Ryan Hartwich on Conferences

August 25, 2006 · 5 Comments

A timely coincidence: Ryan Hartwich offers his thoughts about the value of conferences on Fusion Authority, just as I excuse myself from MAX. Adam Lehman will be taking over my Fusebox section of the frameworks debate and one of my colleagues will be taking over my partner summit sessions. I have a personal conflict on the Thursday, the day of the partner summit, and since someone from my team will have to replace me there, I can't justify going because my team just has too much going on around that time. I've been very lucky over the last few years to attend a lot of conferences - mostly to speak at them - even though it hasn't been core to my job. When you speak at CFUNITED, for example, and get all of your material in on time, your room is paid for which substantial lowers your budget. I've had to justify only the flight costs - and the time off work. Yes, time off. When I'm at a conference, I'm not "working" and that is a cost, just as Ryan points out, even for fully-funded employees. I've said more than once that ColdFusion community work and conferences are "not my job" but this year the rubber hits the road and MAX is out, as is the upcoming TeraTech frameworks conference (likely January 2007, either in Florida or DC). Beyond that, I can't say... CFUNITED 2007 is probably out but I will make cf.Objective() 2007 even if I have to pay for that out of my own pocket and take vacation time to attend!

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Tags: adobe · adobemax06 · cfobjective · personal

5 responses so far ↓

1 Raymond Camden // Aug 26, 2006 at 6:04 AM

Sean, you may want to consider, if it is to your liking, doing presentations via Breeze. I know I would attend them.
2 Sean Corfield // Aug 26, 2006 at 10:43 AM

I don't have the time right now and to be honest don't have a good set up either at home or at work to do Breeze presentations right now. Work is open plan and too noisy. Home is fairly noisy too and I currently have no second monitor (which, to me, is a requirement to do Breeze so you can be sure what your attendees are seeing!).
3 Richard Tugwell // Aug 26, 2006 at 11:39 AM

Sean - given that you appear to be the busiest man on the planet, I'm not surpised...
4 Dave Shuck // Aug 26, 2006 at 4:38 PM

Sean I have gotten so much value out of the sessions of yours that I have attended at the last two CFUnited conferences. I completely understand your reasoning, but I would like to state the obvious by saying that your presence would certainly be missed next year if you skip it.
5 Sean Corfield // Aug 26, 2006 at 5:36 PM

Thanx for the kind words Dave :)

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