Winding Down

Our conferences are coming to an end. I am re-evaluating how we socialize.

Dear Handmade folks,

This shutdown isn’t the end of Handmade Cities, but it does mean we’re ending our conferences in favor of local meetups. I’m officially collaborating with The Offline Club in the future, since we both agreed we admire each other’s efforts.

Personally I’m optimistic for what’s on the horizon. However, in this post I need to be blunt about reality. Stand strong.

REMINDER: Handmade Cities is NOT affiliated with Handmade Hero nor the Handmade Network. We share the brand and that’s it.

What does it mean for the conferences in 2025?

The Boston and Seattle dates stay on the calendar, but they’re meetups now; likely bigger than usual, just not a traditional tech conference. I expect the lectures and demos to remain exciting but in smaller packaging.

This change is reflected in Boston already, which is coming up this weekend. We changed the venue from the increasingly expensive JFK Presidential Library to the Boston Public Library instead:

I’ve disabled the tickets portal and, if there’s room, new folks can join free. E-mail me to RSVP: abner@handmadecities.com. We’ll meet in front of the library Saturday at 2PM: plus ones welcome.

Ticket holders disappointed with this change can email me directly at abner@handmadecities.com to negotiate refunds. I’ve got sunk costs, so refunds might take up to a small number of weeks. However, I’m already processing them as fast as I can, and I’m deeply grateful to the folks allowing me to keep their contribution.

These upcoming events will be delightful all the same.

Why I’m doing this

This story has two parts: financial and personal.

1. Financial

I hinted at economic trouble at the beginning of this summer update and in the bottom section of my Terminal Click announcement. It’s common knowledge profitable conferences are a dying breed and I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long: Deconstruct, Strangeloop, Bang Bang Con, XOXO and other small-to-medium sized events vanished. Even corporate-backed conferences are no longer around: O’Reilly, Xfest, E3 and so on went away.

2. Personal

In the last Handmade Seattle I made a mistake with the balance of content. It was definitely jarring to have little in the way of old-school technical presentations. This caused a 50-50 split of positive versus negative feedback: the positive commentary came largely from newcomers, while the negative came largely from veterans. The reader can visit older blog posts where I apologized and asked for feedback.

However, I stand by all my speakers and refuse to add disclaimers/warnings inside published recordings. It is obvious giving speakers air time doesn’t mean I endorse all their views. In any case, the most controversial talk by far was Andrew Kelley’s keynote on Day One. I received a barrage of vile essays in my Inbox, Discord DMs, and unlisted YouTube videos calling me a communist (what?) for platforming Andrew’s message. I lost genuine friendships from people who were caught up in the heat of it all.

This was personally traumatic, and I can’t use this trauma to justify running half-hearted conferences, which is an important reason for stopping them.

UPDATE 8/18/25: In my original post I aired dirty laundry, which feeds into online drama I’m supposed to denounce. It is now removed.

Nature is healing

The Handmade meetups are awesome and they keep growing. We nerd out with demos and side projects. We help local programmers find work or make new friends every month. I train and mentor hosts, then they take the reins, so the scene is decentralized and self-sustaining. Meetups are cheap or free to run so I don’t have to chase big revenue. Meanwhile, building Terminal Click as an indie dev is therapy compared to wrangling humans for a living!

An impressive number of people who ended their relationship with me have apologized as of late. I’ve forgiven them.

UPDATE 8/18/25: In my original post I posted examples of private apologies, which is unfair to those friends. These are now removed.

Could things have been different?

Without social media we could’ve had more perspective: in the end this was just one event. In fact a Seattle meetup member called me a “young grasshopper.” That caught me off guard until I looked around. Important things take time indeed: TED Talks have existed for four decades; DEFCON is thirty years old; many open-source conferences spent twenty years figuring things out. Herding cats is slow and messy.

I’m done running conferences though. Besides the reasons above, they feed the egos of a few “anointed” speakers and require a social media hustle I just won’t play. I’m opting out. I’m excited about building stuff that gets people offline: better meetups, our own server racks, and self-hosted tools for indie devs with serious Handmade projects.

I’ll keep publishing newsletters here and on Terminal Click, and occasionally on my personal website. I’d still love to see you at our upcoming events, even if they’re not fancy conferences.

See you offline,
Abner Coimbre