@desmond announced this afternoon in an email that he is retiring the EMPEX events to focus on other projects. I attended two of the Empex LA events and really loved them. I don’t think I’m alone in my appreciation for Desmond and the other organizers. I wanted to start a thread where people can share their empex stories as a way to celebrate what it meant to all of us.

I find programming conferences quite intimidating most of the time and empex LA 2019 was a breakthrough conference for me. I applied to speak about Nerves mostly because I was talking to lots of people individually in the community who were excited about it, but hadn’t tried it yet. So I proposed a talk designed to provide easy places to start. I arrived feeling nervous as usual, but quickly found lots of great Elixir Friends who were curious and authentic. They had thoughts about my talk, questions about my projects and were appreciative of the time I had put into preparing it. I felt so comfortable that I proposed another talk for the next Empex LA in 2020.

That turned out to be my last in-person conference to now. I have great memories of talking to Frank Hunleth, Chris and Desmond, and tons of other great engineers. I learned how to find a balance of deep preparation with a casual speaking mode that felt like it worked for me. This turned out to be super important as I needed to be part of an engineering team that went fully remote during the pandemic and afterwards.

Thank you to everyone who helped make these Empex conferences happen. I loved being part of that sub-community and miss seeing lots of those friends. I hope you all have great experiences elsewhere in the Elixir community and we get to bump into each other in the future.