Conference Report: Goatmire Elixir 2025

Underjord is an artisanal consultancy doing consulting in Elixir, Nerves with an accidental speciality in marketing and outreach. If you like the writing you should really try the pro version.

The quiet was unsettling. The lack of concrete things to do was stressful. Me and my wife had been fretting and flitting around the house for most of the day making sure everything was staged, that we had the various prints, checklists were ready, lots of bags and boxes were packed. The event wasn’t even starting today, not even fully tomorrow. The quiet after intense preparation.

Snap to today. The event has now happened. Results are in. I am very satisfied. This is my conference report, as the organizer. Because of my deep level of involvement it may end up being quite a long post.

Conception

I can’t put a date to how long we’ve prepared for the conference. But about 6 months at increasing intensity. I picked up the bug of wanting to run an event when I visited Gig City Elixir in Chattanooga in May 2024. All credit to Maggie and Bruce Tate for that, they have a special thing going. A few things really made it a brain bug back then. Todd Resudek offered that I could freely use the NervesConf name to run an EU event. Very kind and I definitely want to gather the EU Nerves community. And when I chatted with folks about running something in Sweden they seemed optimistic. Andrea Leopardi of Elixir core team fame confirmed himself as my first speaker then and there. In the middle of Rock City.

Bruce and Maggie Tate being lovely hosts during my trip to Chattanooga. They hosted me in their home!

Rock City in Chattanooga

It probably took most shape during the first quarter of this year (2025). The name, sourced from a historic name for Varberg, Getakärr, can be fairly translated to Goatmire. It was distinctive. In fact I think I got about 20 minutes of extra air time in the Thinking Elixir podcast just on the name. I bet it lived rent-free in many people’s heads. My particular sense of humor would be a guiding blight throughout the process.

There were a few things that confirmed it for us. Talking to some of the people around the Varberg tech hub Techarenan was encouraging. They (thanks Sara!) put me in touch with the public sector commerce folks and they were very enthusiastic and gave me a warm introduction to Sparbanksstiftelsen. This is a foundation that owns Varbergs Sparbank, the local bank. They reinvest in the local area and after some conversation we sent a suggestion, a rough budget and we applied for a stipend.

It took a minute to confirm but the year was very young when we got our base funding from them confirmed. Then we started spinning up the non-profit registration. Gathered recommendations for venues and talked to them. In the end landing on Varbergs Teater, the theater where me and my wife married. We chose it because it was the most interesting and the most flexible to custom ideas and is still smack in the center of town. There are many good venues in this little city since it is a swedish tourist-destination but I wanted something with a lot of character and I knew the theater could deliver.

The lovely Varbergs Teater. Picture provided by Varbergs Teater.

Beach in Varberg. Credit Natalie Greppi for Varbergs Kommun.

Town of Varberg. credit Natalie Greppi for Varbergs Kommun.

Some basic funding and a venue meant we had a starting point.

Event architecture

One day NervesConf EU for IoT with Elixir and two days Goatmire Elixir for regular Elixir. That’s the model of Gig City, so I yoinked it. Not reinventing the wheel in terms of structure. I grabbed the scheduling from Code BEAM Europe as well. And you’ll see on speaker’s day, I nabbed a concept from Öredev. I suppose this makes me a great artist. I hear they steal.

I wanted to make the event distinct. I don’t think we actually gave a ton of guidance to speakers towards that. The most relevant bit from the CFP was:

“We will not be taking on talks that are “Update on project X” but are fine with talks that involve new features and either how they were built or what they allowed you to do. Avoid presenting a changelog. Teach something, tell a story, blow some minds or show your work.”

I wanted to do wild things but I’m also new at making events and didn’t want to make my first time completely impossible. I didn’t push for people to take exceptionally bold swings in the CFP but in every conversation I ended up encouraging the more interesting choice at every turn. And there were a lot of conversations.

