How I pick conference talks to attend, more or less | Hacker News Reader

How I pick conference talks to attend, more or less

blog.actbluetech.com

13 pointsthe555 comments

Years ago, I used to attend tech conferences (Microsoft, San Francisco, etc) and also was a presenter (SAP, Oracle, Las Vegas, etc). With that said, I believe attending a conference in person is not as necessary these days because many of them will have recorded videos.

One can watch recorded videos at 2x or even 3x accelerated speed. One can also fast-forward past the slow typing, the slow talkers etc.

If one wants to go because of in-person networking opportunities, or physically touch some new gadgets (e.g. Microsoft Surface table, etc) that's understandable. However, if one's primary takeaway from conferences is quantity & density of tech information, the conference videos are much more effective for that. For example, O'Reilly sells video packages for something like $499 which is much less than the cost of the registration fee + travel expenses. Microsoft makes their conference videos free on channel9. It's more information for less money; a win-win.

"If one wants to go because of in-person networking opportunities, or physically touch some new gadgets (e.g. Microsoft Surface table, etc) that's understandable."

I'd go as far as saying that is what you should optimise conference attendance for.

I learn a lot from attending conferences. But it's mostly from the conversations I have with people, not from watching the sessions.

The opportunity to meet and spend time with really smart people is worth way more to me than sitting and watching talks.

When I first started going to conferences I used to spend a lot of time agonising over which session to go to at multi-track events.

These days I optimise my time for talking to smart folk I'd rarely get the opportunity to spend time with otherwise. Both speakers and attendees. I'd rather continue that hallway conversation and learn something new, than go along to the talk that I can often catch up on later.

I certainly agree about the value of online conference videos. I've paid for them in the past and often turn to them on the web when I'm looking for info or solutions. And yea +1 for watching at double speed, 3x... that's pushing it. ;)

That said, it's easier for me to motivate myself to actually consume talks if I attend a conference. Which is to say, I seldom make time to watch talks on my own. My problem, for sure, but I think of conferences as retreats for catching up on tech. So that, in addition to the the human interactions and the experiential zeitgeist that comes with attendance make conferences still seem worthwhile for me.

Talks being presented by one person is key. Large panels almost always lack narrative. Single person, or well rehearsed dual-speaker presentations usually have key takeaways that make the talk memorable.

SXSW is particularly bad when it comes to panel discussions. Typically one organizer has a few half-baked talking points while the other participants haven't prepared whatsoever.

Yea, I am a fan of the dual-speaker "ideas person + implementation person" format of talk. That often works well. As in:

"And now I'm going to hand off to my partner who can explain what's going on under the hood..."

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