My experience with conference and meet-ups
Conference, meet-ups are so popular nowadays. Besides an excuse of getting out of office, I do believe it’s a great opportunity to learn and network. This article reflects my thinking on how the setup conference or meet-up affects attendee’s ability to learn and network.
Recently, I had a chance to attend a conference about UX in Singapore (thanks to company’s sponsorship). I looked through the schedule and decided to go for the 2 sessions that seemed to be relevant to me.
Little did I know that soon after I settled down at the conference, I dozed off for nearly 1 hour. I only woke up when my colleague asked me to give him something. And nope, it was not food comma. That embarrassing experience makes me wonder what could’ve gone so wrong on that day.
On the same day of the conference, I went to a product meet-up in the evening. The topics were about user story mapping and understanding vision-strategy-objective from company / team / product aspect.
It was interesting, I felt. The content was relatable and actionable in a way that I could go home and did more research these topics. The best part, I didn’t sleep in the meet-up. Why were there two different experiences?
| Details | Conference | Meet-up |
|---|---|---|
| No. of presentations | All-day presentations panels: 10 | 2 presentations |
My two cents: I think 20/80 rules. Out of 10, probably 2 are really good ones. However, if a conference allows me to choose what session to attend, that really saves a lot of time. For meet-up, if the 2 presentations are not good, I also have choice of walking away
| Audience size | 100-1000s | 10 - 50 |
My two cents: Because of the audience size, conference usually holds in auditorium. During presentation, the light will be turned off in the audience area. And that is the number one reason that makes me sleepy. If the presentation is not engaging, it becomes a lullaby for me. On the contrary, meet-up is usually hosted in a company’s gathering area. There is no light effect so I feel the pressured to focus because I’m visible in other people there.
| Content | 100-1000s | 10 - 50 |
My two cents: Maybe I’m naive but I go to conference hoping to learn something practical. However, I feel though a speaker has up to 45 minutes, they tend to present something very general and high level. I can tell there’s a mismatch in expectations between speakers and audience when the host reads audience’s questions.
For example: The speaker talks about “How data-driven UX saves the company time and effort. And how UX should be the centre of every company’s decision”. In that session, the most voted question from audience is “What do you think about doing research with 2-3 people from Starbucks randomly?”. That one question alone is worth a presentation, in my opinion.
I understand the pressure of giving “Wow” effect with such a large crowd. But for practical people like me, the “Wow” without “How” is really a waste of time.
I don’t mind going to conference but I think attending the panel discussion is more interesting than listening to presentations. I feel like I hit more jackpot with meet-ups. And I get to know more people there as well.