Medium Day 2023 is a Wrap! How Did Medium’s First Free Virtual Conference Go?

Did Medium get it right? My thoughts on this monumental event.

Medium Day has come and gone. And what a day it was! I attended the entire event, a full 12 hours of sessions and education about…well, a lot of things!

In case you did not hear, Medium Day, held on Saturday, August 12, 2023, was an all-day virtual conference that Medium put on for free. It was a full 12 hours long and included 30-minute sessions, with many simultaneous presentations running in each slot. They recorded all of the sessions and made them available for replay.

THOUSANDS of people attended. The numbers dwindled to ~1,300 attendees in the last hour (most likely due to time zone differences and attendee burnout), but several thousand people initially joined. Attendees spanned the entire globe.

Sessions were focused on a smorgasbord of topics. Some were for Medium writers. Some were for Medium readers. And some were…just for fun? There were sessions on a wide range of topics — everything from Tarot cards to diversity & inclusion to A.I. to how to write better memoirs.

Now that the day has come and gone, how did it go? Here are my thoughts.

Logistics & Virtual Platform

Medium used a platform called Hopin for this conference, and, given my lengthy background in the technology world, I was pretty impressed with it. While the platform was not without its issues, I was surprised at how well it handled the: organization of 230+ sessions, general bandwidth of ~a dozen people streaming at any one time, balancing of several thousand attendees, recording of all the sessions, and quick turnaround time on making session replays available.

There were a few technical glitches with the platform. At times the sound cut out, the video wasn’t working, the Q&A window wasn’t working properly — I had to enter my questions multiple times to get them to register — and the website would occasionally “reset”, cutting off the current session and then throwing you back in with no sound. You had to roll with it, but, overall, it wasn’t a big deal simply because they recorded all the sessions. For anything I missed, it was easy enough to go back and find the replay several hours later.

There were also technical glitches with the speakers. Being a virtual conference, all the things that you would expect to go wrong with ~350 speakers did go wrong. Some presenters didn’t use a microphone and it was hard to hear them. Several speakers weren’t educated on the Hopin software and didn’t understand how to operate it (there were a handful of speakers scratching their heads at the beginning and/or end of their sessions). At least one speaker had no video or slides. One poor speaker tested everything in advance and yet it took half of her session to get her audio working again. I’m used to this given my long career in technology and conferences. Again, you just had to roll with it.

However, the biggest problem I had with the event was fully under Medium’s control. They built in almost no breaks for the 12–hour event. Every session led directly into another session, minus the mid-day keynote and the 5:00 pm EDT time slot, which each offered 15-minute breaks. I understand why they pushed for content over attendee comfort. It will be interesting to see what the attendee feedback is on this element.

Again, everything was recorded, but you miss out on the opportunity to ask the presenter questions if you miss their session, and that’s where the value of a live conference (either virtual or in-person) lies. My constructive feedback here would be to provide at least a 5-minute break between sessions. And I wish there was at least a 30-minute break after the mid-day keynote. Just so we attendees could go to the bathroom, eat, give our minds a rest, collect our thoughts, etc.

Speaker & Session Content Quality

To be clear, I’m VERY grateful Medium put on this event. It follows their mission to share quality content and meaningful stories with their audience.

That being said, the speaker and session content left room for improvement. The sessions were very hit-and-miss. Attending sessions was very much like navigating Medium. Sometimes you’d find a session that promised one thing, but when you went to that session it turned out to have a clickbait session title. The irony of this similarity to Medium’s platform was not lost on me.

The speakers were hit-and-miss as well. Some presenters did not: organize their content well, stay on topic, and/or deliver on the promise of their session title. More than half the speakers I watched ran over their allotted time.

I can’t recall how the speakers and session topics were chosen, but both can be improved upon for next time. We were granted permission in advance to hop in and out of sessions, which helped with any guilt of feeling rude. I found I hopped out of sessions ~one third of the time due to a miss in reality compared to my expectations.

Notes From Tony’s Sessions

Tony Stubblebine’s (CEO of Medium) mid-day keynote speech was the best session I saw at the event. However, my personal goal for this day was to learn more about what’s happening at Medium, the recent changes Medium rolled out, and how to get back into the art of awesome storytelling (the direction Medium is going). Tony was very honest and genuine with us in his keynote, citing important statistics about Medium’s journey in the past year. He also used the last ~45 minutes for an “ask me anything” session.

Here are some of the key comments and screenshots I captured from his morning and mid-day keynote sessions:

• His mantra for Medium (which I agree with): sharing stories is an act of service
• 45% of Medium’s content is published via a publication
• Q3 2022 included the worst month in Medium’s history (as shown below). They lost many subscribers. Tony’s explanation was they were lost in the numbers and forgot about their human readers. I believe him.

