Trade Shows, Technology, and the Quiet Need for Human Contact

The Conference Is a Counterweight

We don’t really gather anymore.

Sure, we meet. We call. We collaborate. We ping. But getting a bunch of people in the same place for no other reason than to talk, argue, show off, and learn something? That’s become rare — almost weird.

Conferences, somehow, are still doing that.

Not flawlessly. Not always affordably. Not without awkward panels and lanyards and branded tote bags. But still — they’re one of the few places left where like-minded people in wildly different zip codes come together, on purpose. Not to be productive in the corporate sense, but to be there. To be around other people who care about the same strange, niche stuff you care about.

It might sound overblown, but I don’t think it is. Because there’s something very real missing from our lives right now — something conferences, in their messy, overstimulating, beautiful way, are still trying to offer.

And that thing is connection.

The Loneliness We Don’t Talk About at Work

It’s easy to feel like everyone else is fine. You log into Slack. You answer emails. You joke in the chat during a meeting. You close your laptop. But the truth is, a lot of people are alone right now. A lot of people are isolated — even the ones in loud households, even the ones with coworkers constantly DMing them.

In May 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General called loneliness a public health crisis. Not as a metaphor — as in, actual health outcomes. It’s linked to heart disease, depression, dementia. And remote work, for all its advantages, makes it worse if you don’t have strong connections outside of it.

But you can’t just schedule connection the way you schedule a standup meeting. It happens in the in-between moments — in the hallway chats, the long lunches, the weird shared joke at a vendor booth. And those don’t exist in remote-first life. They happen in person.

What Makes a Conference Feel Different

When you walk into a conference — whether it’s an esports tournament, an open-source unconference, or a packed expo center full of software engineers — there’s this weird electricity. Everyone is there for a reason. Everyone came voluntarily. And most people are just… glad to see each other.

They’re not all extroverts. Most aren’t. But there’s something comforting about being surrounded by people who care about the same stuff you do — stuff that maybe nobody else in your life even understands.

A conference, for a lot of folks, is the one time of year they get to feel like part of a real community. Not a Twitter thread. Not a Discord. A real room full of people who get it.

It’s easy to underestimate how powerful that is.

Glenn Gets It

Glenn — the network engineer this site is focused on — has worked behind the scenes at hundreds of these events. He’s the guy setting up the infrastructure so the livestream doesn’t drop, so the booths don’t flake, so the demos load in five seconds instead of buffering awkwardly in front of thirty potential customers.

But the part of the job he actually lights up about? It’s not the gear. It’s the atmosphere. It’s watching strangers connect. Seeing someone finally meet their long-time collaborator in person. Watching a nervous junior engineer become a confident panelist over the course of a few days.

For Glenn, it’s not just about internet uptime. It’s about helping people be somewhere meaningful — somewhere they might actually remember.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Profound

There’s this temptation, when talking about conferences, to make them sound world-changing. But that’s not really the point. A conference doesn’t have to be profound to be worth attending. It just has to feel human.

And it often does. People talk. People get coffee together. People sneak out of keynote sessions to catch up in the hallway or quietly decompress in a side room. People fall in love. People quit jobs. People brainstorm side projects over drinks and turn them into companies two years later.

None of that’s on the official agenda, but it’s the reason people keep coming back.

Real Space for Real People

In a world where so much happens asynchronously and algorithmically, conferences remain stubbornly synchronous and analog. They’re flawed. They’re expensive. They’re sometimes corny. But they’re also real. They create a space that doesn’t happen anywhere else.

And in this current era — when so much of tech culture feels like it’s happening in parallel universes, barely brushing up against actual life — having a place to show up, shake hands, and talk shop might be more important than ever.

Not because you need it to do your job. But because it reminds you that there are other people out there doing the same work. Facing the same stress. Geeking out over the same dumb little quirks of an API or a tool or a wiring standard.

You’re not in it alone.