to launch this conference to satisfy, um, vision of what a conference should be, did this eventually replace your previous business focus, but it sounds like it, it hasn't. No, no, this is a venture that you're on, not, this isn't replaced the original business. No, it's a, it's a, it's a great way being a software company to continuously renew our not knowledge. And it means, it really means that we can, we can, as a software business, we can continue to be on top of things and do the newest things. Um, we're just like we were early with Java and, but that was just kind of predated, uh, the conference. We've, you know, a number of times been, uh, you know, been fortunate because of this to be part of new things happening. Um, so we, uh, it's a constant source of, of inspiration and new business opportunities and new technologies that we can, you know, we can see and evaluate, uh, and, and sell to our customers.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, so, um, so it gives us a good footing, uh, kind of high profile technology, um, software shop. Interesting. So this is, uh, this is definitely one of those, uh, don't quit your day job kind of things. You, you, you're doing this kind of on the side to help support and, and, and do some interesting stuff, but you kept the core focus of the business and this isn't, it built to expose what your company is and then also satisfy some of your own training needs. Yeah, we actually don't, we, we, we're quite careful not, not promoting Trifork, the company, at, at our conferences.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Because you don't want to turn this into a Trifork world, right?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, because that would, that would make it sound like Java, Java world or whatever, uh, like, like a marketing, marketing-like thing, which is, you know, much more indirect aspect of the conference. I mean, the, the core focus once you're at a conference, of course, is, you know, transferring interesting knowledge from the speakers, uh, to the attendees and, and, and, you know, you know, when you run a, um, high quality conference, you also tend to, uh, I often hear this from the speakers, that, that, uh, that the kind of attendant, attendees that are attracted to these conferences also tend to be high quality. So they really enjoy their interaction, um, with attendees and the questions and, you know, the stories and the issues and whatnot that, that attendees have.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
So this is good for, for speakers as well as the attendees?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Of course. Um, I mean, um, a good quality conference is one where the speakers want to go to see the sessions.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. And to interact with the people that are at the conference, right? Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Yeah, it's always a tiny thing, whether they bolt after the session or they stay and they, they talk and hang out and get to know everybody. Yeah, you'll often see this at, at, at, at many other conferences that the speakers will tend to fly in just for the talk and then they're, they're off again or they'll go to the speaker's lounge. I don't know, here at our conferences we explicitly don't have speaker's lounge. Uh, so we don't want this, the speakers to kind of escape into their little special area where it's, where it's like a VIP area or something like that. Uh, we want them to be, be visible and part of the, part of the event. And all that champagne and caviar is really expensive, so. Well, we do have, we do typically have like a speaker's dinner or, you know, with, um, where we typically invite, um, you know, also typically we have volunteers, uh, see us students or user group participants or whatnot who want to come help. Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's always good to have some extra hands.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
At a conference like this, checking badges or helping with running errands or various things at the conference. Um, yeah. And one thing is, is people that are going to be watching this who, you know, run their own smaller conferences or, or just interested in how things go. And I, and myself even included, you know, I remember when Dave came and he was just kind of scouting out Chicago, getting to know the community, talking to lots of people. Um, but I am curious to some of the decision, not, not just for Chicago, but what is, what is some of the, how do you decide on and evaluate a, uh, a location, uh, and then make a final decision that, yeah, that's a place we want to try to be hosting a conference at.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Or is that a trade secret?
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
There's no special secret in that. And, and, and it's not, it's not very scientific at all. I mean, typically it's, uh, it, we, we get requests to run our conferences everywhere. Um, uh, so typically it's, uh, it's a matter of like personal relationships. Uh, typically we know people in that area. Uh, we, um, or we like the area. We, we want to go there ourselves.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Uh, so there's all kinds of subjective matters also, but of course a strong, um, user group, group community. One of the things is we, we're not, we're not actually very good at marketing these things.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, and, and like regular marketing is very expensive. So we tend to run the marketing by, you know, kind of lean, very lean means and, um, and indirectly via user groups and running our go-to nights and, and these kind of community-like efforts. Um, so having something like strong use of local user groups to, to, uh, to help us, um, uh, bring out the message is really valuable. Uh, so that's definitely important when, when selecting a location, whether we, we think that, um, there's somebody there that can help us bring out the message and get, um, kind of, uh, get the message to the potential attendees. So if I'm in a city and I'm looking at this video, and I'm like, oh, I, you know, I think my city has, has some unique value that would be great to host a go-to conference. How, how could somebody go about getting in contact with, with somebody from, from the go-to conference and talking with them and figuring those things out? Well, let's see, we're typically easy to find, you know, we're all, we're all over, all over the world in our conferences, right? Uh, so, I mean, everybody welcomes a common approach.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
Um, I mean, there's nothing, uh, nothing special about that.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
There's no specific, like, if you'd like to host a go-to conference, this is the forum and you have to have this and this and this and this qualifications. Um, no, but I mean, really, uh, you know, no, I mean, that's, um, that's all very subjective and, uh, you know, comes from talking, uh, knowing people and, and, and everybody's welcome to ask this. And, you know, just a final question is, having run so many conferences, what, is there any advice you'd have for somebody who's running a conference, maybe a two to three hundred person conference, for things that they should think about or be aware of that maybe were surprising when you first ran a conference that you've learned, has there been any particular things that might stick out in your mind, is like, this was something I didn't expect, but over the years, doing X, Y, or Z is, is really improve the quality of the conference, or?
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
One particular thing? Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
It's difficult, uh, I think, uh, it's important to, uh, it's important to make it worthwhile for, I mean, think of this, think of the speakers, maybe, I mean, uh, it's important to make it a fun thing to go to for the speakers, too. I think, I think that's, if there's one thing, one piece of advice, right, is, of course, it's important, and the conference is not run for the speakers, right, right, but, but, but that the speakers want to come there and enjoy being there, uh, do something for the speakers, um, and think about that. So, I think that's important, that's important, because that's, like, the seed, that, that's, like, the, the core that drives all the other good effects. Okay, um, so if you take care of your speakers, you're usually going to be having a higher quality conference and bringing speakers back year after year.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Exactly.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
It's like, you want to be in the positive rumor mill of, kind of, the speakers tend to know each other, uh, you know, across conferences, so you want to have, you know, a good rumor going that, oh, that's the conference. Yeah, that's the one to go to.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Kresten Thorup developer community and conference conversations
All right.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down, Creston. Oh, you're welcome. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you letting me do the interviews here, too. You're welcome. Thanks. Thank you.