Conferences: Valuable? Or the Spawn of Satan?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Keith Cronin wonders: <<Do you (the average List member) go to conferences
regularly? Do you only go if your company foots the bill? Is it a tough sell
to get your company to give you A) the time off and B) the money (if
applicable)?>>

I go to the STC conference roughly every 2 years, both because my boss and I
take turns abusing the education budget and because (despite my defence of
the conference) I don't think it's something I need to do annually. There
are other education opportunities that are relevant, and I can't always
attend both conferences and training; this year, for example, I'll probably
do some Flash training or delve deeper into some of the depths of HTML via
Dreamweaver. FERIC is happy to provide time off for training, and will
provide adequate budget to fund it.

<<Do you go for your interest in specific topics? Or for the networking
opportunity? (This answer might be best given in a proportion/percentage) 5.
Are the topics well-chosen?>>

With STC, I try to sample a wide smorgasbord of topics; I strive for a
mixture of things that are important to me to keep up to date on (about
30%), things that I don't know anything at all about (about 20%), and things
that relate directly to my job (about 50%). I don't always find the topics
well chosen or well presented, but it's rare for me to find more than one
time slot per day when there's nothing interesting going on. Even then, I
can hit the display room and check out new software or scope out other
people's manuals.

Networking is certainly a fun bonus, but I find that it's most
_educationally_ effective at the networking lunches (I usually host a table
on a couple days) because you get to discuss a specific topic in some depth
for an hour with 8 or more others who share your interest. The
"progressions" are also excellent. Here, there are (say) half a dozen tables
at which each host discusses a single point under a broader topic. You get
in-depth discussion most times, and the chance to explore the gritty
details.

At other conferences or training sessions, I may be going for a specific
reason, such as learning everything I can about a new help technology. But
when I have that need, I usually don't go to a general conference like STC;
I look for specific training sessions. And perhaps that's one reason I
disagree so strongly with Andrew Plato about STC; I go to learn entirely
different things than technical skills, since I learn my technical skills
elsewhere.

<<6. Are there major and obvious gaps, where subjects that should be
addressed are glaringly absent? 7. Are the topics explored to the correct
depth, given time constraints, audience demographics, etc.?>>

As others have noted, technical details are largely lacking, and some talks
are quite disappointing. If you don't know the speaker, you don't have any
idea whether the talk will be shallow or really profound. I've found two
tricks that greatly increase the likelihood of picking good talks. First,
have the conference proceedings shipped to you beforehand so you can check
out the paper the speaker submitted; that often (not always) gives a good
idea of the content, and skimming the proceedings often reveals cool stuff
that you'd never guess from the talk's title.

Second, try to show up 5 minutes early at a chosen talk and have a backup
session ready; if you're early, you can grab a handout, scan it, and decide
whether to stay, and if you choose to leave, you've still got a couple
minutes to run to the other session. I've occasionally blown off a session
too if it looked unpromising, and run off with a friend or colleague to chat
instead.

<<8. Overall, do you find such conferences worthwhile? And a final, more
brass-tacks question, applicable if your company pays
your expenses: 9. Would you spend your own money to attend?>>

Not every conference is worthwhile. That's doubly true if, like me, you
spend an inordinate amount of time reading the journals and keeping up with
the field; the "new things to learn" factor decreases a fair bit, though
it's still profitable to see how other people are dealing with the same
problems I face or the variations on a theme in how they apply solutions.
Economically speaking, sticking to the literature might make more sense if I
had to pay the bill myself, particularly since I can now contact most
authors by e-mail to discuss their research. But as working vacations go,
you can't beat a conference, and I'd still attend every couple years if I
had to pay the shot myself.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

Hofstadter's Law--"The time and effort required to complete a project are
always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's
Law."


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