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Comment by preordained | Hacker News Reader

I hear you on almost everything...I love tinkering, hacking, reading, pondering, side "experiments" (I think "project" is a bit grandiose for what I hack on from time to time)...but holy hell do I hate conferences and things like that. I just don't get it...most every conference I've seen could have been summed up in a quick article or powerpoint...and I don't get any personal thrills from the "live experience". That, and this is mine own super biased experience, every developer I met who was a conference nut was that guy who was obsessed with the "new shiny", who never seems to do any work that isn't greenfield and leaves others to deal with the fallout of various short-lived infatuations...yah, I'm not bitter, heh...but I'll be damned if these guys don't love their conferences;)

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I'm from another field, but I love love love conferences. It's like an annual reunion of my peers, days of detailed talks and better questions, and vast amounts of network chat that I find interesting and valuable.

I see a lot of anti-conference comments here on HN, and I don't get it. Every week I've spent at a conference has been highly illuminating and motivating, and recharged my fascination. This is all followed by presentations to the larger team of what I learned so that the benefits of the experience were broadly dispersed.

3-5 days in a new city seems like a huge win with the professional benefits. What am I missing?

>It's like an annual reunion of my peers, days of detailed talks and better questions, and vast amounts of network chat that I find interesting and valuable.

I think that's the key. Conferences are only fun if you can actually have a meaningful connection with the people, if they are genuine peers with similar interests instead of just a bunch of people there for their own self-aggrandizement, sneaking around the corners trying to catch someone saying "dongle". Or the ones mainly frequented by socially inept nerds, like Fosdem.

So conferences can often be pretty hit-and-miss.

> 3-5 days in a new city seems like a huge win with the professional benefits. What am I missing?

I'm the tech presence at many of my companies industry conferences. The city the conference is in makes no difference because I'm there to meet people and schedule accordingly. Current customers, potential customers, tech people from partners and even competitors are all very valuable interactions.

For me, conferences have turned into a cost effective place to meet in person all of the people I deal with remotely.

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