Boss, Send Me To #ngconf 2020!
Do you remember what you were working on five years ago? So much has happened since then! The number of programmers in the industry has doubled, and almost every single JavaScript library that we used is either unmaintained or on LTS. You’ve really come a long way since then!
/me high-fives you
Things change fast, and developers need to work hard to stay in the know. Attending conferences can introduce you to the right topics and people, helping you maintain a knowledge of modern tool belts for web developers. However, attending a conference can range from difficult to impossible, depending on who you’re working for.
The following are things you can try to help convince your employer that 2020 is your year to attend ng-conf. If you are having a hard time figuring out how to approach your boss about sending you to a conference like ng-conf, this article is for you.
Here is a list of what this blog will cover:
1. Use it or lose it budgets from 2019
2. New budgets in 2020
3. Investigate company’s training guidelines
4. ROI focused plea — Focus on how much it will save to train you
5. Retention / Raise — Build it into your raise
6. Make it a win/win
7. Perfect Pitch — Prepare your perfect email pitch
8. Elevator Pitch — Prepare yourself for a conversation
9. Commit to sharing what you learn
10. Become a speaker
Use-Or-Lose Your Budget
Many of us work on teams that have a maximum budget they can spend each year. If they don’t spend it, it goes back to a larger pool, never to be seen again by our team.
Ask your boss about this option and see if you can lock down a piece of your company’s travel / training budget. With the end of the year coming up, it’s a perfect time to jump on this conversation.
New budgets in 2020
Some time towards the middle to end of January, most organizations will submit and receive their 2020 budgets from corporate. Before this happens is the best time to negotiate your spot in the upcoming year’s budget for training and travel. For tips on this approach, read below the seconds on perfecting your email and elevators pitches.
Investigate the company’s guidelines
Though you and your boss may not be aware, your company may very well have an established training guideline. If you’re in this situation, you can work with boss to come to an arrangement that will allow you to get what you want out of your position.
Focus on ROI
Many things happen to you when you attend a conference, several of which will improve your productivity in your current role.
First, conferences allow you to see in-depth presentations on dozens of topics you wouldn’t normally get to learn about at work. You don’t get enough knowledge about the topic to master it. But you do acquire enough info to know how you would use certain toolsets in different scenarios. Understanding this is HIGHLY valuable, and will prevent you from writing hundreds and thousands of lines of code that could have been solved in a few dozen, HAD YOU ONLY KNOWN!
Second, the amount of networking that goes on at a conference will change your career. I have learned more from following on twitter the people that I meet at conferences, than I have from any other source of learning. By widening your network, you widen the pool of resources you have to learn from and to ask questions. This network of friends and professionals has proven itself invaluable in my career. The support you will get from your new conference friends will improve you as a developer, I promise.
Show the talks and titles, and explain to your boss that to learn these topics on your own would take you 5–10 times longer than the three days you will spend at this conference. This kind of simple math helps you easily prove the ROI on sending you to a conference like ng-conf.
Retention / Raise
For those of us who were hired without a yearly training allowance, your next raise-cycle is the time to lock in this yearly allowance for yourself.
Let your boss know that on top of the compensation bump, you want one (or go big and say more) company-paid training each year. This will be a nice approach. Once you have negotiated this, you never have to ask permission again. Everyone will know that you’re going to a training of your choice, no questions asked. If you aren’t sure how to begin this part of the conversation, consider the later sections on perfecting your elevator pitch.
Make it a win/win
If everyone wins by you going to a conference, it is a much easier conversation or all involved. The following are ideas of how to make this conversation feel like a win for your boss as well.
Tell your boss to come to the event as well. This year we have a pre-conference workshop focused for management. You could recommend they go to that, as well as come and learn Angular with you. This turns it into a team-building moment by dramatically increasing the team’s camaraderie around the event.
Some bosses are scared that they send you, then they also have to send others on the team, which may be way outside of the budget. If this is your scenario, let them know that you can be respectful and not boast about this to the other team members, as that would only create envy amongst the team and make life harder for the boss.
Promise to share what you learn with the team. Commit to coming back and presenting the five or ten most important things that you learned by attending. If you can present the topics that apply to your org the most, this will help make your attendance a win/win for the boss.
Perfect Pitch
However you approach your boss on this topic, unless you know they will say yes, you will want to work on your delivery. Don’t just stumble in and explain that there’s an Angular version of burning man that you want them to send you to. Unless your boss is extremely understanding, it’s not going to work.
