--- title: What I Learned from Attending 23 Developer Events in 6... description: A Developer Relations professional shares observations from attending 23 developer events across 6 months in 2026, interacting with roughly 3,000 developers.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-from-attending-23-developer-events-in-6-months-pdoimnwko twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What I Learned from Attending 23 Developer Events in 6 Months | daily.dev og:description: A Developer Relations professional shares observations from attending 23 developer events across 6 months in 2026, interacting with roughly 3,000 developers.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-from-attending-23-developer-events-in-6-months-pdoimnwko og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/PdOImnwko.png og:image:alt: What I Learned from Attending 23 Developer Events in 6 Months og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What I Learned from Attending 23 Developer Events in 6 Months **[Kilo Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/kilo-ai-blog)** · 8 min read · 6 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A Developer Relations professional shares observations from attending 23 developer events across 6 months in 2026, interacting with roughly 3,000 developers. Key themes include a massive AI literacy gap between power users and beginners, bottom-up AI tool adoption driven by individual developers rather than top-down procurement, a surge in side projects and indie building enabled by AI, a shift from model loyalty to model diversification, a sudden pivot from maximizing token usage to cutting AI costs (triggered by usage-based billing from Copilot and Anthropic), a resurgence of in-person meetups, and enterprise organizations finally treating AI adoption as a survival imperative rather than optional innovation theater. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why did developers suddenly start caring more about AI costs instead of maximizing token usage? The shift is linked to Copilot and Anthropic moving toward usage-based billing around the same time in spring 2026. Once developers could see their actual consumption costs, demand for cheaper alternatives spiked almost overnight, driving sudden interest in lesser-known models like MiniMax, GLM, and Kimi that were previously unknown in enterprise conversations. _daily.dev helps developers weighing model costs keep tabs on pricing shifts across the AI tooling landscape._ ### How is AI tooling adoption spreading inside large enterprises compared to traditional enterprise software? Adoption is happening bottom-up rather than top-down: individual developers try a tool, trust builds, and it moves up the chain to leadership for ratification, reversing the usual pattern where a VP picks a vendor and it filters down through procurement. This is attributed to tooling evolving faster than committees can evaluate it, and taste becoming a valued individual skill. _engineers navigating fast-moving tool choices can track community-driven adoption signals on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [DeveloperWeek 2026: Making AI tools that are actually good](https://daily.dev/posts/developerweek-2026-making-ai-tools-that-are-actually-good-n6qqbxhtz) · Stack Overflow Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Developer Advocacy in 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/developer-advocacy-in-2026-h7cgoaip0) · Planet Python · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [The AI-native developer](https://daily.dev/posts/the-ai-native-developer-brcktqbzr) · Engineering Enablement · 47 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#devrel](https://daily.dev/tags/devrel) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-from-attending-23-developer-events-in-6-months-pdoimnwko) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What I Learned from Attending 23 Developer Events in 6 Months","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-from-attending-23-developer-events-in-6-months-pdoimnwko","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-from-attending-23-developer-events-in-6-months-pdoimnwko"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T07:49:50.546Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:26:53.641Z","description":"A Developer Relations professional shares observations from attending 23 developer events across 6 months in 2026, interacting with roughly 3,000 developers....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/287ff57e3e15d9d14b86708d498fa0a3?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/287ff57e3e15d9d14b86708d498fa0a3?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Kilo Blog","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Kilo Blog","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--x3pmrf8D--/f_auto,q_auto/v1774964071/logos/kilo-ai-blog?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/kilo-ai-blog"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-from-attending-23-developer-events-in-6-months-pdoimnwko","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":6},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"llm,ai-coding,devrel","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Kilo Blog","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/kilo-ai-blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What I Learned from Attending 23 Developer Events in 6 Months"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-from-attending-23-developer-events-in-6-months-pdoimnwko#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did developers suddenly start caring more about AI costs instead of maximizing token usage?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The shift is linked to Copilot and Anthropic moving toward usage-based billing around the same time in spring 2026. 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