Why NOT going to conferences is costing you too much
I have been a professional developer for over 20 years. I officially started learning to code on my TRS-80 Color Computer about 35 years ago. I grew up in a very rural area — Chimney Rock, CO — and there might have been 50 people in a 5 mile radius. Being in such a remote area, learning to code was difficult.
I distinctly remember getting 4 chapters into Getting Started with Extended Color Basic, and getting stuck because I couldn’t wrap my brain around for/next loops at age 13. I had no one to reach out to who could help me, so I put the book down and stopped my learning.
I repeated this 3 or 4 times over the course of a year until I could finally grasp the concepts and complete the book.
Fast forward 20 years to 2004 — I’d become a Visual Basic programmer. I learned new techniques and concepts by reading 800+ page books, while typing code examples in. This process of learning was effective, but took a lot of time to learn concepts. There was little feedback on best practices, and often the patterns I implemented struggled when the applications scaled. Learning was tough, often with outdated materials/books/articles, and the options were limited.
I almost never went to conferences or user groups/meetups over those 20+ years, as I didn’t see the value in it. I attended a few user group meetings in the early 2000’s before open source was really a thing, and developers rarely shared anything valuable at these meetings. It was mostly a quick show-and-tell, with no code examples or real explanation of techniques. Everything was coveted, and I would usually feel like I wasted my time at the event.
Over the past 4 years I have been a part of over 100 meetups and about 10 conferences all over the world including ng-Conf, Angular Denver, Angular U, ngIndia, Angular Mix, International JavaScript, Angular Up, and Framework Summit. These conferences have become an invaluable learning resource for myself and my team, so much so, that I bring my entire development team to ng-Conf and Angular Denver every year so we can all learn about the new developments, techniques, best practices, and patterns going on in Angular. I couldn’t imagine not going to conferences and learning.
I organize the local Rocky Mountain Angular meetup here in Denver, and have for the past 4 years. I often emcee the local event to make announcements and introductions. When exciting conferences are coming up I ask for a show of hands on who is planning on attending. Even when conferences are right in their own backyard, a majority of developers don’t attend. When asked, the common answers boil down to “can’t afford it,” “my employer won’t pay for it,” “it costs too much,” and/or “I can’t get the time off work.”
It’s disappointing to me how little priority is placed on educating the workforce. As a Google Developer Expert in Angular and Web Technologies, I see firsthand how bad or outdated practices are costing businesses millions of dollars. I am often consulted on projects that fail to meet requirements, perform poorly, are riddled with bugs, or are outright cancelled, and almost always it is because developers haven’t been exposed to best practices or the proper way to develop projects.
So, whether you are a developer or in management, I would implore you to take another look at what you are doing for training. Conferences are one of the best ways for you to learn what is out there, what you should be learning, and the direction that the web is heading.
If you think conferences are too expensive, consider the cost of failed projects.
If you’re still not convinced, check out Angular Denver. The ticket price is around $500 to see 45 speakers from around the world and workshops are 40% less than what you might pay for the same workshop at other conferences.
In closing, some might ask, “if everyone goes to conferences and learns the best practices, wouldn’t that put BrieBug out of business”? I think it’s a great question and maybe one day we will have to cross that bridge. In the mean time, we are currently working on online training courses via Thinkster.io, as well as Angular Fundamentals 3-day training courses to help teams level up.
If you’ve found yourself struggling with a project, needing an architecture review, or wanting training with Angular Fundamentals or NgRx, please reach out to me to setup a time to talk.
