I made it?

My body completely crapping out on me did not stop my conference plans. Honestly I'd probably not gone unless my wife had essentially said that it was fine if I just went and had a couple of days of recovery or whatever in the hotel room. I think it was all loving support and I think she wanted to make sure I didn't regret not going. She is definitely taking on a heavier load whenever I travel.

I did get better and aside from occasionally needing to reassure people that I have a chronic thing due to the absolutely gnarly cough I got most of the symptoms under control. I have no concept of how I will be able to maintain this approach to keeping myself functioning when I'm home. It'll be a very hard thing for me personality-wise and in terms of habits. But it would almost certainly make me feel much better. Anyway, figured since I dumped a load of my troubles in the last one I would also share some of the resolution.

Been able to attend the entire conference. Been able to let lose a bit in the evenings. Had lovely fun with the people I know or got to know here. I gave my talk and it went fairly well. I had a bit of demo trouble but most of it just contributed to excitement. Feedback and conversation off of the back of my talk has been really good. At least four very concrete conversations with people genuinely interested in either Elixir or Nerves.

I've been surprised by the number of devs that know of, have poked at or been meaning to try Elixir. This is a very Java- and .Net-heavy conference and I haven't needed to explain it from scratch to most devs. Some off-dev or less-technical people have been curious and gotten a primer.

It is very useful to be in the broader developer context. There is so much that's different to how we operate internally in Elixir. Our stuff is the most exciting in the delightful contrast it has to how development overall works. Our tools are the most impressive to the people who've seen nothing like it before. Internally we are impressed by the various pushes to really leverage our technology and make it work for more cases. But the stuff that we consider solid foundation at this point cover more than 90% of what most need and looks absolutely wild and wonderful from the outside.

If I get the chance to speak here again next year I almost hope I can put in two talks and give one that's a very straight-down-the-middle (well, I'm still me) LiveView-is-awesome-talk. Just show people how nice your world can be. And maybe another one towards stuff like FLAME, clustering and really exercising the BEAM. But then again I have a lot of Nerves to tell people about. Always so much to consider.

I love talking inside the community, a place where we have shared understanding and can push at the edges of what our whole thing is with Elixir and the BEAM. But there is so much work to be done in talking to others and showing what it can do in places where we are often at step 0.

I am excited by that.

Where do you think we should be telling people about Elixir? Are there conferences you think I should put on my list for consideration? You can reach me on the Fediverse where I'm @lawik@fosstodon.org or by responding to this email to lars@underjord.io.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate you.