A Business Conference in California

It seems that there are more conferences every year and yet it is harder than ever to find one that I would actually want to attend. When I was younger, getting out of the office for a week to go to any conference was a quality experience in and of itself.

Well, 20 years later? It is still a great experience to get out of the office and learn some new tricks of the trade per se.

I am an advocate of quality conferences. The operative word being, “quality.” Unlike many training classes, conferences usually offer a bigger menu of opportunities. If you get a bad instructor at a training class, you are stuck with him.

A good conference has swim lanes or tracks that you can choose to follow or not. You tailor your experience. In IT, larger conference hosted by Microsoft, Oracle, Sun and others attract a lot of vendors. It gives you a chance to camp out with a vendor of choice. Two years ago, Google was an exhibitor at the JavaOne conference I attended. We were able to hang out with some Google software engineers and understand new technology that they were demonstrating.

It has been said that part of my criteria for a good conference is location. It is not without design that I attend more conferences in San Francisco. One reason is that quality conferences tend to gravitate towards cities where people, top in their profession will come.
I am on a plane making the 5 hour journey west as I write this post. I have been thinking about my youngest son’s question delivered just before my departure for the airport this morning.

“Daddy?” he asked. “When you get in a plane and fly to San Francisco, do people try to shoot at your plane from the ground.”

I looked at my wife who was trying not to choke on her coffee, and quickly looked back at my inquisitive son.

“No, I do not think so, Spencer.” I answered.

We live in a different world since 9/11. My older kids used to ask me to bring home tee shirts. Now they are asking if there could be terrorists on my flight.

I am looking forward to this conference. It will be good to be surrounded with some of the best in the business.

It was hard leaving my two month old sweet Molly, my four other kids, and my wife. My family always beats any conference, no matter how good it is.