This week, the founder of this web-site/blog, John Trigg, is at a conference. If you are there, you can speak to him about his expertise without paying any extra fee over your conference fee. There are many other people with expertise you can talk to at the conference, as well. Others can speak to you about what you know. Even when you work for a large company, it’s not always easy to get a wider perspective on what you’re doing or want to do. This is something best done at a conference where you’ll find both the experts at the topics you care about AND people that want to discuss these topics and learn more about them. Often, there’s an overlap. At the best conferences, everyone truly brings a little something but takes a lot back.
The reason I’m bringing this up, besides John being at a conference, is that I just happened to be discussing this very topic with one of my customers, yesterday. There’s one particular conference I attended, this year, which was so terrific that I just can’t stop talking about it. It was extremely collaborative. At the end, I learned a lot but also felt good that I was able to share my own knowledge to help others. I both gave and I got. One topic that I brought up to my customer is that there is a specific company that seems to show up at all the big conferences. I’ll call them Company X.
Company X is a large company and somewhat progressive in what they do. They have the resources and collective knowledge to do things that most of the other companies are still only talking about doing. If you happen to attend a conference that Company X attends, they will likely be giving a presentation and it will be a professional and informative session from which you will probably learn something. Additionally, Company X appears willing to network with other people to share their knowledge. I can only guess at their motives. However, I don’t believe they do it to brag or show-off but truly to share what they know with others and participate in and be a major force in the Informatics community. Although they are often ahead of most others, since they do have people attending so many conferences, I suspect this is part of why they are usually ahead of the rest of the companies – companies where employees might not attend a single conference in a year, let alone multiples. What I mean is that, by attending the conferences and really talking to the people at them, I think that Company X learns a lot about what others are doing and thinking about what they can use to help them gauge whether they could do something different to be “better” or “more competitive.”
And so, to stay ahead of the curve regarding the biggest issues in our industry and to find ways to speak directly with others that are facing similar issues to your own, nothing can replace attending a conference. And by attending one in-person rather than attending something like a webinar, you might or might not be surprised to find that you form stronger bonds with people and potentially make long-term contact with whom to share ideas. The value you get from attending an excellent conference much more than makes up the cost of attending.
