Michael Eaton

Hi, it’s Mike with Ubtastic again. I’m sitting down with Michael Eaton and we’re going to be talking about Kalamazoo X, the conference that he’s been running for the, or been co-organizing at the very least for the last five years. Hi Michael, can you, thanks for taking the time to sit down. Can you tell me a little bit about what is Kalamazoo X and how it got started? Yeah, thanks for having me. Kalamazoo X is a, we’ve started building it as the non-technology technology conference. Really what it boils down to is it’s all about soft skills. A few years ago, the user group I’m part of in Kalamazoo, Michigan was kicking around putting on a conference, but we didn’t want to have just another day.net or a co-camp. We wanted to do something different. And a good friend of mine, Josh Holmes, suggested that we, you know, think about something like soft skills or, you know, he pitched like two or three things and soft skills really kind of jumped out. We all noticed a distinct lack of soft skills talks at conferences and, but it’s important that people, especially developers, who are typically bad at the soft skills portion of things, have a conference like that. What is soft skills in this context? So soft skills, we do everything from, so I guess the original vision was things like design, architecture. You know, user experience, but it’s turned, it’s kind of turned over the last couple of years into more of, you know, a lot of interpersonal communications, a lot of things like that. You know, how to be a better person is what a lot of it comes down to. You know, someone described the conference this year as a profane set of TED talks. So we, you know, we try to get these, these, we limit, it’s a single track. It’s 30 minutes per talk. And I did that for a couple of reasons. The first year we had it planned, we were going to do a normal multi-track conference, you know, five tracks, you know, however many talks that is. And a few weeks out, we just didn’t have a lot of attendees. And I panicked. I totally freaked out. In fact, I reached out to a couple of really good friends of mine, one of them being Jim Holmes, who helps run Codemash. And I was just, he was one of the speakers for the first year. And I was panicked. I’m like, I don’t know what to do. And it was literally a last minute decision to make it a single track conference. Probably two weeks out, I emailed the speaker saying, okay, instead of an hour, you guys get 30 minutes. Well, in fact, the first year it was 20 minute talks. And the speakers, all but one, one of them just couldn’t justify, you know, a long drive to do a 20 minute talk. But all the other speakers, I think we had 14 or 15 talks the first year. They all jumped it. They jumped the chance. Because 20 minutes means you have to be on. And they all were. It was amazing. But, you know, that first year we did have some more, you know, some technical centric talks. Not super hardcore. No one, we’ve had two people show code and it was only snippets of code. Otherwise, it is very, it’s very touchy feely topics. You know, the first year we did have talks on leadership and those types of things. And that’s what I look for. In fact, we don’t actually do an open call for speakers. I handpick the speakers. I personally invite every one of them. And what I look for are keynote quality talks. Someone that can get up on stage for 30 minutes and nail it. And, you know, there are a lot of great speakers out there. But there are even fewer that can do that. And that’s what I look for. And we’ve had some amazing talks. And it’s, there have been some. I’ve even called some of the talks life changing. I mean, they’ve been just, you know, kind of like, wow, what was that? Because some of the speakers, in fact, anymore, there are some speakers I will just approach. And I will just say, I don’t care what you talk about. Just fit it within the overall framework of the conference. Which is soft skills. And you have 20 minutes. Here’s your theme. Go. Yep. Yep. And, you know, we have been at 30 minutes for the last couple of years. And it’s been just amazing. Because most of them will just get up there and just nail it. We have had some people, you know, because you’re not on all the time. And we have had some talks, you know, not go as well as they could have. But, you know, for the most part, you know, you get someone like a Leon Gersing. I’ve never seen him not be on. Yeah. And his talks are the ones that, to me, they always seem to, Leon has a way of talking to me during his talks. And some of them have just been like, wow, I needed that talk at that moment. He presented at SCNA and that was the overall, just the vibe of his, on Twitter, his post-talk. Just people being utterly floored by the emotional. And I think that’s something that’s, one of these conferences, I just wonder, you know, you mentioned earlier that you were recording some of them. But I think the in-person experience is very different. From the recorded, is this something that you’ve maybe felt as well that, you know, hearing these people speak live, it’s a much more personal venue. They can kind of address you directly and impact you and you get a more of an emotional. Absolutely. Actually, when I introduce, because I kind of emcee the day and I get up and I’ll introduce each of the speakers. And I always say it’s a very selfish event for me because these are people I want to see. And most of them are really good friends. You know, Leon and Joe O’Brien and Jim Holmes and, you know, I can’t name them all. But there have been just some amazing speakers. And it’s just such a joy to sit there and just let them do their thing. Right. It’s amazing. And I did, you know, we have had people say, well, just release all the videos. This was the first year we actually were able to record them all. We had logistical issues in the previous year. It just didn’t work out. Recording a conference, even if it’s single track, is still hard. And this year we came close and there were still some issues. But, you know, part of my thing is I want people to show up because it is such a different experience. You know, the audience is so much more in tune with what’s going on. And it’s, you know, you have to be there. I mean, yeah, we have