Conferences 102

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Conferences 102 | Compiler

About the episode

We all know what industry conferences are for. You see the talks, you do the networking, you get the swag. Anything else? Well, yes, actually.

In our second episode on tech conferences, we cover how to make the most of attending them. How can you prepare? What do you do in the moment? And how do you use that experience after you return to the office?

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It's an exciting time in tech, one that comes twice a year. It's conference season again. Last year, we shared some strategies on submitting talks to conferences. This time around we're covering what to do when you actually get there, speaker or not. I guess the crux of it or the notion boiled down is taking one opportunity that you've been given, so that golden ticket, and thinking of a myriad of different ways of how do you make that into much more than just you going to an event and having that to be finished and then over. So you're going to a tech conference. You're going to get to hear knowledgeable people share what they're working on, see what companies are releasing and collect some sweet, sweet swag. But those alone don't make going to a conference into a golden ticket. With a little bit of preparation and effort, you can turn your conference attendance into an even bigger boost than an educational field trip. What's better than that? Well, you're about to find out. This is Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat. I'm Johan Philippine. And I'm Angela Andrews. We go beyond the buzzwords and jargon and simplify tech topics. Today, we cover how to make the most out of attending tech conferences. Angela, you go to quite a few conferences, right? I used to, but I get to attend a few here and there. How many would you say you go to in a year? Maybe one or two. Okay. But I love them. I have a whole collection of conference badges. If you're ever on a call with me, you're going to see them displayed prominently in the background. I am very, very proud of having attended upwards of 20, maybe 30 conferences in my career. Oh, wow. That's a lot of badges. That's a lot of travel. It is a lot of badges and I wear them very proudly. Do you put them all on at once? All like Mr. T. Yes, every last one of them. On top, on top, on top. Yes, I love conferences. That's awesome. So much energy. Well, let's go over the very basics for our audience. Tech conferences—they have a fairly uniform structure with a few notable exceptions, but most of the time, you have the keynote addresses that almost everyone attends. It's the big announcements that the organizers put on to be the big draw for the conference. Then you have the breakout sessions, a series of talks handpicked to fit that conference's theme. And all the while those are going on, there's also usually an exposition floor where the conference's sponsors will have booths and staff on hand to answer questions and promote their products and yes, hand out some swag. Yes. How else do you get your wardrobe unless you get the swag? Your wardrobe, your mugs, your fun little fidgets and— All the things. What else would I wear if I didn't have free conference t-shirts? Now, the first part about making the most out of your conferences is being prepared. What can you do before you go that'll get you ready for success? That all depends on why you're going. Sharon Gai from the top of the show is a regular on the conference circuit. She joined us last year with some advice on how to get a talk accepted. These days, she hosts a podcast and gives keynote speeches. She shared a few of the different kinds of people who go to conferences. Now, you get people in sales, marketing, developer relations, all of that, and they're representing the company and laying the groundwork for those deals and making that money for their company. You have people on the procurement side who are looking for some help to solve their problems. They're the belles of the ball who are there looking to spend some money and build those relationships and possibly buy something to help them out. You have some people going to keep up with the state of the industry, investors looking for new opportunities, people scoping out the competition or perhaps potential partners to team up with. You also have students or recent graduates who've just entered the field. Hello, we see you. You're the ones who are trying to figure out what's what in the industry. Now, these are some of the more common reasons people go to conferences. Whoever you are and whatever your goal, realize that not everyone gets to go and you have that opportunity. I think be really grateful that you got that spot. It means that the company sees something in you that made that investment on behalf of you. If someone else is making that investment in you to go, you should do the same. Make an investment in yourself. So before you go, come up with a plan. Angela, is that something you typically used to do when going to conferences? Yes. Coming up with a plan ahead of time, figuring out your goals? Yes. So what I would do is you look at the list of sessions and you plot and plan. You sign up for or bookmark or whatever the language is, and you don't always get to go into the sessions that you want to get into. They could be super popular. There's no room for you. It's almost like a first come, first serve to be perfectly honest, but you should go with a plan, what your primary first choice, second choice. If you get the conference app, look at the map and see where things are lined up. You may have to move things around in proximity. You want to be able to get from one session to the other pretty easily. I remember this huge conference back in San Francisco that I loved, but you have to just haul