This Tech Conference DID NOT Go Well!

I had a poor experience at this conference! A few weeks ago, I traveled to London to speak at Modern Frontends Live, a conference that boasted about having 3,000 attendees. Not only was the conference poorly organized for speakers, attendees, and sponsors, it was also questionably unethical.
Modern Frontends Live - www.modernfrontends.live/
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[@edanbenatar]

Putting out a video like this is exactly why I appreciate you. Thank you for sticking to the truth and looking out for all of us!

[@JamesQQuick]

Thank you Edan!!

[@ravenbergdev]

I was there. Day 1: no coffee. Day 2: messy drippy thermal coffee carave. I ended up walking in and out the venue to buy some decent coffee. Mind you: paid over £400 for the ticket

[@paulloveless4122]

No coffee? What's next!? A warcrime!? No seriously that's literally inexcusable.

[@colinmarshall6634]

Respect for facing something uncomfortable like this and doing the right thing. I'm a new developer currently in a bootcamp and am grateful whenever people highlight the less savory things so I don't get caught up in nefarious and sketchy stuff.

[@JamesQQuick]

That’s what it’s all about. I took huge inspiration from the stance lots of others took!

[@mukey]

You guys should get together, organize, and file a class action lawsuit against the organizer of the conference for breach of contract.

[@JamesQQuick]

I've heard rumors that some of the sponsors are. We'll see.

[@FrontEndNerdery]

James, thank you for putting this video together and sharing your experience. I appreciate you and I appreciate what you've done here. More people need to know what happened and we need to, as a speaker community, make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again. Especially from this organizer. Thanks.

[@JamesQQuick]

Thank you!! That means a lot!!

[@vycos-zen]

This is so important to be voiced. There should be a good amount of filtering when it comes to diligently organized events and cash grab operations. it should be distinguished.

[@JamesQQuick]

Thanks for the support!

[@ryanreedgibson]

I was to speak in front of 30 people at a Forex trading group in NYC's financial district. The topic was trader taxation and the treatment of 1256 contracts. I flew from Phoenix to speak for three hours. There wasn't 30 people there was 5k! Never spoke to a group that large and had to work through a massive panic attack. It was the worst experience in my life.

[@brandonleichty]

Love that you made a video on this. I saw a lot of comments on Twitter about this conference, but had no context

[@JamesQQuick]

Yeah I’m sure. There’s been lots of shared about it with different context in lots of places

[@james-perkins]

I am lowkey glad that I got COVID and couldn't attend. The organizer tried to get me in trouble with my CEO for calling her out for selling tickets. You would probably see me referenced in blog posts.

[@JamesQQuick]

Yeah I heard of more sketchy shit like that. Sad :(

[@dupre7416]

My work holds 250+ conferences per year. It's a ton of work. If you don't have a good system in place, things will get missed. I can definitely say that we appreciate our speaker's time and treat them like celebs. If your company gets a reputation of not treating the talent well, you'll quickly burn all you community bridges.

[@EleftheriaBatsou]

Thank you for sharing your experience 🙏

[@SimonHoiberg]

Really appreciate it, James!

[@JamesQQuick]

Thanks as always Simon!!

[@markgonsalves]

Im here to support you my guy. I don't understand half the stuff you say but I love it. 👍

[@KimMaida]

Thanks for putting this out, James -- I was going to speak but ended up pulling out because it felt off (making speakers pay for their own T&E, the numbers seemed like they were very inflated, etc.). I spoke at Build Stuff instead and have nothing but GREAT things to say about Build Stuff (highly recommend!). Definitely appreciate all the folks who spoke up about what went down at Modern Frontends. She gaslit a lot of people who were speaking up, and that was so shameful -- and then afterward, continued to act like the whole thing went great. Thanks again for sharing

[@JamesQQuick]

So glad you found an event that went so well for you!! Definitely super unfortunate it turned out this way. Just good to let people know. Thanks Kim!

[@mfsbo]

Scammers have got into conference and talks already but this experience is like theft in broad day light

[@oncoding4520]

We love you

[@JamesQQuick]

Always!

[@paulloveless4122]

This video is my first introduction to your channel and the first I've heard of this organizer. I found your video to be fair and presented without flair or emotion. Good work.

[@JamesQQuick]

Thanks! I appreciate that!

[@shubhimainalli]

So sorry for all the speakers and audience, such a disappointment thanks for bringing light on this, it's a lot tough to talk about unethical things and advertising it to be massive event and false claims of livestream of event by such conferences.

[@MikeBifulco]

Proud of you, mate. Your expectations aren't unreasonable, and it's important to call out unfortunate experiences like this, to keep the bar appropriately high for community events in the future.

