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I went to my first Teradata Partners User’s Group Conference in 1998 (back then it was the NCR Partners User’s Group Conference). We were considering migrating our data warehouse to Teradata, and a few of us were sent to talk with other Teradata customers. The conversations were very productive. I learned a lot about the platform. I met new friends that I kept in touch with for decades. I loved everything about the conference: the presentations, the networking, the products and demos, the entertainment, San Diego in the fall. I couldn’t wait to go back.
Returning was a struggle. Conference attendance was not at the top of the list of prioritized department expenditures, and being selected was primarily a function of round-robin equity. I was able to attend the next couple of years, but it required getting presentations approved and/or a whole lot of begging. There had to be a better way.
A friend I met at that first conference was on the User Group Steering Committee, a team of about fifteen customers tasked with organizing the conference. She invited me to join. That began fourteen years of participation on the Steering Committee.
One obvious benefit was that I didn’t have to beg (as much) to attend the conference, but that turned out to be incidental compared to the others. Over the years I had the pleasure of getting to know over a hundred different customers and reading a couple thousand presentation abstracts. It was informative to see the cycle of new capability awareness, early adoption, and mainstreaming through the lens of conference abstracts. Working with that group through the years has been a highlight of my career.
One piece of advice I often give, especially to those just starting out, is to find an industry group, join it, and actively participate.
It doesn’t have to be conference planning. Just find a way to interact in-person with others in your field outside your company.
Conferences have changed considerably over the past five or ten years. Covid certainly accelerated the change, but change was underway long before that. I saw it myself in my company, and I saw it at friends’ companies.
Technical conferences have existed for as long as there has been technology, but their popularity exploded in the 1990s, coinciding with the rapid growth of the tech sector.
My first conference was COMDEX in Las Vegas in 1993. Our little four-person company had a booth. Over 175,000 people attended. A few even found their way to the back corner where we were situated. The conference took over the Las Vegas Convention Center as well as a couple surrounding hotels. Particularly memorable was the giant sailing ship in the middle of the expo hall with the booth crew dressed as pirates, encouraging people not to illegally copy software.
The internet existed at the time, but was very low speed. Those of a certain age can still hear that dial-up static sound in their mind’s ear. No Zoom conferencing or YouTube videos yet.
For a tech company, their annual conference was the biggest sales and marketing event of the year. They would showcase their technology and make new product and feature announcements. Potential customers would be feted by their sales team, meeting with other customers and technical experts. There were keynote addresses by celebrities and galas featuring big-name entertainment.
Host companies tried to outdo each other year over year. There was great content. Great networking. It was a great time. Attendance swelled.
Until it didn’t. And again, this was long before Covid.
Management often considered conference attendance to be more like a paid vacation than an educational opportunity. Certainly some people treated it that way, but in my experience not the majority.
It got harder and harder to get approval to attend. Approval was sometimes denied even when the company didn’t have to pay for registration or travel expenses.
Covid then put the brakes on everything, and we became accustomed to interacting remotely. Virtual conferences went mainstream. After all, they’re much less expensive to produce, and much easier to consume. Plus no travel expenses.
But I would assert that virtual events are much less effective.
Unless you really put yourself into the mindset of watching the presentations as though you were sitting there in the audience, the temptation to multitask is overwhelming. And chatting with a bunch of other attendees that have been assigned to a virtual breakout room is a pale substitute for chatting one-on-one with a person you just happened to see in the hallway between sessions. Nothing can truly replicate the value face-to-face interaction. This is the primary benefit of in-person conferences, and it is a substantial benefit
My podcast partner recently made the comment that maybe we shouldn’t call them conferences anymore. The term has become irrevocably contaminated. But we didn’t get to the point where we had an alternative recommendation.
Do you have any suggestions?
Perhaps summit or forum. Maybe something with community in it. Leadership definitely. And catalyst or accelerator. You might remember the old Kurt Russell movie, The Barefoot Executive where he proposed a TV show called Abraham Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog, because everybody likes Abraham Lincoln, doctors, and dogs. So, join us next spring at the Data and AI Value Leadership Accelerator Summit. Or maybe not. We’re still working on it.
