Conferences as a Way of Life
I’m here to share 9 peculiar sides of the professional conference goer’s lifestyle.
Earlier this month, I was paying my electricity bill and it seemed out of the ordinary: the bill was too low.
At first, I thought there might be a mistake; then I remembered that I spent the entire month of October traveling — so there was no one at home to use electricity. Ah well.
Between September and November this year, I’ve found myself at the following airports: Sofia; Berlin; Munich; San Francisco; Minneapolis; Toronto; Bogota; Frankfurt; Vienna; Prague.
Not that many — if you’re a flight attendant. Which I’m not. I’m a lazy office-person with a strong attachment to my desk.
Here’s what happens when you spend a couple of months traveling for conferences.
You become a pro at passing security checks at airports. Honestly, there is no TSA agent that can scare me; I’m in and out in seconds. There’s an art to planning a trip lead by the goal of passing through security quickly and painlessly — and I’m the artist.
You own airports in general. The more you hangout there, the better you become at spotting the comfiest spot, the corner with the best wifi reception; the best coffee place, etc. You can map each and every power outlet within minutes. You start walking around with an air of superiority to the poor souls struggling to find their gate. Amateurs.
You gather a gang of conference buddies. This is the best part. Once you meet someone at two consecutive events and hang out with them, you’re officially conference buddies. You start coordinating events you’re going to. You book the same hotels so you can have breakfast together. You develop inside jokes. You have the funny stories from previous events. It’s a special type of friendship that you learn to cherish (shoutout to my conference buddy and human being extraordinaire Tamar!).
You find 7 million different ways to explain the same thing — because seven million people ask you the same question and you don’t wanna bore yourself by using the same words.
You get really good at preparing presentations last-minute. Those 30 slides you need for the conference talk you’re delivering the next day? Done in 15 minutes — gifs, examples and stats, the whole shebang. Flight layovers are the best times to prepare those, I promise.
You develop the ability to evaluate an event in 3–5 seconds just by looking at their website. It’s all about experience, I guess — the good events all share the same traits and so do the bad ones. Speaker lists, venues, agendas — a quick glance at those and you already know if it makes sense going.
You start planning your personal life according to events you’re attending. No time to have coffee with that friend you really want to catch up with? You can squeeze them in between this conference and that hackathon.
You gather a ginormous amount of swag. You start with that one t-shirt of the project you really like. Then you tell yourself that you can take some stickers, there’s room in your luggage for those. Before you know it, you find yourself grabbing tote bags, power banks, socks, hoodies, and whatever else you can get your hands on. You develop conference greed (I now have so many cool t-shirts and socks that I don’t think I will need to buy any in the next 3 years).
You start missing your crappy tiny apartment. Honest to god. That place you’re sick of looking at, tidying up and re-decorating suddenly feels like the best place in the whole wide world and you can’t wait to get back home.
I’ve been home for a couple of weeks now and I’m quite happy with this fact. I appreciate the fact that I won’t have to travel for at least a month — but I also can’t wait for the next series of events I’m gonna go to.
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