Conferences cost a lot of money.
Many are in the USD 2000-4000 range! How can anyone afford that! No Budget! Boss doesn’t want me to take a week off!
Let’s turn that thinking around.
Is there something you saved for, worked hard for, and then bought? And that thing helped your life immensely?
In my life, it was a car. I lived out in the woods, away from employment and opportunity. To get TO the opportunity, I had to get a car. Having a car meant getting a chance at freedom and opportunity.
Once I had the car, I then could get to a job, where I could learn more and be trained. That earned more money, I then went to school, spent a LOT of money there, got trained, and got a better job! Rinse and repeat!
Rare today do we find ourselves in a job which allows us to grow with no training. Face it, many companies are short on training budgets, and they tend to want you to spend nothing.
In the free to minimal cost, I do have recommendations, such as Microsoft Virtual Academy and Pluralsight that have training.
One deficit with those options is interaction with peers, and the ability to get questions straight from the source. That is where a conference can help.
I spent a full week in Seattle recently at an internal conference.
Many of the same actors at this conference present the top tracks at Microsoft public conferences such as Ignite or Build!
My SQL and Data Platform people will of course tout, rightly so, PASS Summit, put on by the Professional Association for SQL Server.
I know of friends who also put on the IT/Dev Connections conference, and there are smaller ones as well. I mention this one, because I attended IT connections in 2005, met the great Kimberly Tripp, and it inspired me that SQL Server could be FUN and I could do a lot with it.
A few years after attending that conference, with some experience mixed in, I am a technical seller at Microsoft! I also speak at smaller venues, and had the privilege of speaking at our internal technical conference last year!
Why go to a conference?
You will learn a lot, you will meet the experts, and you can take that knowledge and networking with others to help you move forward and up in your career.
It helped me. It can help you. And later on, you can then help others. That is the best reward.
Thank you!
George Walters 