Meetings, conferences, and workshops: Why we should still meet physically

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Today, we have everything we need to never have to meet physically again. Video calls replace meetings, AI assistants answer technical questions in seconds, lectures are available on YouTube, and asynchronous communication makes time zones irrelevant. My company (the the native web GmbH) has been working fully remotely since its founding in 2012, not as a last resort, but as a conscious decision. We advise clients, develop software, produce videos for YouTube, and write technical articles and books without anyone ever having to commute to an office. We don't have one.

Strictly speaking, physical meetings are hardly justifiable in our industry anymore. Travel costs time and money, the environmental impact is questionable, hotels are overpriced and not always comfortable. You can watch a technical lecture on YouTube, have a discussion in a forum, or hold a workshop via a shared whiteboard. Nevertheless, I am convinced that something crucial is lost when we only interact digitally. Not because the digital world functions poorly. But because it is blind to a certain category of experience.

The digital world works excellently

This is not intended to be an article that badmouths remote work. On the contrary: remote work is an excellent form of work for the everyday life of software development, which I would not want to miss anymore. Code reviews, pair programming, technical coordination, client consultations, even workshops can be carried out digitally, and well at that. Anyone who claims otherwise has either never seriously tried it or has done so with the wrong tools.

AI further amplifies this effect. Knowledge that was previously only accessible at conferences or in expert discussions is now available at any time. You can describe a technical problem and get a well-founded assessment within seconds. You can familiarize yourself with a new topic without attending a course or asking a colleague. The barriers to accessing information have never been lower than they are today.

And the tools are getting better, not worse. Virtual whiteboards allow for real-time collaborative work. Screen sharing makes code walkthroughs as transparent as looking over someone's shoulder. Automatic transcriptions record what was discussed. In many situations, digital collaboration is even superior to physical collaboration because it is documentable, searchable, and reproducible.

So the question is not whether the digital world works. It works. The question is whether it is enough for everything. And the honest answer to that is: No. Not because it lacks something technical, but because certain forms of human perception are tied to physical presence.

What doesn't fit through the screen

Imagine a room with 200 people listening to a lecture. There is a certain energy in the room: attentive silence, occasional nodding, a quiet murmur at a surprising thesis. Or the opposite: restless fidgeting, furtive glances at smartphones, a palpable lack of interest. Both states convey information, and important information about whether an idea resonates or falls flat. This information exists in no video, no transcript, and no chat log.

The same applies to the coffee break. There is no coffee break in a video call. There is a screen break, where you get up, get a coffee, and look at your smartphone. In a physical coffee break, however, something else happens: You strike up a conversation with someone you didn't know before. You accidentally overhear a snippet of conversation that catches your attention. You join a group discussing a problem you are currently facing. None of this is planned, and that's precisely the point.

Digital communication is goal-oriented. You open a call to discuss a specific topic. You send a message because you have a specific question. You watch a video because you want to learn something specific. Physical encounters, on the other hand, are open-ended. They leave room for the unplanned, the coincidental, the incidental. And in my experience, that's often where the most valuable things emerge.

I have experienced this multiple times in my own career. In 2011, I traveled to the first Node.js Conference Italy in Brescia. Rationally, I could have watched the lectures as recordings later. But what reached me there was not the content of the talks. It was the atmosphere: 250 people from all over Europe passionate about a technology that hardly anyone knew at the time. In that room, I realized that Node.js would not remain an experiment. No video could have conveyed that realization to me. It arose not from what was said, but from what was palpable in the room.

Inspiration rarely arises at the desk

For everyday work, the desk is the right place. That's where code is written, architectures are designed, articles and presentations are created. The desk is the place of execution, and remote work optimizes it in an impressive way. You work undisturbed, in your own rhythm, with your own tools. That is productive, efficient, and for many people, also the more pleasant way to work.

But new things rarely emerge in execution mode. Inspiration requires a different state: a certain openness, a willingness to be struck by something unexpected. Anyone who sits at the same desk every day, uses the same tools, and consumes the same channels operates within a closed system. The impulses that come in are filtered, curated, algorithmically selected. They confirm existing assumptions instead of questioning them. This is not a malicious intent of the algorithms; it is how they function: they show what fits with previous behavior, not what deviates from it.

Physical encounters break through this system because they are unfiltered. You perceive moods, body language, enthusiasm, skepticism. You are confronted with perspectives you did not choose yourself. You experience how other people think about problems that you approach from a completely different direction. And sometimes, a single such moment is enough to trigger a thought that influences months of work. Not because the thought is so brilliant, but because it arises in a context that makes it effective.

