Ben Freiband

Why would I do a silly thing like that?

Why does anyone do anything? Connection? A desire to share knowledge? Boredom?

I’ve started attending conferences. I didn’t wake up one morning and say to myself, “Hey, I think I’m gonna be a conference guy.” It was mostly by chance.

Back then, as a not-junior-but-not-quite-senior iOS developer living in Michigan, I hadn’t found an enormous amount of opportunity to connect with a broader developer community. I had friends from school, and friends from work, and chatting with all of them was of course lovely. But I missed spending time in an environment in which I was surrounded by people who shared an eagerness to build projects and learn together. That was something I knew and loved from my collegiate hackathon days. So when I saw mention online of Deep Dish Swift – a new iOS developer conference in the US – I needed to be there.

There, I found more than just incredible talks (of which there were plenty!). Huge shout-out to Josh Holtz, who put so much of himself into organizing Deep Dish Swift, because I also found a community. Not immediately, mind you – at the time, I was simply making friends and chatting with people. But the more I talked to these complete strangers, the more fun it was. And the more I was learning. From challenges with concurrency and discussions of app architecture to comparing team dynamics between teams of different sizes, I was hooked. These were the conversations I wanted to have more of.

So I went to Deep Dish again. And again. And this time, some of my friends from previous years were speaking there! Matt Heaney and Adrian Eves both gave incredible presentations. However, when we met up later in the evening, they each had the same question for me:

When are you giving a talk, Ben?

And I… well, I didn’t know the answer to that. I’d been attending Deep Dish for those past few years, and with each year ideas had started forming in the back of my mind. The sort of ideas that might just be a fleeting thought, if you leave them at that and move on. But those fleeting ideas have a tendency to turn into something real if you humor them for a second. These were topics I wanted someone to be talking about, but which were never quite addressed. And it was then that I realized if I really wanted someone to speak about those topics, and open up that discussion from a new angle, and help more people think about things in interesting ways… the person speaking might have to be me.

So, when Matt and Adrian asked me when I’d be giving a talk, I conferred quickly and quietly with a dram of whisky from the hotel bar, and all four of us agreed that the answer was “as soon as I book one.”

At their urging, I applied! Matt and I parked ourselves in the hotel lobby and worked on our respective proposals. Obviously, it was short notice and I wasn’t going to be selected, but this was going to be great practice regardless.

So anyways, then I was selected to speak.

Wait, what? Hopefully Paris is ready, because in just under two months, I’m heading out to speak at SwiftConnection. At first, upon being selected, one’s thought might be abject terror (I said “might”). But here’s the thing – I know what I’m talking about. I know the surrounding landscape, and oh boy do I have thoughts. So, really, now I just get to start more discussions – just from a stage this time.

Hopefully people converse amongst themselves after my talk, and hopefully they have strong feelings too about what I should have mentioned but didn’t. And hopefully those people make new friends and eventually encourage each other to share, and speak, and learn. Hopefully more people connect, and more people learn, and more people are excited and passionate.

So why did I create a blog, and is it just a nerd diary written in public? Sure, maybe to some extent! Maybe I want to put a type of content out into the world that’s different from what I’d speak about at a conference. Maybe I want to contribute even more to the community, and help it feel even more active, and connect with people in discussing what was written. Maybe I simply need somewhere to dump thoughts so they don’t have to live in my head.

But here we are, and we sure are doing it.