Feeding the Hype Cycle

There are a couple of implications but the one I wondered about the most is this one: Could that be something that contributes to the constant hype cycle? I mean, go through the list of jobs that I claim are strongly represented in the speaker community. How many of those earn their living with “new stuff”? Technology evangelists? Oh yeah! Developer advocates? Definitely! Trainers? Often. Authors? Mostly. Consultants? Depends, but surely a lot.

So, yes, many speakers have the job to play with new languages or language versions, unreleased frameworks, and cutting-edge architectural styles. They do that and report their findings back to the community — usually in the form of “Look at this awesome thing!”

In and of itself that’s of course not bad. But if that perspective is dominating conferences (as well the influential sites and blogs for that matter), how do you think that affects the developers who are actually creating production software? If almost everybody they see, read, or hear in public, maybe even look up or aspire to, talks about shiny new things?

Wouldn’t they mostly consume content dealing with the cutting edge? Wouldn’t they want to try that stuff out? Wouldn’t they want to play with just the same things so they can partake in that discussion? Wouldn’t they assume that only the new shiny is really great because, hey, nobody talks about that old stuff anymore?!

So on one side you have developers who love to learn and try things out and on the other side you have speakers who, by virtue of they daily work, are mostly talking about the cutting edge. There’s a clear demand and a supply to match but when there is so much more promotion of new technologies than of proven tech’s untapped potentials, is it surprising so many developers want to work with the former rather than the latter? Without a counterweight of interesting talks about getting better in what we do daily, isn’t it natural that we live in a never ending hype cycle merry-go-round?