This applies not only to conferences. It also applies to a workshop at a client's site, where you experience the actual team dynamics for the first time, instead of reconstructing them from Jira tickets and Slack messages. In a remote call, you see faces in small tiles. On-site, you see who is talking to whom, who is silent, who rolls their eyes when a certain topic comes up. You sense where the real tensions lie and where the energy is. This perception is worth its weight in gold for a consultant because it makes problems visible that are not documented anywhere.

It applies to the meetup where you get to know a local community in a foreign city for the first time and realize that the problems you thought were unique have long been solved elsewhere. And it applies to the conversation at dinner after a long day of conference, where more strategic clarity emerges than in ten planned video calls. Such conversations have no time slot, no agenda, and no shared document. That's precisely why they are so productive.

The difference between information and experience

Watching a lecture on YouTube provides information. Experiencing the same lecture live, feeling the audience's reactions, and then talking to the speaker afterward provides experience. Both have their value, but they are not the same. And anyone who considers the difference irrelevant underestimates the role that experiences play in decision-making.

Information can be digitized without loss. A technical lecture loses nothing if you watch it as a video. The slides are the same, the words are the same, the code examples are the same. Those who seek only information can indeed save themselves the travel. In this respect, those who declare conferences obsolete are quite right on this level.

Experience, on the other hand, cannot be digitized because it arises from the interplay of content, context, and personal experience. The experience of sitting in a room full of like-minded people is different from watching the same lecture alone in front of a screen. The experience of facing a speaker and asking a question is different from writing a comment under a video. The experience of incidentally overhearing what people are discussing during breaks is different from reading a curated summary.

We run a YouTube channel with around 60,000 subscribers. No conference in the world gathers so many people in one room for a single lecture. Purely quantitatively, YouTube is vastly superior to the physical stage. But reach and impact are not the same.

When I record a video, I speak into a camera. I don't see faces, get no reactions, and don't feel whether an idea is landing or if I'm losing my audience. The comments under the video come hours or days later, often detached from the actual context. At a conference, however, I immediately see what works and what doesn't. And afterward, conversations arise that open up new directions. Such conversations have brought me entire projects, taught me new ways of thinking, and initiated collaborations that have lasted for years.

In a personal conversation, something arises that goes beyond pure information exchange: trust, connection, and sometimes the beginning of a collaboration that you previously thought impossible. No algorithm can create that.

The counterarguments are valid

Of course, there are valid objections to physical meetings. The environmental impact of air travel and hotel stays cannot be ignored. The costs for travel, accommodation, and conference tickets add up quickly. The time spent traveling is missing for productive work. And not every conference is worth the trip: there are indeed events where, after two days, you realize that you could have absorbed the essential insights from a one-hour video.

Taking these objections seriously means making more conscious decisions about when physical presence justifies its cost and when it doesn't. Not every meeting needs a room. Not every workshop has to take place on-site. Not every conference deserves the travel. Anyone who travels to every event indiscriminately wastes resources. But the blanket conclusion that physical meetings are a relic of the past is just as wrong as the assertion that remote work is only a temporary trend. Both are extreme positions that do not do justice to reality. The reality is more nuanced: some situations demand presence, others do not, and the art lies in recognizing the difference.

What helps is a simple distinction: Is it about exchanging information or gathering experience? Is it about completing known tasks or searching for new impulses? Is it about efficiency or inspiration? If the answer points towards information, task completion, and efficiency, remote is the better choice. If it points towards experience, impulses, and inspiration, the journey is worthwhile.

The space that only exists in the physical world

The question is not whether to meet physically or digitally. The question is when each mode plays to its strengths. And the answer to that is basically simple: For everyday life, the digital world is superior. For the moments that change everyday life, physical encounters are irreplaceable.

In practice, this means consciously asking yourself: When is the effort worthwhile? If I'm meeting a client for the first time and want to understand how their company works, I'll travel there. If we're planning the next increment in the third sprint, a video call is sufficient. If I want to get a feel for where a community is heading at a conference, I'll be there in person. If I wish to watch a specific lecture, I'll watch it on YouTube.

I will continue to work remotely. I will continue to shoot videos, write articles, and convey knowledge digitally. But I will just as much continue to board trains and planes, sleep in overpriced hotels, and meet people in a room. Not despite digital possibilities, but because I know their value and therefore also see their limits.

Because in the end, the most important realization I've gained in over 20 years in this industry didn't come from a book, a video, or a chat. It arose in a room where people gathered who were passionate about the same thing. And that room only exists in the physical world. No algorithm can simulate it, no screen can replace it, and no remote set-up, however good, can reproduce the energy that arises when people gather in one place because something is truly important to them. (who)