Importantly I’d heard the great things people had to say about EMPEX and The Big Elixir. A single track conference in a great venue will be a very focused affair. I had some faith that we could deliver something similar though we are decidedly not New Orleans or New York levels of cool. But the town punches above its weight.

3 days, the first probably smaller, single track. That’s the rough of it.

The crew was me, my wife and our then-employee Tomie. Tomie has about 10-15 years of event planning experience and helped get us started well but they would then leave Underjord to do great work over at Entryfy an awesome client of ours (with our whole-hearted, mildly heart-broken support). Entryfy would also end up sponsoring the event. We brought in a new acquaintance. Helene Mattisson, wife of swedish Elixir old-timer Johan Mattisson. She helped us stay secure in the knowledge that we weren’t missing crucial know-how and details. Like having insurance. She is a gem, and available to contract for event work.

Building it up

I had a single speaker (thanks Andrea!) so I started reaching out to my network to pin people down. The Nerves core team for NervesConf, good collaborators for more Nerves talks. Some solid names for the Elixir days of the event. Added myself for padding, since I’m probably the most visible Elixir dev in Sweden.

The procedure for getting sponsors was similar. Tap my network, both the local one in Varberg and the one in I have in Elixir. My sponsor journey went pretty well overall. I had a late plot twist of a sponsor pulling out shortly before payment was due but someone picked up the mantle quickly after (thanks Alembic!).

At some point I launched the waiting list. We estimated we could deal with 150 people. The waiting list climbed to 90 people very quickly. Over time it drifted up to 200 before we launched tickets. If there is something I’ve worked up a muscle for in the last 7-8 years it is “marketing”. That is, I am already actively posting on socials. I have a newsletter. I have a podcast. I know other people with podcasts. I get around.

Excitement was building way better and faster than I had dared hope. I was fully ready to run the conference at 90 people.

The appetite for a community-run less-commercial Elixir event was definitely there and another one popped up essentially in parallel with AlchemyConf in Braga, Portugal. But they were in March, we were targeting September. I had already decided on the theater when they announced their own (larger, fancier) theater. They were first on using Discord as a conference app though. I jacked that from them.

Over time design, ideas and concepts started to crystallize. The pre-CFP line-up looked great. The CFP made it fantastic. I had great help from the program committee I recruited (thanks Sophie, Rebecca and Cornelia!). The event gained steam. And speakers kept getting back to me with weird (awesome) ideas and requests which pleased me to no end. Gus Workman and I conspired to do something with hardware. He did all the work, I found the money. Supported by old compatriots Tigris.

The day before the day before

The emptiness was heavy. I felt like I had missed something. Probably everything.

The Discord was popping with people travelling, making board game plans and announcing their arrivals to the swedish west coast. Lots of cute observations about the strangeness of various parts of Sweden as people traversed it. I was on high revs and completely idle. Thankfully I had an errand I could run. It was both practical and an excuse for me to say hi to some people. We literally didn’t have more we could do at this point. Very close to “go time” but many hours until we could pull any triggers.

I shoved a bunch of Nerves hardware into the car and drove into the city (I live in the countryside). I would stash it in Gus' room until he arrived and could deal with it (oh, how he would have to deal with it …). Three boxes of devices with less-than-good 3D-printed cases and one full box of actually good 3D printed cases. For 200 devices in total.

Parking outside the speaker hotel, Gästis, I wrangled boxes in there and went to the reception desk. As I waited a bit for the receptionist I spotted a group of 6 or 7 familiar faces. From memory it was Frank Hunleth, Rebecca Le, Jonatan Männchen, Pascal C, Srinivas Ganti and Dan Janowski. Pascal was the only new acquaintance and he was subsequently everywhere. They helped me stash the boxes in Gus' room and I had already cleared permission with Stina (my wife) to grab dinner in town with people. So we acquired a Josh Price and a Sam Aaron at minimum before we sauntered out to find some swedish-style pizza for the weary travelers.

