Kevin McDonagh on: How to attend a conference | Hacker News Reader

Kevin McDonagh on: How to attend a conference

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85 pointstomh-27 comments

The advice is really good for someone who wants to sell stuff. I kind of do comparable things without wanting to sell anything. I just like to hear what people are working on and what there plans are so I can stay in the loop of new developments. My goal for a conference is 20 business cards, not 200 to 400.

The talking to new people thing is pretty important. I am terrible at this. When I attended my first conference in 2008 a continent away I stood there in a room of 400 people literally not knowing anybody. That moment it dawned me that my boss just paid thousands of dollars to get me here so I better use this opportunity. Three years later, one of the first five people I talked to at that conference got me an H1-B visa and a six figures job.

There are related mistakes to make. I've been to so many conferences by now that I know a lot of people I want to hang out with at any given conference. It's easy to just keep talking to these people because that means I do not have to leave my comfort zone again. This is obviously bad because I will not meet new people that way. The same happens when you go to a conference with other people of your company and just stick together the whole time. Do not do this.

About this demoing thing. I used to demo our software a lot at conferences. However, our software was so popular in our niche market that people always asked me to see it. I don't think I ever pushed it on anybody. Demoing works perfectly fine if you just leave the main room and sit somewhere around the corner. Most of the conferences I attend are in hotels, so they have plenty of chairs everywhere.

What is not mentioned in the article is that you should try to be a speaker at conferences. It is not very hard to become a speaker and it puts you into the spotlight. This makes it much easier to make new contacts. Additionally, many conferences pay travel and hotel costs of their speakers which is awesome.

This is an insanely annoying behavior being on the receiving end and in fact will be decremental to your efforts if you do it to me. I go to conferences to talk to people in the community not to have to listen to pitches. This reminds me how the new york tech meetup turned from being a small venue cool place to present a project you are working on into a huge deal with vc's, service providers etc.

I agree, this kind of behavior at conferences is a HUGE turnoff. I always come home with a backpack full of cards that I promptly throw in the trash.

I guess it really depends on why you go to conferences, and which event you go to. I wouldn't pay the $1000+ price tag of some conferences just to "talk to people in the community". Free meetups achieve that just fine.

For a 1000 usd conference sure, but it's happening to the grassroots conferences and it's pretty annoying. My suspicion is that it's tied to the current funding craze.

The nice thing about big conferences is that everybody makes an effort to show up. People aren't going to fly in from all around the world to attend a free meetup, whereas they might for a big conference. So the big conferences are really the best chance you're likely to get a large part of the community together for a chat. At the free meetups you'll mostly just be running into the same few people who happen to live less than a 45 minute drive away.

Agree. While it's great to have a demo available if it pops up in a conversation, power pitching can be annoying. Especially if it's done by somebody who exhibits the traits of poor salesmen.

Regardless of whether you are trying to sell someone on your services, I feel that this is a very good piece of advice:

The majority will thank your asserted approach, and are looking forward to your conversation.

At a professional conference, oftentimes people are very happy to learn about what you do and to tell you about their own work and interests, but are too shy to initiate a conversation. Being proactive in this regard can be a very good way to make new contacts and to learn about what is going on in the field, even if you are not trying to eventually profit by signing them up as customers.

Although I am a normally shy person, I find that at academic gatherings such as conferences and workshops, I can very easily talk to people. "What do you work on? / What is your topic area?" is such an easy question and they are guaranteed to have a long interesting answer. Its rare to be in a spot to have so many people around you with common interests, it should be easy to get people talking.

I appreciate some greeting the behaviour of pragmatic conference attendance as suspicious. I'm not advocating talk as any substitute for credibility but if you have a good product and want attention you will have to get out there and in front of people.

Fyi, this is Kevin, the author :-)

I appreciate that. What is annoying is the sales pitch that you don't want to hear and have a hard time escaping from. If somebody has a good product that you have interest in, an in-person demo and opportunity to ask questions is great! Or a business that you're interested in working with -

Anyone got any good tips for attending a technical conference as a regular developer rather than someone looking for business networking?