a-- to another building, and it was just so much pressure to get to your next session and I tried to be smarter about it. And the night that you get in, look and see where things are and maybe have that plan in place. If this one doesn't work out, what else could you do? Coming up with a plan, absolutely fantastic. Putting that plan on paper, also a very, very good idea. It is. More and more, I've been working with a calendar just so I don't drop the ball on one or more things that I'm trying to remember. I'll take a look at the topic lineup in advance and create calendar invites for different topics that I want to make sure I don't miss. That's Ryan Jarvinen, and he's a developer advocate here at Red Hat. He goes to a lot of conferences—on average, one to two a month. So he's got this down almost to a science. His first tip is to make yourself a calendar. We were just talking about looking at all the topics and the sessions and figuring out which ones you want to go to. Put those down on paper, put those down on a calendar. Figure out which talks, workshops, and other sessions you'll learn the most from, and then you'll have somewhere you can refer to really quickly so that you know where you're going to go and how much time you have in between each of those sessions. That'll likely mean making choices too. While most conferences have tracks by topic to avoid similar sessions overlapping, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to attend everything that you want to. Now, that'll keep you busy. In addition to filling up your calendar to optimize your learning potential, make sure you leave some time in there to recuperate. Calendaring out some downtime as well. One thing I end up finding as I attend more conferences is I love how much it gives me a social recharge interacting with all these people, but also, it can be really depleting at the same time having to keep conversations going all day. And so sometimes I have a downtime lunch where it's just me on my own going out, where I take some time to call my wife and kids and handle home life during the middle of the day. Angela, I saw you nodding there along with Ryan's advice. Yes, you have to take a breather. So you're meeting new people, you're learning new things. You're hustling from one place to another, and it is exhausting. I have to agree. You do have to do yourself a favor and schedule time just to be, whatever that looks like to you. You really need to make that a priority when you're attending conferences or they'll wear you down, they'll wear you down. Conferences, they're long, right? They are. Breakfast is at 8:00. This last conference I went to and I'm like, "Where do they do that?" And so 9:00, you're off and running and it's a lot. So self-care during a conference is critical. Yeah, it's no use taking the time to go to a conference if you're just going to exhaust yourself. Exactly. And then be unable to remember anything that you're there to learn. So take some time to plan for some time to yourself and make sure that you don't burn out. Okay, so you have a goal, you have a game plan. That's right. Time to put it into action. You're at the conference. Don't panic, and remember who you're there for. You're there for yourself, but for a lot of you, you're also there as a representative of your company. Sort of thinking of the interests of that company. So say if you are at Red Hat and then you are a developer and you met X, Y, and Z, I don't know, IT manager from whichever financial company. If you are sitting right beside them or you just happen to make that connection, think about who else in your company, so at Red Hat, would benefit from that connection that you just made. A lot of us have seen people going maybe a little bit too wild for their own good, and that reflects poorly on their organization. That's something you're likely to hear from the know-before-you-go talk from your own company before you actually go to that conference. Right? Yeah. What I wanted to bring up here from Sharon is what she's talking about is a little bit different. It's about keeping an open eye out for people who could help your coworkers who couldn't necessarily be there with you. Ryan shared some straightforward advice for retaining what you learn from breakout sessions, but with an element that I didn't expect. Yeah, I would take notes. I would also take screenshots with your phone if there's any major takeaways you have, screenshot it, post it on social media, @ the speaker and say, "Hey, this was a great point," and introduce yourself. And depending on what your level of expertise is, you could try to team up with that speaker at future events. I'm so used to taking notes by hand that I probably would just never have thought to just take a picture with my phone. What? You don't see all the people in front of you standing up with their cameras? I do that too, and it is a great snapshot of what's being said. And I'm an avid social media sharer of things, and he does have a great point. Now, he did say one thing that I never thought of. What's that? Maybe you can introduce yourself, which is something that I try to do sometimes, but if it's something that's in your wheelhouse, why not team up and do a talk at a future event? I'm thinking about an opportunity that I missed, that this really fits into that bucket. Now, she and I are very friendly now and we speak quite frequently, but boy, if I would've struck when the iron was hot, we could have done something together and I never thought of that. Yeah. The other thing that he mentioned that I'm not very good at, you just said that you were pretty good at, but it's using social media very, very actively while you're there at the conference. Oh, yeah. It keeps you engaged. People can say, "It's a distraction. You're tweeting during a session," but for those that aren't