I went home shortly after the pizza, more people accrued as we ate. I got to say hi to Flora and Tom Petterson, just in from New Orleans. We tee-hee’d in secret about the massive part they still had to play in making the event memorable.

Setup & Speaker’s Day

The day before the conference started was planned for setup. We had access to the venue from 12-16 to rig stuff. Then we had plans with the speakers of the event from 16 into the evening. Me and my wife absolutely stuffed the car with stuff, including the plywood goat, drove into town. Parked at the venue and went for food.

The goat. A statement art piece by David Qvarnström. All event photo by Petter Boström.

Srinivas was a champ who showed up immediately for the prep though he wasn’t even originally a volunteer. He just wanted to help and that he did. After a while Flora and Tom rolled in and started the wildest testing for their talk. We’ll cover what they did later.

Zach Daniel showed up to test his talk which required some special effects. A few others also came to test, help and so on. Badges, lanyards and shirts were prepped, thoroughly optimized by Dan J, executed by Helene and Srinivas. Plans were made. Roll-ups placed. We were pretty much ready.

An extra wifi-network was added for Nerves-devices. Would it be sufficient? Of course not. It never is.

Essentially, setup went super. The tech, Tobias is an absolute mensch. What a solid calming presence, absolute pro. I also can’t recommend dealing with a theater enough. Where a conference hotel venue will go “You want to do WHAT?” a venue like this will go “Typical thursday, sounds good. Need lights or smoke with that?”. They are used to doing the difficult thing.

Right before 16 o' clock me and Stina left the venue to get drinks and snacks to Kallbadhuset (The Cold Bath House) where the first speaker social event was. Sauna and a swim in the ocean, rince and repeat. Good way to break the ice. Completely stolen from the Öredev conference who do the same thing in Malmö. People are various level of comfortable, makes for fun conversation and it was all optional. Good view. Nice old place. Not everyone attended this but it was a good time and a good start. Then we sauntered over to the restaurant, NAMI. Japanese fusion tapas. Great place.

Kallbadhuset, photo credit Natalie Greppi.

Also photo credit Natalie Greppi.

I was already very happy. Seeing some of my best community friends drift around my town. Getting to be their curator and having them come to the experiences I chose, definitely brought a smile to my lips. Watching the speakers gather, most of who I already know from the community. What a feeling. With some extra friends included we were around 36 people for dinner. Food was great. People had a great time connecting, reconnecting and so on. Then some of us drifted over to the bar for a bit.

That was a slight mistake on my part.

Day 1: NervesConf EU

I did end up staying out a bit longer and having a few more drinks than I had planned so I was definitely not at optimal energy when I dragged myself out of my hotel room bed around 6.15 in the morning. We slept in the hotel to not have the travel time and the kids were with my in-laws which was a life-saver. Sleeping through the night without bonus dialogue was a big win.

Get into outfit #1, trashy, my most worn metal shirt, the authentically worn-through jeans, studded belt, keychain, Converse All-Star, red plaid shirt. Throwback to my teens. Underscoring the informality of the event. Breakfast at hotel. Get to venue, setup from 7-8, doors at 8, seating area open from 8.30. Start at 9.

Trash outfit. Hair was accidentally messy but I suppose it fits.

Observe the holy jeans.

Great start. It starts on this video. Then Marc Lainez is off and delivering a talk on The Nerves Car project. An audacious electric mod to a WV Polo using a variety of Nissa Leaf, Tesla and other parts. Brains with Nerves, UI with Flutter and tons more interesting detail. I was probably still mildly hung over but at some point I just forgot about that. If you are curious they have shared a lot of detail on it.

All talks were recorded and the absolute majority will be released.

