How do you make a conference worth the time?

The typical multi-session, multi-day, yearly conference that I've been to (I've been to about 30 different ones now, on a variety of topics) has about 20% good content, and the rest is marginal sessions, unhappy speakers (or mumblers), and an excuse to drink with salesmen (as if they needed one). But I've just been to a conference that I found much more valuable than average!

So how do you make going to a conference valuable?

The question that really needs to be answered is: Realizing that the sessions of a conference alone are not typically worth the price of admission, what else is there?

The answer is a lot, if you join in and volunteer to help. There are many things that need to be done for a conference, starting with planning and promotion, including registration desk manning, photo capturing, note taking, evaluation collection and ending with clean up. The more of this you do, the more people you will be in contact with. The more people you get to know, the more valuable the experience will be.

I'm not beating a drum from the top of a soap box here, encouraging altruistic actions and giving the road map for world peace, I'm just stating that I've found the answer to something that has bothered me for years. At the conference I just attended I decided to go all out. I put in hours and hours of promotion effort into the conference over a couple of months before it started, and I got so much more out of the conference than I typically do!

The key to meeting people, which is the key to a good conference, is to have a good reason to meet them and have something useful to talk about. And if you must use a buzzword, you are actually “networking” when you do this. Volunteering to help is the best way to make your conference time worth the effort to attend it.

Oh these gems of knowledge you gather as you get older...