Missing Mesh

After wavering for a few weeks, I’ve decided not to attend this year’s Mesh conference. I’m really pleased that 11 of the 34 headline speakers are women (that’s a far better balance than DemoCamp, OSCON, or other most other events I think about going to), but—well, I still like to think of myself as a technologist, and Mesh is really about the businesses that people build on technology, rather than the tech itself. Just look at the “who should attend” list on their home page: marketers, media, entrepreneurs, and citizens. I’m definitely not the first; I dabble in the second; I’m sort of the third, but only in the “never going to make any money at it” sense (which, to be fair, describes most entrepreneurs), and I’m growing uncomfortable with how the Government 2.0 movement views the last. I’d rather attend some of the workshops co-located with PLDI in June, but I think I have to save up my pennies for New Orleans in November.