Then we are off. I won’t go blow by blow. I loved so many of the talks and I think everyone put their best foot forward. I’m very pleased that my starting strategy worked. Cold open on a talk. The initial keynote speaker is the welcome. The event is not about the event, it is about the contents of the event, talks and people. As the MC I spoke after. Kicking off the event when it was already in full swing. Having earned some of the space to talk about sponsors and what the logistics of the day look like.

Later in the day Gus Workman gave his talk. And every attendee in the audience had one of his Wisteria devices, aka. The Name Badge. A special eInk board based on his Trellis design. We hadn’t gotten the batteries yet but if you plugged it in to USB-C power, it totally worked. He told the story of the device, pretty awesome. The project of getting these devices was real tight to deadlines and Gus pulled an enormous workload (electronic, sourcing, software, manufacturer relations, all him) to do it (on his own volition). May it bring him great business.

Wisteria, the name badge.

By Gus Workman, Protolux Electronics.

Gus fixing and hacking on boards with a crew.

If there was one thing that didn’t go at all as planned it was the badge hack session during this day. It was fine. We covered the state of things, Gus shared more about how it worked. But it was planned to be more workshop and hacking. It didn’t turn out that way because we hadn’t had enough stuff prepared. It was the most shit-show thing of the entire day and it was .. fine. Not very shit at all.

I also tried not to close on logistics. “Don’t open or close on logistics.” is one of my big takeaways from The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. Love that book. During this day I did say a few words to wrap up the day. This was just after the last speaker, Damir Batanovic, had impressed us thoroughly with his drone and video shenanigans, but I had handled the end logistics before he spoke.

MC:ing felt smooth enough. I even got a chant going for Frank Hunleth and got to introduce him as if he were a pro fighter. I had a really fun time facilitating, informing, introducing throughout the days. I got really comfortable and we had few issues, just dealing with the occasional HDMI issue.

Damir Batinovic flying one of his drones.

Damir showing the camera feed.

Frank and the golden rules of restarts.

Feedback from the first day was extremely positive. I went to my hotel room, I showered, I tried to rest. I failed. I revised MC notes to update them with some missing details for the next days. I had food alone, in quiet. Then I went to the bar for a little bit, got to hang with the people and catch the good mood. I had a single beer and was in bed by eleven. I slept well and was in good shape the next day.

Day 2: Goatmire Elixir starts

Outfit. Very fancy. Cravat, waistcoat, blazer styled like old furniture. This time to show people that we are taking it up a notch. Pack extra outfit and lots of gear because this is the weird start. I have a part to play. Breakfast. At the venue from 7.10 probably. Attendees get in at 8. We kick off at 9.

Fancy outfit 1.

In the green room (another perk of operating in a theater) activity is frantic and fun. Zach Daniel has tapped me, Sasa Juric, Shannon and Parker Selbert into speaking roles in his keynote. And then on top of that a whole Ash ensemble of Josh Price, Rebecca Le, James Harton and Barnabas Jovanovics. We are all outfitting ourselves. This talk is weird.

Sam Aaron was jamming introductory music as attendees filtered in and got settled. When he walked off stage the intro stinger played. This was my attempt at capturing the sense of Goatmire Elixir in my head. I had asked speakers for short clips to include. They obliged and I cut this together. Speakers had seen it before the event. Attendees came in cold.

Cue Zach. I’ll spoil the talk a little bit. He does not actually announce a new, real, Ash library. But he does break the timeline. One after another we bring him the stories of broken timelines related to the Elixir ecosystem.

It was a whole thing.

Zach, guilty of the whole thing.

mix new solar_system

Ash team assembled!

Future me.

It was also another cold open. I end up needing to MC in my future post-apocalyptic time traveler kit for a bit as I kick off the day and lead us into the next thing. Then I hurry off to get fancy again.

From the day before I have the feeling down for how talks go for me as the organizer. I start off on stage introducing the speaker, I make sure they get rolling and possibly help with HDMI or stalling for time. Once rolling, I leave and go check on things and let some of the nervous energy that I’m made out of simmer out by walking around a lot. Rinse and repeat.

