Day 21: Share your experience and tips for attending conferences or events

[dianadromey]

Today’s task is centred around attending conferences and events. Attending professional conferences and events can be incredibly valuable for your career growth, networking opportunities, and staying up-to-date with industry trends.

Task 21

1. Reflect on your experiences. Take a moment to reflect on your past experiences attending conferences or events. Think about the conferences you have attended, the sessions you participated in, and their overall impact on your professional development. Consider the valuable insights, connections, or knowledge you gained from these experiences. Reflect on any challenges you encountered and how you overcame them.

2. Share your experiences and tips with the community. Describe the conferences or events you have attended and the key takeaways you gained. Share any memorable moments, networking success stories, or valuable lessons learned. Offer tips or strategies that have helped you make the most out of these events. Your insights will inspire and guide others in their own conference or event experiences.

3. Read other posts: Like and engage with the experiences and tips shared by fellow community members. Likes and engagement give a boost to those whose tips have helped you or resonated with you.

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Why complete this task?

• Gain self-awareness by reflecting on past experiences.
• Contribute to the community by sharing your knowledge and insights.
• Learn from others’ experiences and gain new perspectives.
• Encourage others to share their experiences by liking and engaging with their posts.

[zali (Zenzi Ali)]

During the pandemic, I attended tons of virtual conferences. Eventually, I realized that I was watching tons of presentations and workshops and putting little to none of the information to use. Eventually, I decided not to attend any more full-day
conferences. Here’s what I do instead:

• I read the schedule and only attend talks that are of immediate use (I’m a firm believer of just in time knowledge

• Workshops are preferable to talks. I want to build some immediate muscle memory for concepts that are shown

• Recordings for high-quality conferences are worth the investment

[kristof (Kristof Van Kriekingen)]

For me, joining a conference isn’t about the talks. If you are a nerd like me, you google everything and then talks become more “obsolete”, they can give you ideas for sure but they have less value then a workshop. I love workshops.

But that isn’t what conferences is all about. Imho people joining conferences for talks are “doing conferences” wrong. I … was doing conferences WRONG for a long time!

I thought I had to join as many talks as possible, absorb as much information as possible and have some take-aways. Don’t get me wrong here, some talks are great but for me, most talks are “I kind of already know this”. So where is the added value in going to a conference?

What else is available at a conference? … PEOPLE ARE!

And oh my god, people are amazing. I just went to Agile Testing Days Open Air and my personal take-aways are that I learned so much from networking and talking to people, instead of following a talk. Networking is hard, very hard and sometimes we have to get out of the comfort zone for it. But did I get some good learnings from people.

So my tip would be; when you go to a conference, don’t just follow talks, join workshops and start talking to people in between. Ask them what they do, if they have some cool tips or tricks.

When you ask people for tips or tricks or something cool they’ve just discovered, they are basically giving you a Lightning Talk on a certain topic.

[simienrigler (Simon Rigler)]

A quick scattergun contribution before my flight takes off:

• Taking notes is good - need to do much better at reading / using them post-conference
• Joining the crowd for pre-conference drinks / breakfast etc is a great icebreaker for the conference day(s)
• Meeting people at conferences means contacts, good for future job searches and skills development
• Taking to the presenters / workshop hosts etc afterwards is a great way to find out more on subjects of interest - and to thank them for their worthwhile efforts
• Don’t leave your luggage on a tram in Manchester (or anywhere else) - even if, like us, you do get it back again the next day
• Take up the opportunity of a 99-second talk!

[al8xr (Oleksandr Romanov)]

How to get the most out of the conference:

• ask questions during the talks
• ask speakers after the talk (speakers are also human and they would love to chat at some point)
• talk to another participants (develop a skill of small talk for it)
• if possible - participate at breakfasts / dinners and talk, talk, talk.
• be polite - know when to leave and know when do not bother a person with talking.

But:

• if you want to increase talking efficiency - do not forget to share your contracts via Linkedin. It has great feature to generate QR code of your page or to show people nearby)
• write to people that you talked to after the conference.

Remember, many projects and products can come as ideas from talking to people at conferences.

[lgibbs (Louise Gibbs)]

Don’t eat too much
Yes, there is usually a free buffet with the most delicious looking food, and going for seconds or thirds may be tempting. However, I find I get exhausted during the first couple of talks of the afternoon if I eat too much. In one case, I almost fell asleep (which was embarrassing). I am now always careful to only have 1 portion at lunch. I also take some mints or hard boiled sweets with me, slow release of sugary energy helps me avoid crashing.

Skip talks if you need the rest
Conferences are exhausting. Also, with so many people, things can get a little overwhelming and the room can get a little stuffy. If you do get tired or overwhelmed, don’t feel ashamed if you need to rest and skip a talk. There is often pressure to get the most out of the day (especially if work are paying for you to be there), but you will not learn anything if you are exhausted due to information overload.

