Lame Excuses for Avoiding Conferences
I won’t know anyone
This situation will persist until you go to a conference and meet some people! Then, you’ll know some people at the next event. When I went to IPC in Frankfurt in 2007, I knew nobody but while I was there I met Derick, Sebastian and Zoe … and these three are now conference friends wherever I go! Lots of people at conferences are there on their own and will be happy to chat to you and find out who you are.
Its too expensive
While I’m lucky enough to have the support of my employers, Ibuildings, to send me to at least a couple of conferences per year, I’ve worked for plenty of other organisations that didn’t invest in their people. I think this is unforgivable but the reality is there are plenty of us in this situation. If you are paying your own way to these events I can appreciate that $1100 (~700 GBP) plus international flights plus a week in a hotel in Silicon Valley can seem pretty expensive if you want to get to ZendCon. But there are cheaper and closer conferences are available for most of us – so do your homework and get to something you can afford, even if you don’t do it every year. I’ve yet to get to a conference where the cost outweighed the benefit so in my view this excuse is invalid.
My employer won’t pay
No, well, see previous point. This is true for plenty of people and while I don’t have any numbers on people paying their own way – they do exist and they almost invariably move on to work for employers that do invest in their future. Do this for you, not for them.
I might have to talk to people/strangers
This is the excuse I hear the most often, or a variation on this. Actually you don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to. I went to an event last year and introduced myself to a guy who said “Hi, I’m James. I don’t have any social skills” and proceeded to say nothing further (his name may or may not have been James, I can’t really remember). To be honest I didn’t really think anything of it. Conferences are firstly about the technical content so if you want to come and get the technical sessions and then disappear again – that is your call. I can’t agree this is a good idea but there is absolutely no pressure to be the life and soul of the party, and in fact if you want to sit in the corner and mutter to yourself that is also fine … we’re all geeks after all! Nobody will judge you, in fact if you don’t talk to anyone probably nobody will notice you – just COME and you might be surprised :)
I haven’t been to a conference
Why not? Pick an event you like the sound of, join in the preconference hype (more about this in my post about making friends at a conference) and see how it goes. If you hate it, then don’t go to another. But don’t stay home immobilised by lack of experience, you’re missing out :)
Avoiding Conferences
Getting to a conference costs time, money and effort and if you don’t want to invest any of those things in your professional development then I respect your decision. However if you think you’d like to attend something, but you don’t know what to expect or you have concerns about what is expected of you, then try to put those fears aside and dive in! I think I’ve covered the things I hear most often – what excuses do you hear from conference-avoiders?
Another great way to mitigate conference expenses is speaking! ;) Find a local conference with a Call For Papers (CfP) still open and submit papers on topics in which you feel competent.
As I agree with some of these “excuses” I do think that there is actually way too much conferences one *has* to go.
There are many very good local conferences around the world, support them instead of wasting your money&time to cross the oceans to see the exact same faces :).
Matt: This is very true – although I would certainly recommend attending some conferences before moving on to speaking.
Pierre: That is an excellent point. It upsets me how many people in Europe think they need to go the US to get to a decent conference! There are great conferences in many places, and when you go locally you may meet people to meet up with again at something else local.
A great idea would be to build a social network for PHP conference attendees. There may already be one out there so excuse me if I go on a bit…
People would post up conferences, you could look at a the conference and you could see a list of people going. Maybe you could import your facebook or twitter contacts to see if you know any people who are going.
You could add social events and say you are attending them.
I think the main barrier of people going to conferences other than the financial one, is that many people don’t like going into social environments where they know no-one. This isn’t just isolated to PHP developers either ;) Perhaps some kind of gateway where conference attendees could interact before attending would be a great way of encouraging people to network *before* the conference.
Some solid ideas there, Dean. Somewhere to tie everything together and searching for friends amongst attendees would be quite useful. I’ve been to conferences where they use Madgex’s Backnetwork, which is fairly good for pre-conference socialising, but not free for organisers to use. Shame.
Thanks for your post. It gives me so much confidence to go to upcoming conference. Recently I tried to avoid them as much as possible, because I just coulndn’t face being among strangers somewhere in the world – I always need the feeling of going home in the evenings as my husband gives me so much strength. So yes, I feel much better now. :)
Dean: That’s great advice! I think a lot of the conferences have pages on facebook/upcoming and of course with twitter hashtags its fairly easy to make friends with people before you meet them, or at least have some people to introduce yourself to.
Stephanie: I’m pretty much the same, but I enjoy those few days away doing new things and then appreciate the homecoming all the more! I do hope you make it to an event and enjoy it :)
Thank you for this post. I have often conferences. Some are really cool but some so boring and thanks to you I will be able to avoid some of them !
Thank you
Why quote prices in USD and GBP in ( )? When will we free ourselves from American shackles…
Joe: I was quoting ticket price for ZendCon which is in dollars and added the conversion to sterling for completeneess. No American shackles here, I promise!!
I know I am late to the party, but I still wanted to say thanks for this post. I am new to development and also pretty old compared to most other people who are new (38), and I am quite a bit anxious about attending conferences and making conversation to strangers. I am now going to read your ‘how to make friends…’ post.
Are there any conferences in the UK that you can recommend specifically for for someone who is new to PHP/web development?
Sibylle: I’m horribly biased because I organise PHPNW but I do think it’s a great conference and very much aimed at the grass roots of the industry rather than a showcase of the top levels. This year’s event is on 8th and 9th October, is the best value for money in Europe IMHO, and you can find out more about it here http://conference.phpnw.org.uk. Feel free to get in touch if you have any specific questions, otherwise I hope I’ll see you there – be sure to come and say hello!
Thanks LornaJane! Just got myself an earlybird ticket :-) See you there!