The importance of attending Tech Summits
Attending to technology events presuppose an investment of time and money, either you're an individual or a company. I will give you some reasons why I believe it's important you to take the chance.
10 years ago, I started to be more active in the Tech Events thing. Some of the biggest events I had the opportunity to attend were OpenStack Summit 2015, DockerCon Europe 2018 (2,200 attendees), and KubeCon Europe 2019 (7,700 attendees).
Recently, I attended the Codemotion Madrid 2023 as a speaker. This year, the organization counted 1,800 attendees in Madrid walking through the Kinepolis halls for 2 days.
There were 5 sessions having 7 tracks in parallel, plus 1 keynote at the beginning and 1 special session at the end of the day. The numbers that the Condemotion Madrid 2023 has said:
+90 speakers
+70 talks and panels
As a said before, all this with 1,800 developers participating. The ticket cost was changing based on the date you get it, but I can tell that for a member of my team, it cost 125€. One important question for developers, tech leads, engineering managers, and tech companies is:
Is it worth it to invest my time and money in attending tech events?
My short answer is YES. Now, let’s get into my reasons.
For a software developer. This is the use case of a person that works, either freelance or for a company, in any role related to software development, like Developer, Sofware Engineer, Tech Lead, Engineering Manager, SRE, etc.
First, the technology-related events are important for you because will help you to understand how the current technology landscape looks like. Whether you attend a technology-specific event, like a Java-related event or an AWS-related event, or a more generalistic tech event, the organizers will bring you speakers that provide insights about what’s going on now in the industry.
Second, and thanks to the first reason, you will be able to understand if you (or your team or your company) are going in the right direction in terms of technology choices and strategies. This means that, by seeing what other developers and companies are doing, you will see if your choices make sense for your use cases, or if they are totally misaligned.
Third, engage with the speakers. The speakers are presenting content to you, and the other 1,000 people like you, because they want to share some kind of experience they got, or have some knowledge, that most likely you do not have. Get profit from this! In these events, there are networking areas, post-talk moments, and dedicated “talk to speaker” sessions, on which you can go into deep conversations and squeeze more of your experience.
Last, but not least, in case you are looking for new job opportunities, definitely this is the right place to be. I could bet that 99% of the sponsors attending these events are hiring and you are a potential candidate for all of them. Also, meeting some peers on the lunch line, at round tables, or on the “go and back“ between talks, you will be able to engage and ask about their companies, understand what they do, and see if that could be something you would like to have.
I would like to share a couple of tips with you about attending Tech Events:
As an attendee, you have to filter out, very carefully, the talks that you attend. Your time is finite, there are many talks, and not all are meant to satisfy your purpose. You should come to these events with a clear goal and set up your agenda accordingly in advance.
If you are a junior profile, challenge yourself by attending talks that are out of your comfort zone and are related to topics that senior people, within your company, do.
My experience says that you will have a better experience if you attend with a peer instead of alone. Do not get me wrong, it’s important to extend your relationships on these events, but sharing the experience with somebody you already know, will help you to capture more information and resources to meet your goals.
For a tech company. For me, it makes sense that your company attends these events as a sponsor when you have a clear hiring strategy. This is not the place to sell your product, but it is the place to show your product and your company to possible future employees.
The previous point relates to the fact that it is possible that your company is not yet known in the region, maybe because your company recently opened an office there, and you need to get visibility, for (also) the current or future hiring strategy.
If your company has a clear hiring strategy, go for it. Which tech events? For this, my advice is:
Ask your developers. You have to understand the professional profiles you have in the company and the ones you have to hire. If you need to hire AI specialists, maybe an exclusive DevOps event is not the right one, but an AI-dedicated event or a general tech event could be.
Research previous editions of the event. Perform an investigation of the events on the landscape and try to measure the impact you could
Define how you measure success. There is no point to invest money from the company in strategies, in this case about visibility and hiring, if you are not able to know if it worked.
In an event of 1,800, 2,200, or 7,700 attendees, during 2 days or more, the visibility of your company will be definitely increased.
We reached the end of this issue. Are you planning to attend some tech event? Not sure still if the event you want fits your needs? Any experience attending tech events? Reach out to me! Looking forward to conversating with you!