Don’t skip the expos
It is a great opportunity to learn about some of the various tools and applications are available. Tool awareness is essential for career building. Even if you are unlikely to use that particular application, you never know when it might come up in a job interview. Being able to say, ‘I know about Postman, I met some people from that company at a conference a few years ago and got to try out this particular feature’ really does makes you look good, even if you’ve never used the tool. Between talks, the expos get quite busy, so I usually skip a talk so I have time to chat to the people running the stands at the expos. With fewer people about, you really get their undivided attention.

Take notes, and reread them in the future
I am a keen sketchnoter, and find taking notes an essential part of the day. You will be inundated with so much information, you are unlikely to remember it all. Taking notes is a great way to ensure long lasting benefit from attending. I still check notes from conferences I attended years ago. You never know where you’ll find inspiration. For those who are not good at taking notes (which I totally get) at the very least have a notepad handy to scribble any ideas you might have. Also, after each talk, scribble down a summary of what the talk was about and what you took away from it.

[mahatheed (Mahathee Dandibhotla)]

i liked your last two ideas.I follow these.

[mahatheed (Mahathee Dandibhotla)]

It’s been three years in the community space.

In my initial years, I was not even aware of the concept of conferences.

In 2020 the pandemic gave me a lot of new experiences and one of them was Exposure to Conferences.

My first testing conference was sponsored as I just stopped working at that time and was on break.

I was super excited. I wanted to listen to it all, know all, and do everything possible. I was tired at the end of it. This was a major mistake.It drained me off.

I slept and took two days of solid rest to get back on track. It was virtual. The talks were interesting. I was new to the space. I was like a little rabbit jumping everywhere.

The same year again i attended my second virtual conference.
The concept of this conference was 8-minute talks for a day 100+ talks drained me again with no energy left.
No notes were made. Focussed on competitions and contests.Did some networking.
Left me with back pain as i did not move from my desk for a second.I enjoyed the high post-conference but was sick again.

Attended the first MOT Test Bash because of @marie.drake .I was pretty new to the concept. I felt a little out of the zone and did not attend them well.I knew no one. Didnt, know how to interact with anyone. I watched the recordings of some talks and learnt things. Learning wise it was good.I didn’t relish networking-wise.

Attended the next Test Bash again because of @friendlytester
This was a little better than the previous one. I got used to the conference, people etc.

From then I attended a lot of virtual meetups and conferences.
In some, I spoke as well. So I cherish them.

While attending conferences I had a few observations

• It’s not possible to get all the knowledge at once. Look at the schedule prior. List out the talks you want to attend. and if that did not fit in any alternate. Next, what do you want to watch in the recording?

• Keep water and food ready with you.

• Get up a little stretch and move a bit.

• Try to attend with friends so that you can distribute note-taking activity.

• Here is one of what we did

  https://testflix-2022-notes.super.site/

• Use one-one for chats and make those deep connections

• Interact with sponsors in breaks if possible and listen to their offerings. See if it might help you.

• Complement speakers whose talks you resonated with. It makes their day.

• Create a repository of all resources you collected from them and share it with the wider community. Each time you attend a conference create another folder and have a repository for it.

• For meetups and webinars make mindmaps and carousels of the session and share it on Linkedin and Twitter and tag them or send a personalized note to the speaker.

Dont forget to blink your eyes

These were for virtual conferences.

As for the in-person conference

1. I suggest being present at the venue a little early.

2. Carry snacks and water mandatory

3. Meet and greet people as much as you can as they are the best places to make those connections.

4. Attend one or two talks of your choice. Don’t stress yourself out.

5. Click lots of pictures and post them.Make memories.As recordings would be available.

Get someone to get your pictures clicked if you are a speaker

Conferences are never only about learning. It’s always about people, interaction and having a great time.

Record Great videos too for memories.

Lastly, write a helpful experience report that would help people the next time.

[stuart.machek]

Many have given great advice here already. My one thing to add seems like it is self-explanatory, but I feel it is worth saying: Even when the drinks are free, pass on them.

I have seen multiple people who have been “overserved” at happy hour/networking events and have put themselves into questionable situations that were not necessarily good for their public image. I have also seen conference attendees that engaged in really bad behavior due to alcohol consumption with outcomes that effected their careers for years to come. My advice is to just not take a risk and skip them entirely! Have a soft drink or non-alcoholic alternative. There is plenty of time to drink when you get back home from these events.

[zali (Zenzi Ali)]

@lgibbs

Skip talks if you need the rest

True! You don’t want to need PTO after a conference!

[zali (Zenzi Ali)]

Nice! I’ve always wanted to attend TestFlix conf
(or anything by The Test Tribe), but the time difference has always made it impossible. The stuff on YouTube is great.

@mahatheed

Attend one or two talks of your choice. Don’t stress yourself out.

This is key! I generally only have 2 talks that are must-see at any conference, but feel pressure to get my money’s worth by over-extending myself.

[yessicac (yessica Casanova)]

I don´t have enough experience with in-person conferences, so I don´t have much to say here. I attended some of them some time ago and I noticed that in addition to attend the conference it´s very important to meet and greet people, because we can learn a lot about each other’s experiences.

About the online conferences, as some mentioned before, I try to attend the talks that are very important to me at that time or in the not so distant future, I also try to ask questions if possible and take notes of the most important things.