there, they're getting a glimpse into what you're doing and you're sharing with them. So I think it's a small price to pay to be able to share this content, that little screen print that I may have taken and adding the speaker and giving my two cents. That's invaluable to yourself. You can go back and look at your timeline and what caught your attention most. I have a lot to say about this, but I'm going to let our guests go on this tangent and I'm just going to follow along. Yeah, both Ryan and Sharon mentioned it several times in our conversations. Yes. And social media was a thing that came up quite a bit. Like you said, yeah, it's a great way of sharing your experience with others who can't be there. It's a great way of keeping your own timeline of, oh, this is what I've learned and at what time, but if you're following the conference hashtags, you're going to be able to learn a few things that you might not have otherwise known about. I would do a lot of sharing when you're there. So think about posting on LinkedIn after you've just seen a session that was really cool or really inspiring, or you've learned just even one or two things with a photo and sharing that, and it functions very similar to Twitter. So if you're at a certain event and you're hashtagging the same hashtag that everybody else is posting about, you can also connect with other people that are posting about the same thing, or finding just other people that have your interests or the same interest as you. All right, so you've gone to your breakout sessions, you've taken notes, you've shared your thoughts online, it's time to hit the expo floor. There's two points of approach I would say, for getting the most out of the expo hall. There's almost always an opening night booth crawl activity where you can go from booth to booth and everyone's fully staffed usually during the booth crawl. So that's a peak opportunity point for going out and chatting it up with folks. The hall crawl is where it's at. Oh my goodness. So this is your opportunity. You get to talk to people who work for these companies, find out more about their product, meet people that you find interesting depending on who you're talking to. There's definitely that swag element—why else would you be there if you're not going to get some of that swag? And also, these could be potential employers. That's right. So a conference is an opportunity to network, network, network. And Ryan mentioned this too in our conversation where a lot of the times there's going to be a job board there in that expo hall. So if you're out there in the market, snap a picture and check out those opportunities. All right, so we're chatting it up. We're meeting new people, we're hearing all the pitches, getting that swag. We have the breakout sessions in the expo hall. These are the main official activities that are put on by our conference organizers, but there's usually a whole other informal track that takes place in parallel to all of these. It's called the hallway track. My favorite. Oh my gosh, that's the conference within the conference. Come on, tell me more. Well, Ryan's going to share a little bit more about why it's his favorite part of the conference too. Yeah, so the hallway track is my favorite part of any conference because I get to catch up with old friends, but also, it's—if you're on social media—a decent way of meeting new folks that are posting online. You might see someone say, "Hey, I found this great topic that's coming up at noon. I'm headed to this one next." If you happen to see that person in the hallway, you can say hello, ask them about the topic, learn a bit more. It's all the stuff that happens between the sessions and the conference's hallways, the side conversations further exploring the topics from breakout sessions, the networking, the catching up, that's all super valuable, right Angela? It is, invaluable. So what makes it your favorite part of the conference? It's unstructured, but the opportunity to meet people, like-minded people, to chat with someone over mid-break coffee or between break coffee and snacks and while you're waiting in line for a session and someone's waiting with you and you guys get to talking about things and it is very organic. It's the place that you get to actually meet people. You can't really talk to people while you're in the sessions because that would be rude and it's that great opportunity just to organically meet and talk about what you are both getting out of this conference. And usually, it's a lot of the same things, but some people are walking away with gems and they're willing to share them with you. I love it. It's a great chance to connect with peers, with the speakers, and with potential mentors who can show you the ways of— Exactly. How to navigate the industry a little bit better. It's spontaneous, right? We were just talking about that. It's just unscripted, but it's hard to plan for that. So keep an eye out when you're traveling the halls or when others are tagging on social media. There might just be an unscheduled opportunity to learn. So whether it's in the hallway track, during a session, at a meal, there's often a chance to connect with people. Networking can yield a lot of good results for future job searches of course, but also just to become resources for each other. It's likely you're going to be facing similar challenges to those that someone else has already conquered or maybe they might get stuck where you've already found a solution. The point is that most people are probably in the mindset that they have something to learn and they're pretty willing to connect at a conference. People, when you go to conferences, they're very open to meeting new people. That's the exact reason why a lot of people go. And so I've had a ton of people— I've also messaged a bunch of people also whenever