Elm Camp 2025

At Elm Camp, I spent over two (2) days chatting and hanging out with kind, thoughtful, like-minded folks in Michigan, USA. I feel supercharged by the experience.

First, a big thank you to the organizers, including those who couldn't attend but still ensured it was a success. I am grateful for your dedication and tireless effort. I hope to see y'all next time.

Unconference experience

This was my first unconference. I didn't have expectations, but I wondered whether it would be fruitful. I had a bushel of fun! I felt like an organizer in the best way. During the evening before and breakfast in the morning, we could add our suggestions for discussion topics for the day. Around 9:00, we went through them as a group and made a schedule so folks could attend the sessions they wanted without missing other sessions. Once we knew when and where, we headed to the topics we wanted to attend. The sessions were in open circles, so folks could come or go as they pleased.

During a session, there was no pressure to lead a conversation, even if you suggested the topic. There were several sessions where I had a few things to say, but not enough to hold a group's attention for the whole time. Sometimes conversations wandered, and it was okay! Wandering was welcomed. We wandered into ideas that related to a topic, and before you knew it, we ran out of time. When it happened, we decided to chat later to continue the conversation, or even move other sessions to accommodate the deep interest.

Kind People

The biggest takeaway from Elm Camp was how easily and quickly I made lots of friends and deepened connections. I got to have long one-on-one conversations during hikes around the area. We didn't just talk tech or network for business. Conversation felt free enough to share wild ideas about technology and life. We talked about our whole lives, gardening, children, pets, philosophy, cars, trauma, politics, and even neighborhood Nazis. I felt comfortable, not guarded.

I've been to elm-conf in the past when it was co-located with Strange Loop. There I first felt the kindness in the community as I talked about in Elm Town 61 – Turning the pages with Dillon Kearns (~33:39) and Elm Town 74 – The road to town with Jared M. Smith (~13:09). Through the years, especially since I took over as host of Elm Town, I've been lucky enough to get to know folks deeper. I can say the kindness is real and lasting.

Cream of Wait

While hiking, Ryan shared a story that turned into an aphorism for me. As a kid, his grandma would make cream of wheat for breakfast – you know, that sludge that gets better with sugar, salt, and butter. Ryan said his grandma would warn him and his cousins not to eat the middle (the hot butter). So they would dutifully eat all around the butter until the very end, when they would savor that smooth, delicious bite.

To me, that experience instilled the discipline I see in Ryan's work to use Elm, build Elm Land, and share knowledge such as the Welcome to Elm! series on YouTube. It's not easy to patiently wait until it compiles to know it works. Even harder to build a tool and not consider it done until the docs are great, or plan, record, and publish a long tutorial series. I now refer to that discipline as Cream of Wait.

Tech

We came with our laptops, so we shouldn't ignore the delightful desire to dive into the details. No one can escape AI, not even at Elm Camp. My quick takeaway is that folks see how it's especially helpful to have the confidence of Elm when working with an agent who might lose their mind at any time.

A shareable highlight is that Simon Lydell created a "robust virtual DOM for Elm", lydell/elm-safe-virtual-dom, that solves several issues, notably it doesn't break when browser plugins move DOM nodes or translators...translate. As I was driving home from Elm Camp, I listened to Elm Town 69 – A vision for tooling with Simon Lydell, where Simon mentions at the end that he was interested in working on these problems if he could get the "time and inspiration". I live for this level of connection.

Shawn was interested in learning how to be a good Elm dev team manager. It turned out to be an enjoyable conversation for me. I had the opportunity to share a few ideas based on my experiences without the pressure to have all the answers.

We all got to play Elliot's MMO built in Elm on the Lamdera platform and learn about the high-level strategy he used for conflict resolution. We saw Wolfgang's demo of how Elm could be used to build a TUI. Sung shared a DB TUI built with Bubble Tea. Casey expressed enthusiasm for writing temporary elm-review rules to refactor a codebase. Henrikh shared Feedback.one, even getting it integrated into the Elm Camp website (https://elm.camp/) during camp.

There were a bunch of conversations, many of which I missed. That's okay. I couldn't be everywhere, all the time. I didn't feel that Fear Of Missing Out. When I was curious about a topic I missed, I simply asked someone who attended what it was like.

Community

The last discussion I'll share is about community, specifically where Elm "happens". There were lots of interesting thoughts on online communities and ways to coordinate. For me, Elm happens every day at work. And I get to chat with folks on Elm Town regularly. In June 2025, Elm happened at Elm Camp. (Some organizers and I recorded an Elm Town session about it!) For other folks, Elm at work might be a work-in-progress. This blog is Elm. You don't need permission to make Elm happen.

If you're looking for a network connection, you can check out the official community links or on the Elmcraft Community page.

After the chat at camp, here's where I landed on what to expect in different online spaces:

Elm Slack - chat for users of Elm. Get answers to questions in #beginners or #general, the latest happenings in #news-and-links.
Elm Discourse - the official forum where posts remain, but close for comments after ten (10) days of inactivity.
Elmcraft Discord - the "cozy" place to chat about building with Elm, share resources, and contribute to the elmcraft.org garden.
Incremental Elm - where folks who work on Elm-related open-source projects collaborate.

Some folks complain that Elm Slack history is unavailable after 90 days. However, knowledge is expected to shift to other forums, like Discourse, elmcraft.org, or into blog posts, tutorials, or books. I find that to be a reasonable thing. Trying to parse through chat history for a solution is not fun. If you find Elm knowledge, share it! Write your own blog posts about Elm. That's where Elm happens without limits.

A shift in my takehome from past conferences is that previously, I would leave with new ideas to put to use at work and in my personal projects. Now I feel a sense of cooperation. I see that we can have an impact with our actions. Where projects had stalled, folks are now finding ways to continue by collaborating, like moving the Elm JetBrains plugin (intellij-elm) to elm-tooling.

Closing

I feel the roots of the community strengthening. The uncertainty of an unconference ripened into a summer camp to savor. If you missed it, let's connect online, or Cream of Wait for the next one. I know I need to get back to editing the next Elm Town episode.

To everyone who attended Elm Camp, thanks for everything!

– Jared M. Smith

When related notes come in, I'll share them here:

Elm Town 85 – Wander: Elm Camp 2025
The intellij-elm plugin has a new home!
Ryan Haskell's post with pics (@ryan.town on Bluesky)