[@JamesQQuick]

Thank you :)

[@michaelessiet8830]

Ryan spoke about this. I'm glad you did too, we should hold people accountable for their negligence

[@JamesQQuick]

Thank you for the support!

[@ryan_roga]

10:00 I mean it is technically VERY difficult to live stream without cameras. 🤣

[@PaulMcCannWebBuilder]

"Could one of you in the audience please point your phone at the stage and join this Zoom meeting?" Unfortunately a lot of hybrid events really feel like that's how it's done.

[@mergeinterface]

Sorry to hear, lots of great names, and an organiser taking advantage of that is terrible! They should be held accountable!

[@PhillipHilton]

I've seen this kind of thing happen with conferences before. Its a cluster farq caused by the unholy marriage of overly optimistic 'confirmation bias' and 'the incident pit.' Trying to organise something large and high quality with too short a runway is a recipe for disaster. Its typically caused when another conference pulls out last minute or a musician cancels a few dates. This leaves the venue or the event firm that originally booked it with an expensive problem but it also creates an opportunity. That firm's sales team then start ringing round event firms and talent management companies offering crazy discounting and bundles I.e. take this one and the next two we will give you 30 points off or "you can have it for the cost of the cancellation fee(plus 20%)" until someone is silly enough to bite. That poor sap then has to go into overdrive to deliver 'How hard can it be?' they ask. The short answer either 'very' or 'impossible' which the inexperienced soon discover as they ring round their regular reliable vendors - the catering guys, the AV people, the firms that design and build the booths etc. They discover to their horror that the good guys are all booked up months or even years in advance and now they have to settle for 'whoever they can get.' Also, speakers and attendees. They need to book flights and hotels which get more expensive the closer you get meaning speakers pull out and fewer attendees are willing to fly in from abroad. This further impacts quality as you have a lower budget for your AV, catering, etc. What they should have done at the start was massively slash ticket prices, limit the scope, hire a celebrity the target audience would like to hear speak/get an autograph from and aggressively market to the locals. That gets you 'bums on seats' and 'boots on ground' which in turn gives you a better budget which gives you better options and makes people want to come again.

[@myronkoch]

Wow, shaaaady. Thanks for the heads up

[@AlleyDev]

Ah that’s so awful. So sorry to hear this.

[@aaronmcadam]

Gen was incredibly lucky that we had experienced conference goers to look after everyone! It was still awesome to meet and grab dinner with you, though. Here's to the next time you're in London ❤

[@JamesQQuick]

Great to hang out with you as well!!

[@zkoolkyle1]

You're wholesome, this is why you have such a great following. Also big fan of the podcast! P.S. Looking forward to new videos on Sveltekit. (1.0 soon!) :D

[@JamesQQuick]

Ah thank you! I’ll actually be doing a live stream of supabase and sveltekit Tuesday so keep an eye out!

[@ClarkSell]

Breaks my heart to hear things like this and makes it so impossible for those trying to do the right things.

[@JamesQQuick]

I know one place these things don’t happen! :)

[@npf21]

It almost sounds like for example the Fyre Festival that really could of ended up like this logistically sounds close to it in the tech sense. It's good you're having a honest after action review (AAR) post conference openly to give a different perspective and opinion. The integrity, ownership and communication of the conference from the organizer sounds like from what you said they should of owned up and admit the flaws of the conference. I hope they do open up of the flaws even after what's been said and done because them saying they didn't know/ ignore it is just utterly wrong. I guess something to flow up in another video later on would be what does it take to make a good tech conference. Thanks for opening up to this situation and telling us, we as a tech community need to prevent bad conferences like this happening making false promises without communication and ownership and make it better for the whole tech community

[@HoNow222]

thanks for the video!

[@jkovert]

The technical difficulty is that there was no tech to have difficulty with. That's a technical difficulty, technically speaking.

[@JamesQQuick]

Right?!?

[@JavaScripting64]

There's a lot to unpack here

[@thedevdavid]

I’ve had a similar experience earlier this year at another conf. It was a German conference. They invited me to hold a workshop. Agreed to do it. Only asked them to cover travel and accommodation for the days of the conference Then later I saw they priced my workshop around $1,200. They stopped communicating, I tried to reach them for weeks. No answer. One day I saw that they removed my workshop. Turned out no one bought it.

[@TheRubenator05]

Fyrebase Festival

[@nathansnow]

Good on you James, it's never pleasant to give anything but praise, but you, the other speakers, sponsors, and paying attendees simply got shafted mate. Very noble of you 😊

[@JamesQQuick]

:)

[@AustinShelby]

Damn sucks to hear that you had such a bad experience. I just had my first my first conference talk a few weeks ago at a conference hosted by DigitalOcean and couldn't have had a better experience.

