Make a Business Case for Attending Conferences
Here’s a great blog post from Sean Gerety on how to make a business case for attending conferences.
I’m guessing there are a lot of us who have had to go through this exercise with our companies. With the conference season about to heat up, this is very timely.
Check out Sean’s post at https://ideakitchn.com/blogs/sean/archive/2010/01/04/so-you-want-to-go-to-a-conference.aspx
He’s also thinking about adding a spreadsheet that you can download to help figure costs.
Here’s some added goodness from Doug Turnure at Microsoft to help skin Sean’s suggestions.
You could enumerate some actionable carats as well, for the employer… for example:
- Prior to attending, I will work with the team to determine a few sessions that they see as critical to attend, and will attend those sessions.
- Upon return, I’ll build out a half-page summation of each session, with links to available collateral, so that everyone can benefit from the session.
- 1 week after returning, I’ll give a de-brief to the team.
- After the event, we’ll set up a discussion group, and once/twice a week at lunch, we’ll go through one of the sessions and talk about the important points.
- While there, I’ll set up a side meeting with <insert expert or MS/Corporate liaison) to discuss a specific problem we are having with our application.
- While there, I’ll find Microsoft employees and get a bunch of free meals off them :-)
Thanks for checking out this post!
| Cheers, |
Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation |