On Attending Conferences

When you run your own company, and are personally footing the bill, conferences are a time sink and money sink. You seldom get much to show for it, expect a promotional pen or two. Yet I keep going to them. Here’s why.

Like-minded People

People who don’t run a business find it hard to understand the stress and pressures you go through when you run a business. Your friends who have never run businesses are puzzled why you seem stressed yet show the outward signs of success.

Even fellow business owners who don’t run software businesses don’t quite understand the issues you face as an owner of a software company.

When I go to conferences for software company owners, such as MicroConf or Business of Software, I meet people who understand my situation. I describe some business problem I have, and halfway through I can see they get it. They don’t just understand, they empathise.

This has no financial benefit. It does, however, help relieve the stress to see other people with the same problems manage to survive them.

Building Networks

In this age of online communities, face-to-face contact still excels in building business relationships.

Getting a response from strangers online is hard. Getting a response from someone you’ve had the pleasure to chat with in real life is much easier.

I recently contributed a guest post to a blog run by the owner of a successful software company. I’ve met the owner in person at several software conferences. Knowing him in person made it much easier to approach him and to get him to agree. In fact, the first time I met him in real life, he invited me to contribute a blog post.

Expert Advice from Smart People

Frequent conference attendees joke about the “hallway track”. Many people find they learn the most not from the scheduled conference sessions, but the impromptu discussions during the breaks between sessions.

It was one such “hallway track” discussion where I received enlightenment about our target audience for Feature Upvote (my company’s product for managing feature requests).

I had thought our target audience was owners of small software companies; that is, people like me. But over drinks one evening at MicroConf Europe, someone who knew my business told me that my target audience should be product managers. As soon as he spoke, I realised he was correct. I had been trying to sell to the wrong people. My marketing had been targeted incorrectly. I felt a blindfold had been removed from my eyes.

Time to Think

Attending conferences force me to get away from my computer for a couple of days, and instead be exposed to new ideas. Even if I reject an idea as not suitable for me, it triggers creativity to deal with problems I’m facing.

I seldom encounter a completely new idea at a conference. However the conference setting forces me to think about the idea at length.

These are the justifications I use for going to conferences.