I go to a conference where they wanted to link up because we're there. Even though we're a tech-savvy group of people, we haven't all quite figured out how to easily share contact information. There's that awkward moment of, do I give you my email? Do I give you my number? And so I've seen a lot of people do this and I've started to do it as well, is you can get a QR code of your LinkedIn profile. And then if you save that as your homepage, as your wallpaper on your phone, then whenever somebody wants to connect with you, you just have to tap and then show them the QR code and then they automatically scan it and it's just a very easy way to connect with each other. Easy. She is onto something. That is the bee's knees. Of course, there are other ways to connect. There are other apps and abilities that will allow someone to send their contact information to you, but this one's such an easy one. By all means, be ready and having it as your home screen. That way, you don't even have to go fishing through your pictures or whatever. Exactly. It's so smart. It's great. Super smart tip. Thanks, Sharon. Yeah, I actually just did this myself after the interview in anticipation of my next conference. Awesome. So I have that picture ready. It's not my wallpaper yet because I like having my kid on there, but when I do travel, it'll be there. Exactly. I like that too. All right, so the conference is wrapping up. You've likely gotten a hold of all the swag you can handle, or maybe you haven't. You've been too busy going to sessions and hanging out in the hallway. It turns out the end of the conference might just be the best time to trawl the expo hall for goodies. So if you're just going around specifically to pick up freebies, the end of the show is frequently a good time to pick up all the leftovers. So if you're looking to stock up on your wardrobe or grabbing things for your kids/co-workers/boss, hint, hint, take a lap on the last day when the booth staff are trying to figure out what to do with all the extra stuff they don't want to ship back to their offices. You are doing them a favor by taking that crap off their hands. So I have two great tips I want to share. Oh, please. I always carry a flat duffel in my suitcase. I usually don't check a bag because why if you're only going for a couple of days? But there's so much swag that you cannot get it back into your carry-on. So if you have that flat duffel and you open it up and you toss in all your goodies and check that one bag, well, you're good to go. Another thing is they have these great little neck pillow thingies where you can stuff all your socks and t-shirts and plushies and whatever, and just wear it like a neck pillow while you're on the plane. Ah, clever, Easy peasy lemon squeezy. I have one of those. I carry both of those with me every time I travel. That's fantastic. I love that. Then you're on your way home, but don't think that means that you're done. After the break, we'll talk about some of the things you can do after the conference that can bring lasting results. So what do you do once you get home? Wash your t-shirts before you wear them. Do that load of laundry. It's time to reflect. Usually the main takeaway is going to be what have you learned and have you met anyone new? I think those things are the main things that haven't changed over time. I'm still looking for new ways to engage with technical concepts, and the nice thing about software is it's always evolving and it's always changing, so there's always something new to learn. Look back on your experience. What did you learn? Who did you meet? What was surprising? What have you unblocked for yourself? Hopefully you took good notes. Ryan mentioned how doing so even after one of his very first industry conferences helped him solve a technical problem he was stuck with. I was at a Rails conference, RailsConf in—I think it was 2008. And that one really was one of the first big ones that I attended after college. And I remember picking up a lot of technical new approaches to problem-solving that I hadn't really considered before. And I think it really helped me, going back to work, approach things in a whole different way. And so that's always one of the takeaways I want to have for other people. Give them new ways of approaching problems that are valuable to them, something they can bring home and really benefit from in their work life. Is that something you've found to be a consistent benefit of going to conferences, Angela? It really is. The stuff that you learn, you can take it back and implement, that falls into your wheelhouse. Being that invigorated by being educated and wanting to rush back and do the thing or implement the thing or try the thing, that stays with you for a while. And I do agree. Taking great notes of sessions is helpful, and if you're talking about sharing it with your colleagues, why not write a blog post for all the sessions that you've attended, your little takeaways? Partner it up with some of the screen prints that you've taken on your phone. And I really do believe that conferences are a great opportunity to learn to solve a problem back in the office and become the office hero. You're the one who got to go and now you came back with all of this great new information to share and improve the team as a whole. That's really invaluable. I guess the silver lining or the underlying benefit to that is when you are in a role of knowledge-sharing within your company, people see you as a point of almost authority. Maybe you are the most junior person on the team, maybe you have the least experience. Maybe you're completely new, but because you are the one that's doing that sharing, people will start to pay attention to you. And if you are working in a huge company, you'll notice that people that you've never met before from another completely