Conferences I Attend

While there are plenty of conferences to select from, most of us are in about the same situation, regardless whether we’re customers, consultants or software vendors. For most of us, even if the conference budget fairy came along and dropped a wad of money into our conference budget for the year to give us enough money to attend whatever we wanted to attend we still couldn’t go because we’d end up taking so much time off work that we’d get nothing done and have no time to apply whatever we learned at the conferences.

My Criteria
First of all, anyone that is running a conference thinks theirs is the absolute best. Like the rest of us, they’re selling something and if they didn’t really believe it to be the best, it would be hard to sell it. In any case, I think most of us can learn at least something from every conference we attend as they all have at least some good kernel of information to glean.

I look at all the things I COULD attend. If it’s the type of event where I have to wait to be invited, I cross it off the list if I don’t get invited. Also, I consider how much time and money I’m willing to allocate for the year. From there, I pick the number of conferences that fit into that time and financial budget.

I look for the events that provide me with the most useful and interesting information that relates to what I do. If a conference has activities that are especially beneficial, maybe some type of discussions between attendees on specific topics of interest, then that pushes an event higher on my list, as well.

That still leaves me with a few too many to attend so I’ve added the criteria that I no longer attend events where I’m not invited to at least participate in some way, such as chairing, being on the advisory board, speaking, etc…

Types of Conferences
I try to average one major laboratory informatics event and one large consulting-oriented event per year. I call it an average, because some years when I see more especially good opportunities, I attend more events, and lean years with fewer events that I think will be beneficial, I might not attend any for the year.

Notice that I didn’t mention user group meetings. Often, when user group meeting time rolls around, my customers will assume that I’ll be attending. Many of them believe that, with all the users there of the system I work on, that that would be a great place for me to network for business. First, and I know I’m getting a little mushy about this, but I find it incredibly touching that my customers care that much about my business and me and finding more work to do. It’s the thought that counts and I appreciate it.

However, outsiders aren’t necessarily invited to software vendors’ user group meetings. If they ARE invited, they’re almost never allowed to network for business. After all, the software vendor is paying for that event and does actually deserve whatever business comes out of it. On top of that, all the interesting news that comes out of the user group meetings gets filtered back to everyone else because, if it’s so terribly exciting, everyone is talking about it. Even beyond that, some of the software vendors just send me e-mails when they have exciting news to impart. Thus, in no way would this be a good use of my time. For those of you who have seen me at user group meetings during the period where I’ve been running my business, it was because I was both invited and was hoping to do some business development with that software vendor (see, doesn’t “business development” sound so much better than “sucking up”?!  ;-)    ).

An Admission
I’ll admit that if I think a lot of people I know will be at a conference, I sometimes attend it, anyway. That’s why I occasionally show up at Pittcon, because I know I can stroll through the laboratory informatics area and run across quite a few people I know. I enjoy that and I don’t get many of the opportunities.

Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/