released some videos. They’re out on Vimeo, which can be reached through. Our website, kalamazoox.org. And we’re going to release more. But in the end, you know, I’m doing this to help drive people to come next year. Because, you know, next year is going to be year five. And, you know, this year was as perfect as it could have been. And next year we’re going to try to top it. And we’ve got some, we’ve got a couple speakers lined up. In fact, I’ve been soliciting some input from some past attendees just to ask them, you know, what have we done? What have we done wrong? What have we done right? What do you want to see? And it’s been just a blast. It’s a great conference. The people that have been, have come to the conference get it. And they’re, you know, people have said it’s one of their favorite conferences to come to. It’s relatively small. And it is in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is kind of out of the way. But you know what? We’ve had people come from Chicago. We’ve had people come from as far away as Louisville. And, you know, we’ve flown speakers. And from Colorado, we flew a speaker from Colorado. But we have had people drive. We had people fly in from different places to come to the conference. Now, it seems to me like I’m starting to see kind of a little bit of a theme with community conferences. It’s starting to evolve with more of this, like you said, soft content. But kind of contrasting that to hard tech conference. Some people say, oh, I go to a conference. I want to hear about the latest and greatest frameworks and techniques and all that stuff. But going to a conference like what you’re describing, Kalamazoo X, and then the certain talks that happen even at Windy City Rails with Steve Klabnick talking about philosophy for software development. And then Leon at SCNA talking about his keeping software weird. And then what you’re talking about at Kalamazoo, it almost feels like there’s starting to be a little bit of a… A trend that people are… You know, we get enough tech at work and we get enough tech through normal means. But getting that human interaction, getting motivated in a positive way, not just, hey, rah, rah, rah. But like trying to reach to an emotional core for why we do what we do and why we’re passionate about it. I mean, is that… Have you been ever… Anybody complained about, hey, why is it more like… Latest and greatest tech or from Microsoft or… Yeah, our after event survey, we get that a lot. And I stress about it. I really do. I stress about that. In fact, the email I sent out to a couple of people today saying, you know, should we change the focus? So let me just take a quick step back. So the name Kalamazoo X Conference was originally our code name. We honestly couldn’t think of a good name. You know, calling it the Kalamazoo Soft Skills Conference. Yeah. It didn’t work. And so we kept calling it in our emails to the Kalamazoo X Conference. And so the first year we decided, you know what, let’s go with it. And we could be geeks and say, you know, this year X equals soft skills. And maybe next year X will equal whatever. But the soft skills thing just kind of stuck. And I do get that from people. You know, hey, why don’t you bring in some tech talks? And the funny thing is the years that I’ve tried to bring in some tech talks, they have been… They have been… The lower rated talks of the day. People have preferred the full-on soft skills talks versus, you know, things a designer should know or things a developer should know. Even though the talks were great, they just didn’t resonate with the audience like the soft skills ones did. That’s the thing with the soft skills is it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Microsoft developer or a web developer or a mobile developer. Or a developer at all. Or a developer at all. Yeah, exactly. You can just be a person. Right. We actually had people this year say that next year they’re going to bring their spouses. Who are not devs. And we… Kalamazoo is a college town. So we do try to bring… Get in some students too. And, you know, my wife comes every year. My kids have been there. I mean, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s… That’s where we’re trying to struggle a little bit with, you know, calling it the No Technology Technology Conference. Because… You know, anybody can come. And that’s kind of the angle we’re going to start shooting for is, you know what? It doesn’t matter what field you’re in. You can learn from this. I mean, seriously, you listen to a Leon talk, his U talk, or his going gonzo talk, or any of them. Even if there is a little bit of tech in it, you’re going to get something out of it. You know, Joe O’Brien’s people patterns. Everybody could get something out of that. I don’t care what field you’re in. You know, Tim Wingfield did a talk this year on… Your career is yours. You know, we had Elizabeth Naramore do one on dealing with difficult people. These are not… These are not just for developers at all. Yeah, so it’s like kind of a developer maybe bend or theme for the day. But any person could come to this conference and still get some value out of it. Right. And I think, you know, we try to think of it that way because we are devs. Right? The first year of marketing, the first couple years of marketing, was word of mouth through Twitter. And that was, who are we marketing to? Our friends on Twitter who are almost all devs. You know, this year we’re… You know, I’m trying to make a little more of it on Facebook and try to get people pulled in that way to see what it’s about. We’ve got the videos that have been released. I’m trying to think. You know, we’ve got Elizabeth’s out there, Leon’s, Tim’s. None of them are like hardcore tech. So, you know, I would certainly recommend anybody watch those. Even, I mean, Justin. Justin Searles talks about the Mythical Team Month, which is a little geeky, a little more technical. But still, I mean, it’s all good soft skills, people-related communication-type stuff that everyone can use. Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down and talk about KalamazooX. Sounds like it’s a really exciting conference. And I will have it. I will be sure to post this before the conference. Okay. Thank you very much.