After a bit of discussion and debate a few of us have decided to go ahead with the Detroit Day of Functional on March 25, 2017. Detroit Labs is kind enough to let us borrow their space for the day so that’s where we’ll have it. We’re charging $30 a ticket but that’s mainly to cover lunch and maybe a t-shirt for the attendees if there’s enough left over for that.

We’ve also decided to do something a bit novel (well novel for me anyway). We’re organizing the event as an unconference. That means no pre-selected speakers or sessions. We’re running the whole thing on the principle of open spaces.

I know some people will wonder why we’ve decided on this approach. I can’t speak for my colleagues but for me there were a few good reasons:

1. I wanted to keep the event relatively simple and I wanted to focus on content more than anything else. A call for speakers is a lot of work and frankly as much as I’m usually happy with the folks we end up with I also feel bad for those who submit great ideas that we can’t accommodate. This way if anyone’s got something really neat they want to discuss, they have the opportunity.
2. I’ve observed that no matter what I pick for a conference there are people who feel that I’ve got some sort of blinders in regards to content. I’ve been told that my conferences are too “Microsoft-centric”. I’ve also had people express concerns that underserved populations aren’t represented enough by speakers at my conferences. Well here’s your big chance to show me what I’ve been missing. Literally anyone who cares to lead a session can do so. If, for instance, you don’t feel like there’s enough content on stack-based languages at conferences, here’s your chance to remedy that. Want to have a conversation on why functional programming stinks? Feel free. That’s the point of holding this as an unconference–you decide what we discuss, not the organizers (well, not only the organizers anyway).

I wanted to insure that people know exactly what to expect from the start. I wish I were a bit more glib because I think that sometimes people feel that I swing some pretty blunt language but I can’t think of a clever way to say “Hey, we’re not going to have speakers for this event. We will have lunch and we may have t-shirts but no set agenda in terms of speakers.” I’m tempted to set up a pool to see how long it takes someone to ask me “Hey why aren’t you guys going to have speakers at your event?” This is my attempt to forestall the question before it’s even asked.