[@christopheanfry2425]

What a shame!!! As you said you can recognize your mistakes apologize and refund or solved the complains but to ignore it’s a huge shame and this kind of people doesn’t deserve to keep their jobs. I hope, you, professionals who attend and speak and put so much energy and money on it, will make the worst comment on her, you’re right everybody has to be aware of what happened to prevent this from happening again. They stole money, time and illusion to great people. Liars and stealers 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

[@thelastninja4825]

I stopped going to conferences , waste of time and money

[@insightinternet]

thanks for the warning 👍

[@socialkruption]

nah man, call people out and put them on blast. Otherwise these type of people keep doing it. We need more aggressive people in the field to speak out and not fence sit.

[@1VIPWRX]

Damn shame , charge backs going to be crazy .

[@NicolaasBurgers]

I've seen a similar thing happen before for a new market (people selling goods at stalls etc), which is essentially another type of conference - the sellers, like me, were unhappy with how it turned out. The ultimate cause is the failure to attract attendees - everything else is likely to be a downstream consequence of that, including the lack of cameras, which could have been a cost-saving measure in light of the lack of attendees. I'm starting to wonder if it's an inherent part of human nature to become overwhelmed at, and have very volatile reactions to, the very public failure of a conference you organise which needs sellers/speakers/hosts to put in a fair amount of their own resources. It would be an exceptional human being to be able to rationally, ethically and with poise deal with that situation. It's like drowning in the ocean, as human you're too overwhelmed at the predicament to be able to resist pushing another person down in order to desperately try to get some air. One solution as a society for this would perhaps be to have the organisers guarantee a minimum amount of attendees and that if this does not eventuate, there is legally-enforced compensation by the organisers to the sellers/speakers. That would increase the barrier to entry for these conferences but those that do get off the ground would have substantial backing if they fail.

[@MC---]

I have experienced the vendor market thing recently. It was my first market and also the markets very first event. My expectations were low but it cost 40 bucks to have booth to sell stuff. It had very low turnout. If it wasn't for another vendor buying at item just before tear down we wouldn't have had any sales. Perhaps this conference over promised and under delivered on attendees and had to cut things like you said.

[@Hobbitstomper]

At least they didn't have a foam pit...

[@JavaScripting64]

"foam pit"

[@tsalVlog]

oh man, after finding out who ran the conference I am so disappointed. :(

[@markpender5286]

I guess no cameras is a type of technical difficulty... but seriously that's very shady and sucky thing to do

[@alanjrobertson]

Very interesting video. Sounds like a really poorly organised event - the warning sign seemed to be (as you touched on) just how last minute everything seemed to be, no proper programme, no cameras properly setup, etc. Very poor show on the part of the organisers and if they want to cancel workshops then they certainly should be reimbursing their accommodation.

[@moviesunified6746]

idk, if this is a common practise . but, today there is a conference going in on london called Blockchain Expo. I signed up to view it live. (though it was free conference.) . but this event also did not sent the link of live stream.

[@JamesQQuick]

Oh no. That’s not good :(

[@gblargg]

Gen Ashley probably: "Haters gonna hate!"

[@Crismodin]

It was pretty much like that Firefly festival, that big music festival that was quickly thrown together and the hype/promotion promised this big huge production but turned out to be a giant flop.

[@WyzrdCat]

Everyone knows that event attendance is within a 90% margin of error. KEK

[@jorshaw86]

conferences are generally a waste of time so not suprised

[@JamesQQuick]

I respectfully, but completely disagree lol

[@andrewstorm8240]

Are there any confidences you would recommend ?

[@JamesQQuick]

RenderATL, That Conference, KCDC, Jamstack Conf. Lots of good ones :)

[@JohnnieWalkerGreen]

So, how were "Gen Ashley" and "Modern Frontends Live" track records anyway? What made you decide to participate there regardless?

[@milosveljkovic4720]

6:45 heartbreaking :((

[@JamesQQuick]

Yeah :(

[@seandavidson3602]

Sounds like one of those things that have a lot of moving pieces that depend on other pieces to function. One thing goes wrong and you don't have the money to pay the video streaming people, then it all starts falling like dominoes. Which all falls back to an organizer that is in over their head and should never organize an event again. ..or maybe just downright fraud.

[@JamesQQuick]

Yeah I think it all comes down to transparency to let people know what’s happening. That was the missing piece.

[@nicolasdupere]

It sound like Fyre Festival.

[@coffeemusiccoding]

Such a shame it happened. Better communication on ticket sales performance and at least some acknowledgement that things were not as advertised would have saved a little bit of face. However, not event that...

[@jeffwads]

That sucks that the "organizers" pretty much ran a sham job on everyone.

[@mukey]

Also. What's the full name of the organizer.

[@FrontEndNerdery]

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/CeCXRXRj-gr4bpNKbnj8BX9RyVU/appointments

[@JamesQQuick]

Gen Ashley

[@jdranetz]

The Fyre Festival of tech conferences.