When asking for permission to go to an event, the boss wants to see key pieces of info about the event, the costs of sending you, and what they get out of that investment. Don’t drone on about who the speakers are or that we will be serving chocolate-dipped bacon. Show your boss(es) the numbers that they need to know to accurately consider this.
The following is an example email that you could share with your boss:
Hi <Boss>,
Our team is working through some very difficult issues, and I am confident that with training in modern techniques, we can solve these problems more accurately, and for less money.
I have found a conference that teaches what we are looking for. To boot, the entire Angular team will be there, giving me access to them to ask questions about things that are uniquely affecting us.
The conference is ng-conf, and it’s the largest Angular conference in the world. This year is the seventh year the conference has happened, and each year is reported to be better than the previous. here is some info:
Dates: April 1–3 2020
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
Cost: $1299 (ticket)+ $400 (airfare) + $600 (hotel) = $2299I would travel out on Tuesday March 31st and be back for work the following Monday.
There will be over 1500 Angular developers at the event, including the entire Angular team from Google, many from the RxJS core team, and several from the TypeScript team from Microsoft. The conference has activities 16-hours a day, to maximize networking and learning time.
I looked into similar conferences, and this is definitely the one to go to. People regularly say that this is their favorite event of the year. Please let me know what you think.
— Developer McAngularFace
Here you highlight the things that management cares about. You’ve provided statements around the legitimacy of the event, and talked about the exact costs and time commitment. You provided some hype-statements so that your boss can see that the event is righteous. You have also spoken to any research you have put into the process of looking for events that would be great. If you are going to go the email route, consider this template 😊
Elevator Pitch
If you are that developer who wants to do this in person, there are several great ways to broach the subject. The following is one way that helps create an environment with empathy and where you can talk.
The following approach is a story telling approach. You get to make the person you’re talking to be in a story that you are telling. It will help them see how attending the conference will help.
Here is an example of that story-telling pitch:
You know we keep getting burnt by the same issues when it comes to how we store our users’ session data? We talk about wanting to improve it, but ultimately no one ever does the improvements? I think it’s because no one is sure of the best way to fix that. I would like to spend a few days focusing on problems like this, and more. I have found an opportunity where I can spend three days with the Angular team and dozens of the smartest Angular developers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Capital One, T-Mobile, SpaceX and more. I will use this time to analyze what the best approaches may be, and then present those to the team so that we can make a decision on how best to proceed. There is a conference in April called ng-conf. It’s three days long. It’s consistently the greatest conference around. I want the company to send me there so that I can learn what we need to know to solve our problems here. What do you think?
There are other great pitches you can opt for. Whatever you pick, keep it direct and focused on the point of the conference.
Commit to sharing what you learn
By committing to sharing what you learn, you can dramatically elevate the company and teams you are working on. Consider the following quote:
A rising tide lifts all boats
Show your boss that by sending you to the conference, everyone on the team will benefit. So many times my bosses asked me to share what I learned. So I finally just started committing to do that before I even when to the conference.
Sharing doesn’t just mean that you come back to your team and share. But it can also mean that you will go to your local meetup and present to them as well. This kind of sharing further benefits your boss, as it will put you in a position of showing your local developer community that your company invests in its employees. And this helps with recruiting and recognition in the local community.
Become a speaker
By becoming a speaker, you are showing your boss so much about yourself. Getting on stage at an event such as ng-conf is monumental, whether its your first time speaking or your hundredth time speaking. Your boss should be impressed and basically has to let you go. Your flight, hotel and ticket are paid for as a speaker. You boss simply has to get on board and allow you to go without making you take paid vacation. Should be easy enough. The process of selecting speakers for the conference is still happening. You can submit your talks on the ng-conf website. Look for the link “CFP 2020”. We will close this process on January 3rd, 2020. You still have time!
Summary
There are lots of ways for you to get your boss on board with this master plan to send you to ng-conf. If you have other ideas, please leave them in the comments below, or tweet them at the official ng-conf twitter account with the hashtag #ngconf2020.
EnterpriseNG is coming November 4th & 5th, 2021.
Come hear top community speakers, experts, leaders, and the Angular team present for 2 stacked days on everything you need to make the most of Angular in your enterprise applications.
Topics will be focused on the following four areas:
• Monorepos
• Micro frontends
• Performance & Scalability
• Maintainability & Quality
Learn more here >> https://enterprise.ng-conf.org/