Many great talks through the day. The sense of excitement and fun among the attendees was fantastic. We eventually received the Wisteria batteries and handed those out. The devices were not just for NervesConf. Everyone got one. The mood was stellar. Catering did well, coffee was available, people were generally not hungry.

Towards the end I gave a few notes, talked a bit of logistics. And then handed things off to Sasa Juric for the last iteration of the year of the talk he has been touring that has not yet been released on video. Some say we got the best version. Tell Me A Story.

Sasa Juric - Tell Me A Story

Feat. the Skull

It was sublime. I was riveted. When the Erlangelist asks you for 55 minute slot to present a three act monodrama you give it to him. When he asks for a skull you order the skull. And then he will enrapture your crowd and grab a standing ovation on his way out. And he really thoroughly lectured me on making better PRs…

The energy of this evening was wild. I’ve never had so many people thank me in my life. I’ve never had so many people tell me about my own event in bewildered excitement. I could not be smiling more.

Partially I was smiling because I was one of five people among the nearly 200 involved that knew how the next day starts. Everyone was curious what to expect from another day at Goatmire but no-one was ready. To make sure they didn’t discount the start, I pinged @everyone on Discord and teased that they should not miss it.

One beer. Maybe two. In bed at a reasonable hour.

Day 3: Goatmire Elixir ends

Other fancy outfit, darker, more somber. Breakfast. Head to venue. Piano music hits me the moment I enter. It is on.

Somber fancy

I knew Flora would bring a good talk. She’s an engaging person, fastidious about delivering and smart as a whip. But when she had seen Sasa give Tell Me A Story at Gig City Elixir 2025 she realized what you could actually do at a conference and she asked if she could completely change her talk.

Her mother did puppetry professionally. Flora has done a bunch of puppetry with her mother, internationally. Our conversation spiraled into shadow puppets, old-school overhead projectors and repeatedly asking “is it okay if it’s weird?” at which I would respond “fuck yes, please, kindly make it weirder”. My favorite was “can I bring my husband so he can play piano?”. I was in deep already. I was game for anything.

The grand piano was out. The light of the old projector was suitably flawed compared to the previous day. Another cold open. It could not have been more warm. As she spoke she found ways to put tears in my eyes. Odd that.

The puppetry was riveting. The scissors were .. abrupt. It was a beautiful, awe-inspiring performance. The standing ovation was a given. While overhead projectors have certainly seen use in computer science before I think this was truly unique. I could not be more pleased.

Flora's welcome

Flora's story

Flora speaking

Puppeteering

Piano music and birds

This talk was recorded (technology be willing) but it will not be published in the near term if ever. That is not under mine or Flora’s control for now.

The day continued with people somewhat stunned from that initial presentation. Later The Oban Murders also stuck out as a talk with fabulous showmanship and a very funny performance by the Selberts.

The Oban Murders

I also gave my talk during this day. Prior to it I stole a nap, or at least zonked out, in the green room for a bit. I suppose the days had caught up with me. When it was time for my talk. I had slides. I had notes. And maybe I should have used my slides, for clarity, but I felt so comfortable on this stage at this point and I knew the contents of my 5000 Erlangs topic so well that I just went for it with a demo in hand and a little bit of web browser. I think I stole those style notes from Sam Aaron’s earlier talk on Tau5 actually. I think my talk went fine or even well. I did not know that I had a good line-up at the time when I added my own name to it. If we do another one I probably won’t bother speaking though I do enjoy it.

As we approached the end I had the luxury of addressing the crowd for the last time. I was just launching into a few more personal emotional notes about what this all meant to me when the frantic technical rigging happening behind me really needed a UK-to-EU power adapter. We improvise. Thanks to Oferlund for hooking us up. He also provided about half the music used in the breaks. The other half was local metal band Tvivel. The ending notes were a pleasure to give. A bit of logistics, lots of thank yous. I was so pleased with the entire event and I was excited for the final presentation. Things were good and some adapter tech issue improv did not shake me in the slightest.