Just talk to people. There are tons of interesting and friendly people at conferences. Even if you are shy or don't know anyone, just remember (especially at tech conference) a lot of the people there are just as shy/uncomfortable with 'networking' as you.

That's a good tip - thanks :)

Just look at the conference as a few days of hanging out with like minded people. Just have fun.

My conference knowledge is limited to three years of PyCon, the annual Python conference, but maybe it's helpful...

* Sit in the front row. You paid to be there, you probably traveled to be there, and you probably came because you wanted to learn something. Sitting in the back posting on HN is easy, but get up front and suck the brains out of the speaker. I like to write notes with pen/paper and save my laptop for later.

* If you liked a talk, go up and thank the speaker. Introduce yourself, maybe ask a quick question, then let them get on their way. You might have just found an interesting person to have dinner with when there's 500 random people in the hotel lobby trying to figure out where to eat.

* If no talks interest you in the given time slot, go roam around the hallways, the expo room, or grab a cup of coffee. See what people are up to -- everyone's there with a common set of knowledge/problems. I've learned a ton just from introducing myself to the other guy getting a cup of coffee and end up finding out he also works in the same field, doing the same stuff, we both know each other's companies, but we're solving our problems in totally different ways. Rather than killing time on the web for 30 minutes until the next talk, I just made another acquaintance to grab a beer with, and he made me think about what I'm doing at work.

* If there are development sprints, stick around and hack with people. At PyCon I believe we had 400 people the first day, and it was some of the most fun of the whole conference.

Thanks - really useful advice :)

1-minute demo / tablet pdf presentation

Huh? Do people really do this?

The last thing I want to do is demo anything about myself to a bunch of people hunching over a tiny screen in a crowded room. Even Hacker News would look like shit, no matter how well you tried to pull it off.

The next-to-last-thing I want to do is watch your demo, hunching with a bunch of other people over your tiny screen.

I have enough technology back at the office. I came here to meet people and get get to know them. So just shake my hand, share some cool stuff with me, and meet me for a drink later. I'll remember you much better that way.

[EDIT: Replaced "the Mona Lisa" with "Hacker News". Thanks, JshWright.]

The Mona Lisa might not be the best example... it _is_ a tiny picture in an (often) crowded room.

I assumed he was referring to casual one-on-one demos later whilst meeting for a drink, rather than many people crowded in a tiny room.

My experience of conferences is limited, but normally there's times when you're hanging around sharing drinks with people. It's one thing to say 'hey, I've built some really nice online calendar syncing software', it's another to pull out a tablet, load up your account in the calendar and quickly show him creating a couple of events and inviting people and get him seeing just how usable and fast it is.

In fact, I think this, more than anything, is the 'killer app' for tablets - as Tim Bray said, they're a 'shareable' computer, and being able to quickly demo stuff live is invaluable.

Actually, I'd argue that almost anything on an iPad looks pretty gorgeous. I do believe Kevin means demoing one-on-one. Novoda builds Android apps, so I guess he keeps screenshots and demos of those apps handy to show prospective clients.

Thats exactly what I do. Mind you, not usually within a crowded tiny room. Sometimes talk is just not enough to earn trust, people want to see evidence. A phone with the apps and shortcuts pre-installed is live demo hazard ridden but generally a tablet is a nice backdrop to conversation.

Huh? Do people really do this?

At some point in some conversation, somebody is going to ask "so, what are you working on?". You're going to end up trying to explain it one way or another.

For some things, a quick demo is worth a thousand words.

So it's not a question of 'if', but how much time are you going to waste futzing with your computer in the middle of a social conversation.

I prefer to have fun, learn things, then get very drunk afterwards. If I meet people along the way that's cool too.

Slightly related, where are these conferences and meetups in Europe? Are there just much less and are they smaller, or am I looking in the wrong places? Where should I look?

I find conferences through others in the same industry: http://plancast.com http://lanyrd.com Mostly it is just through the grapevine http://twitter.com and http://meetup.com, knowing lots of people within the industry helps.

"knowing lots of people within the industry helps."

Yeah but that's Catch-22, of course :)

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