Most conferences suck, but you should still attend them

I am sure you have attended conferences that you thought were a total waste of time. And those of you who have already registered are probably wondering if attending TiECON is worthwhile. Those of you who are yet to register, I am assuming, are also struggling about the value of attending. Let me just talk about the problems with conferences in today's information-rich economy, why you should still attend some of them, and how to make the best use of a conference.

Why do conferences suck?

1. Rarely a speaker has anything "new" to say. In most cases, they simply regurgitate what they have written in a book or a research paper or market research report or taught in the classroom - or even worse, someone in their office actually wrote their speech. Many speakers get there not because they are smart but because they have an impressive title.
2. A half-hour Google search will typically tell you more about a topic than listening to some "expert" pontificate.
3. Executives of public companies rarely share useful insights since their speeches have been extensively censored by their PR/IR departments.

So why do I still keep going to conferences?

To share knowledge. Let me clarify. If you think that you will gain pearls of wisdom in a presentation at a conference, think again. You might be better off spending some time on the web. But not everything that you want to know in life is on the web despite the advances we have made during last ten years.

Early on in my career, I worked at a management consulting firm that developed market strategy for corporations by actually talking to their customers. The premise was that despite availability of so much information just about 2% of the world's knowledge is actually documented and less that 0.1% actually searcheable. So where is the rest of the knowledge? In people's heads. While blogs enable more people to share what is in their heads, it is still a drop in the ocean.

In other words, unless you talk to people, you cannot tap into that knowledge. And that is what conferences allow you to do. I have actually found that I get more out of a conference in the hallways and dining halls than during presentations.

How to make the best of your time at conferences?

1. Do not miss a chance to speak to someone.
2. Do not hang out just with people you know.
3. Try to go to a panel discussion than a presentation - if you can choose. Since a panel discussion is free-flowing, you are more likely to hear things that you would not hear in a prepared speech.
4. Don't be afraid to ask questions or approach people. If you get "rejected," you still learned something - that person is not worth doing business with.

Related: Tips on networking

- By Jay Dwivedi
Photo courtesy: Morguefile.com