• They’re back on track and have been steadily trending upward this summer:

• Yes, there were a lot of changes that rolled out this month regarding Medium’s Partner Program, the algorithm, and more. However, what we writers need to focus on is the stories we write. If we write good stories and the Medium audience agrees, we will be compensated for them.

• Although Tony didn’t get into too much detail, there are quite a few things on their roadmap, including 60+ new countries joining the MPP by the end of 2023, better publication management, and a new “friend tier” (which Tony warned us he was not going to talk about…and didn’t).
• Tony feels X/Twitter is dying so they will continue to promote Mastodon as the replacement social media platform. They’ve created a special instance there for the Medium community.

From his keynote Q&A, we learned a lot of things, including the following highlights:

• Tony has no love for what’s written by A.I. and Medium doesn’t want the platform to be flooded by A.I.-authored content. However, the challenge for Medium is that current recognition tools don’t work well. The team at Medium will continue working on this issue.
• Multiple people asked if A.I. was reading the writing from the Medium platform. I don’t believe that question was addressed. Note that Tony didn’t control his Q&A, though — another Medium employee decided which questions made his live list.
• There is no plan for Medium to go public anytime soon
• In the future, MPP writers will receive payment for external reads. There is a goal for this.
• Support for non-English languages is on the radar, but this initiative is not actively being worked on

Recommended Session Replays

I could attend only a fraction of the sessions, so the below is not a comprehensive list by any means. I do plan to go back and watch a small handful I missed due to concurrency issues.

If you have the opportunity to watch the replays and you’re a writer looking for guidance on how to write better stories on Medium, here are the sessions I saw and would recommend (and you should mine the agenda for more ideas):

• Anything that was presented on the Medium main stage, especially Tony Stubblebine’s mid-day “Medium Keynote Address and Q&A,” “How Medium Curation Evaluates Stories for Boost,” “How To Start a Successful Publication on Medium,” and “Making Money on Medium: Facts, Myths, & Misconceptions” (all mostly focused on the craft of writing on Medium)
• “Writing Persuasive Essays and Opinion People Want to Read,” presented by June Kirri (focus: the craft of writing on Medium)
• “Honoring My Truth: The Price of Family Approval,” presented by Mishel Noor (focus: a good personal story)
• “Roz Warren Tells You Why Your Title Sucks, Why Your Introduction Is Too Damn Long, and Why You Need to Shape and Structure Your Work,” presented by Roz Warren, Writing Coach (focus: the craft of writing on Medium)
• “Writing the Bones: Structuring Compelling Creative Nonfiction,” presented by David Todd McCarty (focus: the craft of writing on Medium)
• “The DNA of Your Best Writing Is In Your Failed Articles,” presented by Sean Kernan (focus: the craft of writing on Medium)
• “How to Write Your Story,” presented by Suzanna Quintana (focus: the craft of writing on Medium)
• “Building and Maintaining Your Audience,” presented by John Egelkrout (focus: the craft of writing on Medium)

Summary Thoughts

Overall, I give an enthusiastic round of applause to Medium for this monumental event. Their intent was genuine and I think they did get it right. It takes loads of effort to organize a virtual conference, and it was clear much coordination was required to host this day. Tony did talk of making this an annual event and even possibly pushing it to a full 24 hours in the future.

What did I personally get out of the event? I learned about Medium’s membership progress, more details about the recent Medium changes, a look at Medium’s roadmap, and new tips about writing on Medium. I followed some new writers. I read some new Medium stories. I’m feeling better about the direction of Medium. Exciting stuff!

Although I do have some grievances to air, the truth is no large-scale event like this goes perfectly and that shouldn’t be the goal. This was the first time they put on this event. I think it went pretty well considering.

And, Medium stayed true to its mission statement. We should be grateful they invested in this. If they continue Medium Day, and for free, it will continue getting better and be a way to give back to the fantastic Medium community. If Medium decides to turn this into a revenue stream and charges for it (either directly or via our membership fees), I would be skeptical until they fix the quality issues mentioned above.

Regardless, attending the event reinvigorated my love for Medium. It felt very much as if the platform came to life. Although I haven’t read the writing of most of the speakers I saw, it was nice to see live personas of the writers I do follow who presented. This was the most active I’ve been on the Medium app in months. I opened it at least once every session, looking up the presenter(s), reading some of the stories referenced by their presentations, and engaging again with the writing app I had relegated to the platform graveyard earlier this year.

One thing is for certain — this event will lead to more readers and writers on Medium in the near term. It put back on the map the writing platform we originally fell in love with. They timed this event well with the rollout of the recent changes — it feels like a refreshed Medium.

Thank you to Medium for breathing life into this idea. It’s been discussed for years and we’re finally seeing it come to fruition.

Thank you to the Medium Day coordinators for working tirelessly to put on this event. It’s evident you’ve given it a lot of effort.

And thank you to the presenters who took valuable time to prepare, present, and share your knowledge!

Did you attend Medium Day? If so, what are your thoughts on how it went? Comment below!