[@dominuskelvin]

Just sad 😔

[@betterwithrum]

Damn, Gen Ashely pulled a Sam Bankman...

[@danielho5635]

Frye Festival 2.0?

[@ebrelus7687]

Maybe space is loosing air...

[@bc4198]

Oof - at least it nobody got mugged, drugged, or stabbed, then it wasn't as bad as the autodesk conference in New Orleans 🤷

[@JamesQQuick]

Oh wow. That sounds terrible!

[@koladechris]

That conference must be a scam

[@Sean4Help]

James, I understand how you feel of not wanting to make this video. It must be very uncomfortable because you're an approachable and informative person, not someone I know to complain about things. That said, let me give you a metaphor that would explain why it was necessary and you're doing a good thing - it is better to know let us know the water may be poisoned before we drink it. Not to dehumanize the organizer but rather to say the entire circumstance this person brings may yield little to no ROI.

[@JamesQQuick]

Thank you!

[@MrRobotukas]

This conference it wasn’t about speakers, sponsors and audience it was about getting most money from people. It was a scam. Person who organised just made money from it.

[@seabass_1]

Well u need people for speakers and speakers for people. They prob hoped people would show up and just didnt happen. Maybe they didnt spend much on ads idk but sounds like it was a dud and they were just like uh idk i guess half ass what we can with money we got. They also prob prioritized profit for themselves first and used what was left

[@ryan_roga]

MFL... Ironic that they chose the same acronym as "MFing loser" or "MFing liar" (depending on who you ask). In either case, it's really funny that they foreshadowed the event like that. 🤣

[@Kenbomp]

Wow that a first

[@brandonleichty]

So now that we know “not” to ever go to this conf, what would you say is your all time favorite and most trustworthy dev conference? 🙂

[@JamesQQuick]

Here are a couple That Conference, RenderATL, KCDC, Jamstack Conf!

[@syrup8345]

They forget the 100+ speakers and 3000+ devs values to set to the real values on their website maybe 😅😂 As a beginner I never heard about things like that before Are these things for pros? Talking about in a higher level speaking about programming, web dev stuff?

[@thisispernyc]

Let me get this straight.. a event promoter was less than truthful??

[@JamesQQuick]

More so than any organizer I've ever met

[@makhosandilendondo2594]

👴in progress

[@robrita]

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[@harisaran1752]

I recently organised pydata nd it went so much better than this

[@dm.b7560]

Dude do you sleep?

[@JamesQQuick]

Yes plenty. Why do you ask?

[@UTAH100]

Sharing your experience is probably fine but be careful advising others to ban, etc., you could get in some legal hot water for slander, defamation, etc. I am sure there was fine print in the contract that covered the organizer. Turn out cannot always be guaranteed. You do make it sound like a horrible bait and switch. I have no reason at all to doubt you. I will leave it at that.

[@JamesQQuick]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my language didn't encourage people to ban. That's why I specifically said "I'm not telling anyone what to do, but here's what I'm doing" lol Anyways, great point. Thanks for watching and the feedback

[@UTAH100]

@@JamesQQuick 1:00 *call someone out publicly* *not to have faith in the person in this and future conferences* 2:15 *questionably unethical* 12:30 *No sponsor will ever work with her again* Pretty bold words and arguably inflammatory. Read your contract. Did it guarantee thousands of attendees? I highly doubt it. 12:43 Where you might have crossed the line IMHO... *I WANT TO RECOMMEND TO PEOPLE THAT YOU NOT FOLLOW ANY OF THE EVENTS THAT SHE DOES* Also, many claims you make you admit you cannot back up, like the "technical difficulties." You have no clue what could have happened. Maybe the company in charge of the camera bailed on the sponsor. You really just don't know. Disappointing, yes, but move on. Again, to be clear, I am not agreeing or disagreeing with you- just pointing it out. Your words can effect that person future income. Read your contract. If you want to essentially bash the organizer online, that is your choice but just know there could be consequences. No need to reply back or try to explain to me. It really does not matter to me. You do honestly seem to complain a lot though. I mean did you not get any value out of the conference? You said your personal experience was pretty good. So there is that. Are you now trying to be the people's champion or something? If someone else went and got one business deal out of it- is it still not worth it? With Covid it is not easy organizing these events. Even you said you would not want to attempt that. Just surprised you are coming down so hard on this organizer. The lack of cameras would be disappointing.

[@JamesQQuick]

@@UTAH100 Fair enough. thanks for watching!

[@akpokemon]

> female organizer☕

[@JamesQQuick]

Not sure how to interpret this comment…

[@wolfisraging]

Women

[@orkhepaj]

wokey wahman organizer , next time check her pronouns before attend