What was your best experience at a conference? Worst?

I find my best conference experiences aren't the sessions themselves, but happen in the hallways or at optional side-events. Two conferences I've been to had skydiving as an optional activity, and I've found that's been a great way to make new friends & long lasting connections. Probably something about sharing a near-death experience together.

Most profitable experience was complaining in the hallway to another attendee about the previous speaker. We bonded over our griping & they became a client of mine a couple of years later (even though that wasn't an intention I'd had at the time).

Worst experience was a conference whose topics changed after I bought the tickets, flying halfway around the world for it, then struggling to stay awake for the final sessions of the day. I actually skipped the next conference day, but the attendees were great people & became good friends, so I still got my money's worth.

[Gratuitous plug: I maintain a list of conferences for indie developers, digital nomads and other bootstrapper/DIY types at http://indieconference.com/ I mainly use it as a list of justifiable excuses for travel.]

Worst: Smalltalk/networking. I'm pretty social (perhaps now), but it took a lot (attending conferences, 2 years+, once per month) to feel comfortable approaching and talking to strangers - and the crazy thing was I was in a buy-side position, not sell-side, so I was waiting for others to strike a conversation. Now, 10 years later after getting over the hump, it is much easier. The biggest thing for me was getting comfortable talking to a couple of really genuine sales people. And genuine meant getting to know them very gradually over these 2+ years.

1. If a conference organiser, it's really useful to not just put people in a room with canapes and drinks for a 'networking session' but to actually plan something that can connect people. An event where people can create meaningful conversation, not have flippant conversation.

2. If a participant, read-up by listening to some excellent podcasts by manager-tools.com - they cover tips in a far better way than I could do in a quick HN post (it's free, with a vast range of content, not just for managers).

The best conferences I had are the ones I barely attended any talks in them. Mostly because I met some very interesting people outside and the discussions/debates were more interesting, I've made some great friendships there.

My worst was actually a Droidcon, where most the talks were a word-by-word repeated versions I already saw on Youtube.

Best: Dr. Anita Sengupta from NASA JPL, keynote speaker at GOTO Chicago, speaking inspirationally about her work on Mars entry systems, and also about women in engineering. If I didn't have a family, I'd be very tempted to learn whatever I had to learn (and take the paycut I'd have to take) to work at NASA and be a part of something big.