Blog post: What to see at Öredev 2026

This year I return to the Öredev stage to impose the BEAM on an unexpecting public. To help surface some interesting talks in what is an absolutely bonkers amount of tracks and talks I made a list of what I think I'll want to attend.

First blog post in a minute. I think I should do more of this.

Read it here

Cohesion shattered

All spaces where developers and tech folks typically gathered are splintering. Twitter most spectacularly. I hear it is still kind of the place where you reach the most devs. But it is also a place I cannot be in because I have principles. Bluesky is a useful shadow of what Twitter was and Mastodon is nice but very quiet and it does very little for someone's reach.

I made this newsletter as a backstop against social channels and depending on them. And as a more direct connection with people who'd opted into my writing very affirmatively. The list is shrinking. I think it is a few things. I've been promoting it less aggressively. Churn is natural. Some people don't want to hear about AI and I have some AI on my mind. And I don't get in front of as many people.

And perhaps it just that I don't publish much blog stuff and consequently don't get in front of people and that's why the churn beats the growth. It might be that and if so that's fixable by blogging more. A simple thing considered in isolation since I don't find writing particularly burdensome.

My sense is that it isn't the whole story. Hacker News remains a vector for viral attention but the space has become even more tiresome as the polarization between startup culture and .. humanity grows. The social platforms are many and fractured. It is hard to reach even your own community. Elixir devs are spread across Discords, Slacks, socials and most of them aren't on anything.

My newsletter is mostly an indicator of something I think will have immense negative consequences. Lots of very active and productive devs pick up and use LLMs. LLMs are essentially antisocial. You don't need to talk to other people to get a sense of progress or help getting unstuck. So less conversations happen. No one likes dealing with other people's LLM output. To be polite we keep it to ourselves. All development becomes more and more of a solo affair. Fewer conversations, fewer exchanges and a lot less interest whenever someone releases something new.

So some of the devs that would drive conversation are going more quiet. The platforms go quiet and people check out. The conversations they want aren't happening there.

Anyone running an event is feeling the market right now. Companies are careful and not so spendy. The spaces fracturing and fading means that reach is severely degraded. Code BEAM can't share their CFT into your DM group of like-minded Erlangers or whatever. And odds are that no-one bothers to share these fairly basic posts. They aren't spicy memes, they aren't funny or interesting. They are information for you to go "huh, right, gotta put that in the calendar" or "oh, I was thinking about doing a talk".

I have a slight hope that the protocols behind Bluesky. The Atmosphere thing on ATproto. It might get proper traction over time and start building up new fabric. Open standards feel like the only hope. We know the closed platforms won't lead anywhere good.

And this is not about me and my little public persona situation and how my personal brand converts or whatever. I think some of the things we want in our communities and ecosystems are threatened because semi-boring day-to-day information doesn't permeate into the caves where we've retreated. And that means we can't reach people, for any reason.

Where do you get your information? Do you get any information?

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading.