The COMMON Spring 2000 Conference will be in full swing as you read this, and I hope you will be there. In any case, you face constant advertising inviting you to attend a lot of conferences and seminars. As a professional, you have to decide whether it is worth your time; as a manager, whether it is worth your company’s money. Either way, it is a tough decision.
All conferences offer education and peer networking. But what is the right balance? And how do you tell how good the education is? It all comes down to doing your homework. Here are questions you need to answer to ensure that what you get out of a conference is worth the cost in both dollars and time:
• Is a conference the right way to get what you need? This is about matching your needs with what the conference has to offer. First, you need clear expectations. If you need to train a large number of people on a new and specific topic, attending a conference is not a cost-effective solution. You would do better to bring in a specialist to teach at your site. If you have some tough questions at the expert-user level, a user-group-style conference, with top specialists in the domain and lots of opportunities for peer interaction, might be perfect. It could save you countless hours of searching for the answer on your own and help you avoid the wrong solution.
• Who are the speakers? If Bill Gates opens the conference, it’s going to be fun, glitz, and glamour and you may hear a lot about where the world is going, but don’t expect much highly technical information.
• Who are the attendees? Conference demographics might tell you more than the agenda does. A topic can be treated in different ways. If a lot of technical people attend, you are likely to get good answers to tough questions, but don’t expect to find out about the logistic difficulties of deploying a solution or about the pitfalls in managing the introduction of a technology into your shop. Many conferences have different tracks for different kinds of attendees, but it is usually hard to excel at everything.
• Was this conference given before? Past performance is not always an indication of future results, but having been around for a while means that people keep coming and that organizers might have learned a thing or two from past mistakes.
• What are the opportunities for peer interaction? Conferences that provide informal ways of getting together people with similar technical interests for free-format discussions and experience sharing are more likely to offer a most valuable benefit: talking to people who have been through the same problems. Other people’s mistakes are one of the best sources of education around and a plentiful source at that!
If you do decide to attend a conference, being prepared is key, not only for making the most of it but also for ensuring that you can articulate the value (and get a chance to go again). Here are some ways to prepare:
• Set up your goals ahead of time. As the Cheshire cat said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Write down what you expect to get out of the conference, and be as specific as you can. A list of specific questions you want answered during the conference might be a good start.
• Plan your day. Sessions are often offered several times. You may need them in a specific order. Some sessions may be more important to you than others. And don’t forget cancellations. You need a Plan B, too!
• Interact, interact, interact. Peers who have attended previous conferences can tell you how to make the most of your conference. They can help you select between similar sessions and point out the best speakers, and they might just have the answers to some of your questions.
Last but not least are a couple of tips for after the conference:
• Share what you learned.
• Provide feedback about the conference to your company.
Are conferences good education value or junkets? I hope they are a bit of both. Don’t forget that when employees go to a conference, they give up a few evenings with the family, maybe even a weekend (to save on those airfares). There is nothing wrong with having a little bit of fun, too!
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