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Comment by hjnilsson | Hacker News Reader

Problem with online methods of learning, is it's much harder to take a day off your day job to watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts. Conferences are like a vacation from regular work, where you can focus on learning.

Also, the ability to see people in person, and discuss ideas with them directly is a very different experience from watching a YouTube channel. On a conference, you can meet new people, get job offers, meet new clients etc. directly. Conferences are far from only about educating the audience (author is entirely correct in the if all you care about is learning a new tech, it's more efficient to look up a tutorial on YouTube).

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> get job offers

That right there might be the big negative to companies sending people to conferences.

OR you find out that you work at a bad place.

When I worked in Student Life Department my Universtiy never sent anyone to the National Student Life Conference. They sent two from my office and whent they came back all kind of chaos happened. They found out we were overworked and underpaid.

They said when at a workshop of around 200 people that when asked what your position requiers from you the speaker brought them up to the front when everyone in their small group was freaking out at our workload. The next year I moved to the Library and my co-workers lasted one more year. They highered a new Vice-President of Student life and she rehired for every position and cleared house. Than for one year they had new titles for every position and switched back to the old system the following year. My former University never does Student Life Conferences.

P.S. The University was sued for unpaid Overtime by someone in the Student Life Department and went to trial. The judge ruled against the University without going to his chambers.

> OR you find out that you work at a bad place.

Funny story. A friend of mine (not in tech at the time) was a manager at some retail chain. He had done it for years, and was one of their top performers (clean up problem stores, turn them around, etc..). The company forced him to go to some 'be a better manager' training which is what set the light bulb off that even though he was making okay money, it sucked.

Fast forward a few months later where he quits, and goes back to school full time. Years after that, he's a good programmer and one of the best IT managers I've ever worked with.

On the other hand, if you work at a good place, your employer might want to send you to lots of conferences so you give them good publicity.

I now work at a great place.

> When I worked in Student Life Department my Universtiy never sent anyone to the National Student Life Conference. They sent two from my office and whent they came back all kind of chaos happened. They found out we were overworked and underpaid.

Is that really a negative?

The rest of the post shows it was awful for the employer. Obviously it isn’t actually a bad thing at all.

From the employers point of view? Absolutely!

In my experience, conferences are like a vacation where company expenses are wasted on food, and booze. If there is some learning in there, it's minimal. If you really want to hold a conference where people learn, how about we stop having them in Vegas, or some other warm weather, party destination.

> If there is some learning in there, it's minimal. If you really want to hold a conference where people learn, how about we stop having them in Vegas, or some other warm weather, party destination.

That seems to me to be problems with individuals and not the conference. I've seen people go to conferences and basically skip out on half (or more) of the sessions to go drink and party, and I've seen other people stay locked in through the whole conference learning, taking notes, and participating.

For a company it may be hard to discern who is who, but I'd argue that somehow who squanders an opportunity and misuses company resources is not the person you want on your team.

On the whole, I've probably learned more at conferences from talking shop over drinks than from the talks. Many talks are hastily put together and poorly presented. And many are simply above or below whatever my skill level for that thing might then be (which isn't too say they don't have value, but compared to actual conversations with new and knowledgable individuals...). Maybe "industry" conferences are different from academic ones though.

But don't worry, I've never actually went to a tech conference, exactly because of the huge cost combined with not usually wanting to go to most talks. So I'm not going to be that guy on your team! :)

Lots of people actually don't like Las Vegas as a conference location but it has the air links, the conference space, and the hotels.

Besides most conferences I see are in San Fran, San Jose, NYC, or Orlando. I've only seen large conferences in Las Vegas DefCon, CES, etc.

Those sound like pretty desirable destinations to me. That's the point here. People use this as vacation, I sure as hell have.

There's some level of bonding with the food, booze, and HOPEFUL talk about what you learned at the conference or how you might apply it to what you're working on.

And because you're on a trip, there is less distraction from dog, family, costs.

> how about we stop having them in Vegas, or some other warm weather, party destination.

That's already true for the vast majority of conferences out there, so it's easy to fill the year while ignoring the party-destination ones.

My vote is for North Dakota in winter. We'll see how many people sign up for "learning".

It’s those destinations that have the draw and therefore infrastructure (accessible direct-flight airports, conference locations, cheap hotels) that make conference prices viable.

If you can learn one new thing though it can be worth it.

Another point for conferences, IMHO, is that you might learn something you were not expecting to.

Here's a scenario that I've seen repeated quite often in conferences: You have two talks you are interested in with some free time in the middle, so you pick some other talk to go, if only to fill in the time, and end up discovering an aspect that you didn't even knew would be useful.

I think this is the key really, conferences are like a dedicated period of time you can totally devote yourself into learning without being pulled into the trappings of the daily grind.

I like conferences like Hope and Defcon because they aren't just informative..they are entertainment. Lets be honest, when you want to learn something, text will have a way bigger information density than a slide talk watered down to appeal to the poor taste of the public..

The first conference I ever attended was Defcon. I went for several years running and had a great time. Then I went to GDC (for work) and good lord, was it boring. I think I viewed the conference as more of a way to party with people who had similar interests than to actually learn. Defcon 101 even tells you not to go to too many talks.

Yes and no, while is it difficult to take time off for learning while at work, conferences as a learning tool have ridiculously low information density. Sometimes you get equal amount of information just from watching a couple videos during your lunch break.

> Problem with online methods of learning, is it's much harder to take a day off your day job to watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts. Conferences are like a vacation from regular work, where you can focus on learning.

Let's not kid ourselves. Everyone has their moments of slacking at work. All it takes is to replace time spent on cat pictures / HN while at work with a YouTube video / a podcast / a book. It's much easier than going to a conference.

On the other hand: It is much easier to watch YouTube videos (or podcasts) when you get home from work than getting vacation days.

> Also, the ability to see people in person, and discuss ideas with them directly is a very different experience from watching a YouTube channel.

It may also help to sooth some hot tempers, and one reason the Linux kernel conferences got started.

Taking an hour a day to listen to podcast over seven days is much more easier then taking day off work and is much more effective for learning then seven hours of listening one day.

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