And that isn't a dig at the organisers, who've been good to me. I argued that a profession which can't change itself has no business claiming to lead change for anybody else. Then I sat down and watched a programme that rather made the point for me, again.
Same speakers as the year before, and before that. Same talks, mostly. A few commercial positions with a keynote wrapped round them, and one or two personal journeys presented as revelations. Nobody's lying. It just isn't new, and I'd said my piece and joined the coffee queue like everybody else.
Nobody asks what you've actually run lately
The circuit keeps its own people going. You speak, you write a book. The book gets you the podcast. And the podcast gets you back on a stage next year to talk about the book. But at no point does anybody ask what you've actually run lately.
Hitchens said everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's really where it should stay.
So what's worth hearing from somebody on a stage is dull and very hard to fake.
A lot more interesting conversations happening outside
So I'm spending my time in other rooms and the least I can do is say which ones.
Nudgestock, this Thursday, in Woolwich. Ogilvy's behavioural science festival, Rory Sutherland on stage, and this year it's about trust in an era where seeing isn't believing. Which is our problem too, we've just not said so yet.
GDC in March, and that's the one I'd push hardest. Because games have run always-on services at enormous scale for twenty years, with instant feedback and no patience. Live ops is a job title there. And they settled most of what we're still arguing about ten years ago, because they'd have been sacked by the Monday if they hadn't.
The Service Design Global Conference, Wiesbaden, October. The actual discipline, rather than our version with a process wrapped round it.
Slush in Helsinki in November, which shows you what your customers will buy in three years, before anybody writes it up.
And SXSW, because the technology turns up attached to how people actually behave.
And every marketing event you can get into, because nobody thinks harder about behaviour than people who've got to sell something. AI events too, properly, because if you're sitting those out you're ignoring up to thirty per cent more out of your senior technical people and calling it caution.
Don't leave the industry, but there are a lot more interesting conversations happening outside, and it's time to bring those in.