Are you among ‘privileged’ individuals who have the opportunity to attend conferences on a regular basis? You may agree that to some extent, conferences change the world and empower the dis-empowered. They educate large numbers of people in a short amount of time. More importantly, they build community.

People make connections and friends that last much longer than conferences. Countless projects and many organisations have been created by people that would never have found each other if it were not for conferences. Indeed attending a conference is a professionally rewarding experience. In addition to socialising with colleagues from near and afar, a trip to a possibly exotic locale, the two main reasons for attending a conference are to hear presentations and to converse with other participants and presenters. 

Most conferences are about networking, to use a rather overused work. Whether or not this is worth the money and the time depends very much on where you feel your weaknesses lie: meeting people is often inspirational and motivates, at least you get a glimpse of the process.

Sometimes you might think that the information discussed is not useful to you but if the conference attendees are leaning forward, writing notes and holding up their phones and ipads to take pictures of the presentation slides, then you will know that the speaker is connecting with the audience.

Whenever you have the opportunity to attend a conference, besides making new friends and networking, etc.., there is little else in terms of incentives. When you leave some of the conferences, you find that you are not any better than you were before. A friend confessed to me that ‘there is sometimes an air of pretentiousness with the speakers’ which often turns him off.

What the speakers usually speak about is known. It is the same thing the speakers are always talking about and the sad bit is that it is almost instantly forgettable once the presentation is over. There are a few exceptions to this though.

It would be my wish to see speakers in fairly uncomfortable positions. This is not to approach this subject from a sadistic angle, but rather since it is usually easy to predict what someone is going to say, we might as well force them to really think through their positions.

I would also like to see, for instance, discussions being more interactive. Almost invariably at these conferences, no one seems to remember what anyone on stage has said.  Why are our conferences still focused on the "broadcast” model of a speaker on stage and audience paying attention? Conferences need to have more breakouts and roundtable discussions.

The only thing I seem to derive from these conferences, and believe me, there are many these days, is not at the conference itself, but at lunch. Lunch is when people actually get to meet and talk to each other. While there are other "networking sessions”, these tend to let the usual cliques all meet up and pat each other on the back, or repeat arguments they have had going on for the past five years or so.

An ideal conference, then, would be more like a day full of these lunches – that forced people to think in different ways. Thus, I would love to see a conference where people are either randomly, or carefully planned by organisers, split into small groups, and given a task or challenge. Let them do some scenario planning that forces them to think creatively.

I would like to go to such a conference and come out at the end of the day having met 20 or 30 new people, who, I have a newfound respect or distaste for, while having generated new ideas in my head, and reshaped old, state beliefs and ideas about development and other grandiose subjects that have attracted so much attention.

While the need to attend conferences and networking is as high as ever, companies are often reluctant to send their staff to events because the return on investment can truly be disappointing or even unclear.

One interesting thing about conferences is that the most interesting, informative and educational moments are not spent in the sessions themselves: it is the informal interactions with other attendees that give the most satisfaction!

oscar_kim2000@yahoo.co.uk