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Some constraints need to be applied to this advice, otherwise the conference circuit becomes a huge waste of time that could easily be spent more productively i
by SkyMarshal 9y ago
Some constraints need to be applied to this advice, otherwise the conference circuit becomes a huge waste of time that could easily be spent more productively in the office:
1. Always support your employees speaking at conferences if they've been invited/selected, and make sure they rep your company on conf materials (which is usually the norm).
2. For merely attending the conference but not speaking, make sure there's a concrete justification. Examples:
- Someone you know will be at the conference is on your med-long term recruitment list, but no one at your company knows them in person yet. An impromptu meeting at the conference or afterparty along with a discussion of (and demonstration of your appreciation of) their work gets you on their radar much more effectively than a recruiter could.
- Similar rationale for people or companies you think might be valuable to collaborate or partner with.
- The conference presentations and/or workshop sessions deep dive into some topic of direct relevance to your core business, and provide enough info that employees who attend can apply it immediately upon returning.
3. Make sure the people you send are appropriate for the conference. Send your engineers to highly technical/academic conferences but not the business-oriented ones. Send your sales people to sales conferences. Etc. Be on the lookout for conferences that look highly technical but aren't actually.
4. Consider limiting the number of non-speaking conference attendances per year per employee that the company will pay for, around 2 to 4. This forces employees to choose carefully, prioritize the most valuable ones, and get as much out of them as possible.
5. Consider requiring the attending employees to provide a post-conference writeup detailing and informing other employees what they learned. Again this keeps them focused on extracting value rather than having a mini-vacation.