Rating a Mac conference

My customers are mostly large advertising agencies, and I've been to numerous conferences and expos for that industry. It's unbelievable how many people go to one of these things (many of which have vanishingly little content) and then rave about how wonderful it was.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07732>

With that in mind, I've distilled conference evaluation down to two simple questions:

1. WHAT DID YOU LEARN THAT YOU DID NOT KNOW BEFORE THIS CONFERENCE?

This question forces a hard choice between two natural inclinations: a) the desire to justify the conference cost, and b) the desire to never admit to not knowing something.

2. WHAT WILL YOU DO DIFFERENTLY BACK IN THE OFFICE AS A RESULT OF THIS CONFERENCE?

If it makes no difference in your business, then what is the point? Well, the answer for many conferences is smoozing: getting to chat with old pals. That's nice, but this forces one to assess what the true cost and value is of the conference.

At least for conferences in the advertising industry, it's remarkable how seldom attendees can come up with good answers to either of these questions!

-- Kevin Killion

I'd add (for attendees) Takeaway: Did you leave the conference with anything useful?

If I return to the office with a conference with a CD of presentations and put it on an internal department website, that's very useful for the people who sent me (the Black Hat conference apparently provided these to attendees).

If I get a bound book (USENIX provided these to all attendees), that's easier to read (although easier to share), and helps me see what I missed in conflicting sessions.

USENIX seems to go one better by putting papers online -- restricted to members for a year, and publicly available after that.

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/

Chris -- Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/> Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

Adam's started a useful thread here for folks like us who live in a different part of the world from the main North American conference venues. We pay more for our airfare, spend 12 hours crossing the Pacific Ocean then need time to recoup from jet lag. So when travelling from NZ to a conference like FileMaker's Developer Conference last year, then I needed to obtain information, insights and goodies that I could not have obtained from books or the web.

For me, the insights were most valuable. They ranged from (a) seeing the new direction of the product, (b) seeing the talent that's behind the product and the management of this company, and (c) learning of the company's financial health.

These criteria won't apply to every Mac Conference but I emphasise that they were insights which I would not have gleaned without attending. They certainly fulfil both of Kevin Killion's criteria but I find that giving issues such as these a numerical score is far too subjective.

Of course all the other things like venue, facilities etc. need to be in place but I'd be surprised if there are any professional conferences now which cannot get their housekeeping up to scratch.

But no doubt YMMV!!

John Wolff Hamilton, New Zealand dtopcompwave.co.nz

> 2. WHAT WILL YOU DO DIFFERENTLY BACK IN THE OFFICE AS A RESULT OF
> THIS CONFERENCE?
>
> If it makes no difference in your business, then what is the point?
> Well, the answer for many conferences is smoozing: getting to chat
> with old pals. That's nice, but this forces one to assess what the
> true cost and value is of the conference.

As the co-owner of a small business, I've noticed that sending
employees to conferences and trade shows often boosts their overall
motivation and makes them come up with great ideas about how to improve
our own processes and products.

So, in a way it is related to the question of what we do differently
after attending the show, but it's hardly possible to measure this
aspect in actual Dollars (or Euros, for that matter ;) ). Still, it
does bring quite a bit of value to the company as a whole.

Jochen.

> Adam's started a useful thread here for folks like
> us who live in a different part of the world from
> the main North American conference venues.

Although anyone collecting scores based on the suggested rating system would
need to be careful about this.

For example, in the "Cost/value" category, Adam reminds you to include
travel costs in the calculation. This highly skews the category to
conferences that are close - scores for the same conference for people
attending from different locations will be quite different. It would be
more useful (as a 'should I go' tool) to have an idea of the rating of the
conference irrespective of the travel costs, and then compare the
(universal) rating to your (personal) costs of attending.

=Tony Meyer