Then Sam Aaron played us home by teaching us the fundamentals of music, the fundamentals of programming music and then showed us what it can truly do. I spoke to at least 3 people in the staff who are not programmers who expressed interest in trying their hand at Sam’s Sonic Pi tool. I have already tried it. I love it. You can learn it with Sam’s course that supports his open source work.

People who’ve never seen Sam Aaron do his thing before were in for a treat. People who know him were thrilled. It was awesome.

Each day the venue staff were a bit close to the limit for how many hours they were allowed to work. Not over it to my knowledge but close. So we tried to clear out promptly. I’d shouted people out of the venue both evenings prior. When I tried it this time. Someone shouted about thanking me and suddenly, in the fully lit theatre, not full but well seated and with two balcony levels of people. I got a standing ovation. This was hard to absorb. It was moving. It was very gratifying. Thank you all.

Then I ran them out into the streets for real. We tore our stuff down and let the staff do their thing. Me and Stina, my wife who was on logistics and reception throughout the event went to eat with a couple of speakers and then joined the impromptu party at Bank 28. The bar had offered a discount for anyone with a badge so it became quite popular.

I was not as careful about bedtime this evening and I didn’t have to pay for a single drink throughout the night. People were very kind.

My heart was full. I was just happy. Satisfied. It was a very weird state of being that was thoroughly enjoyable.

Bonus Day: Ash Summit 2025

Because we accidentally accumulated most of the Ash framework’s core team in person for the first time with this event I helped Alembic put together a little shindig at another venue on the Saturday. Being responsible for the keys I showed up and checked people in, watched the door and goofed off on my computer.

I am actually quite interested in Ash but I was checked out. Not sleepy but bone tired. People seemed to enjoy the summit. I think we checked 56 people into this sideshow. Then I had thai food with some friends. Then I went home. I slept a lot that weekend.

Wrapping up

There were a few major things people brought up when they grabbed me quickly during the conference:

• “Thank you for making this happen”
• “You must be so tired!”
• “Will there be another one?”

On the first. I mean “you’re welcome” would seem a bit flippant or arrogant. But essentially that. I was also happy. I was glad they were glad.

On the second. Surprisingly not that tired throughout the event. I feed off of this type of energy. I certainly burned a lot of resources and needed to catch up on it after but it was never brutal during the event for me. Which is surprising. I thought it would feel worse but I do often thrive under pressure, it has a focusing effect on me.

I want to make another one. It just needs to not screw with my day-to-day, work-life balance and vacation time too much. This one was brutal during July especially when I’d normally be on vacation I had tons of print designs to finish, lots of random things to check off and meanwhile I was letting my team go due to the market being terribly poor, we were building a green house which took a lot of time and effort, I was trying to not lose too much income so I was trying to do billable work. It was honestly a shit-show. It wasn’t mainly because of the conference but the conference was part of the bad workload. It was a really crap moment in time. We did okay through it but neither me or my wife appreciated that part of the experience.

There are many reasons to believe we can do it with a bit less grind on a repeat because we know more about what we are doing now. We would keep the venue, the accomodations. There are things to make simpler, there are things to control better. We can hand more of it to Helene this time because we know what we want. It will never be an easy lift if it is going to be an impressive event. The effort shows in the result. We will make a decision but not quite yet.

You can find a list to be notified about any next events, if you go to the website.

I am incredibly pleased with how it came out. Thanks to all who contributed to that. My family, relatives, the staff, the sponsors, the volunteers, the speakers and the attendees. The town.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Thank you.

Underjord is an artisanal consultancy doing consulting in Elixir, Nerves with an accidental speciality in marketing and outreach. If you like the writing you should really try the pro version.

Note: Or try the videos on the YouTube channel.