different team, couple of floors above you, below you, will start to notice you, especially if you start to do a larger recording, making that available to people all over the company. You've done the legwork, do the next easy step that will get you noticed and have people come to you for answers. And if you don't have the answers, you might've connected with someone who might have them. Win-win. Posting your ruminations online can continue the conversations long after the event is over. Sharon recalled one particular conversation she got tagged into. It was just thoughts they had in their head and they were trying to make sense of certain things, and then he tagged me in this, and then I started commenting back. And I think that's something that is really great because they're not just regurgitating content. They're not just saying, "These are the things that I heard," but they synthesize the content and then had their own thoughts or ideas that came from it, and then brought back people to use as a discussion forum. I think that's a really healthy way of combining both conferences. So in-person learning experiences with some sort of discussion forum or communication tool after that you can discuss what you have learned, and combining the two together. That seems to me like a really great way to just continue connecting with people who were at the conference. You don't just get their information. You're fostering relationships with people that you can then continue over time and benefit from, and everyone benefits from it. But more than that, you're not just saying like, "Oh, here's what was going on at the conference." You're also showing that you're able to think about it and have a conversation about it and go into further detail, and explore what was shared in a further context than within the walls of that conference. I agree 100%. That "what next?" after the conference is over is so important. It keeps going. That content still gets put out there by you, by other attendees. You're sharing it with folks online or back in the office. And I think to keep that conversation going is really the best way, especially if you're pivoting or you're new to tech and you've just become a thought leader of sorts on a particular topic. That'll get you noticed. So always be thinking forward, always doing it out in person and out loud is really helpful for you personally as well as professionally. One thing that you can do that speakers sometimes appreciate is to provide feedback, which they don't always get. If they have feedback for me that they're comfortable posting online, I like getting some people posting screenshots of different slides if there was something that was really meaningful for them. That's a nice way to get that feedback. Feedback is a blessing, especially if it's delivered kindly even when it's constructive criticism. All right. Let's recap what we learned today. Okay. First thing to do if you're going to a conference, plan ahead, make a schedule. Plan, plan, plan. Yes, that is key. Make sure you plan some downtime for yourself as well because you don't want to get overwhelmed. When you do get there, take some notes, make some connections. Share on social media. I think we've gone over that one a few times, but let's just say it one more time. Share on social media and really take advantage of all the informal aspects of that convention. And when it's over, don't just sit on what you've learned: write it up, share it, and keep that conversation going. And one bonus—reach out to people that you've connected with. I have made some of the best connections at conferences, and one in particular I'm looking at right now. Thank you, Johan, for meeting me at that conference all those years ago. It was a pleasure. It really does matter, staying connected to folks that you've met at conferences. You never know what could come of it. And I get to work with the amazing Johan because of it, so it's pretty awesome. All at a conference, right? All at a conference. This was such a great conversation. I could have talked about this on and on and on. There were so many great tips. Sharon and Ryan are just gems. They were just spilling all the good news, and we want you to share what you learned. Or if you have your own tips that you use when you go to a conference, you got to share them with us. Hit us up on our socials @RedHat. Don't forget to use the #CompilerPodcast. We really want to hear what you like about conferences, some of your favorite conferences, any great tips that you have, share them with our listeners. We want to hear them. And that does it for this episode of Compiler. Today's episode was produced by Johan Philippine, Kim Huang, and Caroline Creaghead. Victoria Lawton loves, loves, loves all the swag. Our audio engineer is Kristie Chan. Special thanks to Brittany Duggan. Our theme song was composed by Mary Ancheta. Our audio team includes Brent Simoneaux, Leigh Day, Stephanie Wonderlick, Mike Esser, Nick Burns, Aaron Williamson, Karen King, Jared Oates, Rachel Ertel, Devin Pope, Mike Compton, Ocean Matthews, Paige Johnson, Alex Traboulsi, and Mira Cyril. If you like today's episode, please follow the show, rate the show, leave us a review and share it with someone you know. It really helps us out. And like Johan said, feedback is a gift. We love to hear it. All right, goodbye everyone. Until next time.

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About the show

Compiler

Do you want to stay on top of tech, but find you’re short on time? Compiler presents perspectives, topics, and insights from the industry—free from jargon and judgment. We want to discover where technology is headed beyond the headlines, and create a place for new IT professionals to learn, grow, and thrive. If you are enjoying the show, let us know, and use #CompilerPodcast to share our episodes.