Strange Loop is a great conference to go to learn new things and make connections between disparate things. It also attracts a great crowd. I've been a bunch of times and recommend it highly! It's not that expensive as far as conferences go.

The nice thing about Strange Loop is that it is technology-agnostic and focuses on ideas and techniques that are both more broadly applicable and inspirational at the same time.

If your company does anything at scale, Strange Loop will provide value.

I've often found that attending a talk at Strange Loop was precisely the turning point where I finally "got it" ... whatever "it" happened to be that year. Guy Steele's talk in 2010 instilled an appreciation for abstract algebra; Avi Bryant's talk in 2013 solidified it for me. Evan's FRP Elm demo in 2013 was enough for me to try FRP in a fun project, even though I've never used it in production code. But all these things changed how I think about programming, even if they weren't ever directly applicable to the things I did in my career.

There was plenty of stream processing, networking, and database junk I actually did use at work that I learned (or heard of) from Strange Loop ... but the most valuable lessons were more abstract.

@U025L93BC1M Convince your employer to send you to Strange Loop to learn about Postgres clusters or whatever. But convince yourself to go so you can learn about the future of software and climb around City Museum like a monkey. 🙂

Haha... yeah, the museum is a trip but I don't know that Strange Loop will be able to organize the party at the museum this year? @U064X3EF3 any ideas about that at this time (I know St Louis just updated their health guidelines on the 23rd so it's hard to predict)?

yes, we will be at the City Museum again

Awesome! That moves the needle for in-person attendance 🙂