I won’t bury the lead here. Putting a title like “The Future of…” is usually the prelude to a post about the end of something and so it is. After 9+ years of CFE.dev, I have decided it’s time to let it go at the end of this year. This week’s CodeWord Conference and PixelPalooza in November will be the final new events hosted on the site. I hope that you’ll join me at those!
Why?
It’s (perhaps unsurprisingly) a combination of time and money.
Keeping the site relevant and successful requires a lot of time – curating speakers, running meetups or shows, posting new events, promoting events, editing videos, etc. CFE never really grew out of a niche site that most of the developer community doesn’t know even know exists despite years of effort. Giving up precious time on my evenings and weekends to work on this project requires a passion for it that, sadly, I don’t have anymore.
CFE was never about money for me, but this year, as with many other developer focused events and education, the sponsorship dollars just disappeared. The site no longer has any ongoing sponsors. The larger events still have some sponsorship – enough at least to mostly cover my overall expenses – but even that has dropped significantly.
Without my dedicating much more time to increasing viewership, finding sponsors and running events, next year would likely run at a significant deficit. Even if I dedicate myself, there’s still no guarantee that it doesn’t run at a deficit given the environment for sponsorship at the moment.
When?
As I mentioned at the outset, we will still be hosting CodeWord this Thursday and PixelPalooza in November. I was hesitant to announce this before those, but I am hopeful that you might consider joining me for one…ok, two last hurrahs. They are both completely free after all.
The shows (DevRel(ish), Code Br), except for tomorrow’s 2 Full 2 Stack, have likely seen their last episodes. I’m considering running a goodbye show in December but I don’t anticipate adding any other new programming.
What Happens to the Archive?
CFE built a great archive of hundreds of sessions. All of these will continue to live on the web site and on YouTube. This will include all the new sessions from the upcoming virtual conferences. I hope to keep all of that content available indefinitely as there is some great, and often timeless, content on the site from some amazing speakers.
What’s Next?
Honestly, I don’t know. I have, over the years, always created various projects like CFE. They came from some inspiration I had that I decided to pursue. But inspiration and new ideas are much more difficult when you are busy maintaining. I still have things I care about deeply such as helping developers in a very tough job market, fighting for what once was an industry that aimed to do good (or so I thought) and is currently doing the opposite, improving opportunities for underrepresented folks in tech and more. Hopefully, with some more time to explore and think, some new inspiration will come to me.