If You Value Someone, Set Them Free

Earlier this year I did my first proper conference presentation: "Why Do I Hate Unit Tests" at Devoxx UK (you can view the slides here) and I absolutely loved it. Since then I've been trying to persuade some of my more talented colleagues to engage in public speaking, be that internal talks, lightning talks, local or national conferences. 

For one reason or another, getting developers to speak in front of a crowd is difficult and was originally going to be the focus of this post, but while I was thinking about it I realised that I know people who have been in the industry as long as I have who have never even been to a conference, never mind speaking at one!

So lets say we have a manager, "Bob" and an engineer, "Dave", and Dave wants to go to a conference. When Dave goes to Bob and makes his request I have no doubt that the first question Bob is going to ask is "why?"  If Dave is prepared he'll have the list of sessions and what the benefits of each are, but here's the kicker: 

The sessions you attend are only a fraction of the benefit you get from attending a conference

And here's why

Happiness

Engineers, at least in my experience, want to go to conferences, and when you give someone something they want it makes them happier, and when people are happier they're more motivated and more productive*.  Make it a conference in a foreign country and those benefits are increased even further - you're letting your employee know that you value them and are willing to invest in them

Creativity

Do you know what engineers do when they're together outside of work? They talk about work! When I'm stuck on a problem, I'll grab a colleague, go for a smoke**, talk about the problem and usually come up with a solution.  Go down the pub on an evening and engineers are still problem solving, they're just bigger problems. Send two or three guys away to a conference and you'll be surprised what they can come up with when unencumbered by the daily job.

Raise your Company Profile

Wouldn't it be great if people wanted to come and work for you instead of you having to go and look for people? If your staff enjoy working for you and they're out at conferences telling other people how much they enjoy it, your chances of attracting talent increases. If you're doing cool shit, have your techies speak at conferences and get the message across even more. If your staff aren't happy and you don't want them selling, well hell, you've got much bigger problems than I can help you with. 

Networking

For me this is by far and away one of the biggest benefits of a conference - meeting people. Personally I just like meeting new and interesting people, but even if you look at it from a cold, hard, logical position, isn't it better to have a much wider pool of talent from which to draw on? Like I said before, techies like to talk about problems, but when they know someone who specialises, that's the person they'll go to for help!

I'm writing this sat on a plane returning from #AgilePrague and I met some absolutely awesome people there. Fun people, smart people, people who are industry leaders and hey, even a guy who played in a kick ass 80s hair metal metal band! But they all have one thing in common- I'd have met none of them if it wasn't for a conference. 

*Don't believe me? Try reading some books on motivation, I recommend Delivering Happiness and Drive. 

** Any non smokers who think its unfair that smokers take so many breaks: we may be away from our desks, but we're still working, so ner.