Do conferences provide a good ROI of time and money spent on them? Are they more fun than fiscally responsible? Depending on who you ask, conferences are almost all great, conferences are almost all bad or they are hit and miss. Conference regulars will likely say they are great investments while a superintendent or dedicated field manager may say are next to worthless. In this case, as with most things, the truth is likely in between.
Regular conference attendees probably spend less time in the field where many bottom-line impacting issues, decisions and actions occur. They network and learn at the conference but either don’t truly know what the field needs or don’t take actionable steps to implement knowledge or skills gained at a conference. The same is similar for new connections that happened while networking – if the person with added connections and an expanded network doesn’t work hard on them outside of the conference the time and money invested in the conference is all for naught. Conferences can make people feel energized and enlightened. They hard part is when attendees must put in the work and make things happen with the newfound knowledge and/or network.
Less frequent conference attendees like superintendents might say conferences are all but worthless because they have more important things to do like, “actually build a job.” While focusing on the work on site is important, getting out of their routine and learning about things they wouldn’t normally discover can help them find and implement innovations on site. Simply put, even mediocre conferences can help them think outside the box the develop and implement project improving innovations.
Not all conferences are good and attending too many isn’t good either. Attending too many will make it hard to actually get any work done while not attending any can leave you stuck in a rut of comfort where change and innovation are hard to come by. Find the ones that truly benefit you and your project or job and focus on them.
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