Tech Communities as Fandoms

Excellent talk, each talk closing conferences should be like that. Thank You Jessica :)

Great, thought provoking and entertaining

Jessica has great way to get you engaged in what she is saying and really knows her crowd. For me this was the perfect balance of laughs and banter and discussing real issues.

Excellent speaker, exactly what you want in a Keynote. Jessica kept the crowd engaged, entertained and most importantly hooked through her keynote.
Comparing communities isn't easy, but this gave us a great insight into how we're not all that different, and just because we think one thing is weird, we shouldn't think the people who take part in that thing are weird

On the train back home, I was sat near a party of 50yo birthday revellers who got onto the subject of Brexit, which got quite heated in their opposing views. After Jessica's talk about social groups and fandoms, I listened to their arguments in a completely new light, without feeling the need to throw someone off the bridge at Berwick-upon-Tweed. I didn't expect that from a PHP conference! Great talk.

Great talk, engaging, thought provoking and funny.

An interesting and entertaining keynote with some very good points. Anybody can learn from her talk.

An interesting and entertaining way to end the conference, reminding us that people who disagree aren't less intelligent, but are coming from a place we probably don't yet fully understand. Always a welcome reminder, and not even a little bit preachy.

Great talk. As someone considered "a core member" according to Jess' definition in the community around our OSS product, I did recognize a lot of the points raised. That alone allowed me to take a step back, and see if there are things that I can improve by doing things differently.

Jessica's talk was a nice way to end the day. A good talk, shining a light on the self-importance of our communities. I would say that Jessica was a little too far on the side of not taking a side though. I'm by no means suggesting this light was wrong, but perhaps coming out and saying "I prefer x over y" would've made it more interesting. And it was interesting. In the tech industry it's extremely common place to see fan boys, though I would challenge the idea that more familiarity takes someone from "I don't really care" to "mine is better than yours! die! die! die!". I'd argue that it's a curve; when you don't have a horse in the race, you don't really care, then when you pick a horse, you care DEEPLY, then when you ride that horse and see that it is just a horse and some horses can run faster on a track, whilst others are faster on the steeple chase. In my experience, it's the core teams who are the most pragmatic and accepting and those who have scratched the surface who are deeply nuts.

As Jessica said, she's given the talk in other settings and it applies just as much. For a tech conference it had to be a bookend talk, providing a moment of reflection rather than actionable content.