After several years of organizing developer events, we have gotten tons of feedback from developers on why they attend conferences and how these conferences have impacted their personal and professional growth. Here are the top 10 benefits we have collected over the years.
1. Broaden your horizons
With our everyday routines at work, we tend to stay in our comfort zones and focus on the tasks ahead. This causes us to be short-term oriented with narrow perspectives as we lose sight of the big picture and forget to catch up with new trends, technologies and best practices. Conferences are a great way to get out of our comfort zones, open ourselves up to new possibilities and stimulate our minds with new approaches and solutions that will help us with our projects. If you want to broaden your horizons and your skillset, then multi-track conferences give you a great way to expand your knowledge and dive into new technologies, tools, frameworks and languages.
2. Extend your own network
You should not underestimate the opportunities of networking at conferences. We don’t only meet others for fun, but we have the chance to build new relationships with people from different industries, backgrounds and skill sets. While we may not benefit immediately from new relationships, you never know how these relationships can help us in the future to solve problems, find solutions and create new opportunities. Overall, there are many ways for us to network at conferences; for instance, conference apps and other opportunities allow you to even organize self meet-ups for a chance to find others who are interested in the same topics as you.
3. Transfer knowledge to your team
One of the greatest benefits of attending a conference is that you come back knowing more than you did before, which you can share with your team. Transferring knowledge is highly important for the development and strengthening of our teams to perform better. What’s even better is that once you share what you’ve learned with your teammates, you have the opportunity to spark discussions, debates and ideas with them.
4. Get constructive feedback
Being at an event with experts and peers in our field opens up opportunities to get constructive feedback on our products, concepts and ideas. It’s a chance to discuss with others who have different perspectives, experiences and know-how that help us get valuable feedback from people who you normally wouldn’t get it from.
5. Feel inspired, recharged & motivated
We all sometimes need to recharge and get a new perspective. Going to a conference for a couple of days is one of the best ways to help recharge your work life. Listening to industry leaders, inventors and tech pioneers gives us deeper insights that you typically don’t get during your daily routines. So think of it, how can it not be inspiring to hear from those who created something that changed the world? You’ll come back from a conference feeling inspired and motivated from what you’ve learned, who you’ve connected with and with what you’ve experienced.
6. Strengthen your existing skill set
It is becoming crucial nowadays to continuously learn, so it is important to dedicate time to develop and strengthen your skills. At conferences, you get to gain valuable insights, tips and techniques on your tech stack from the programming languages you use to the frameworks and applications you operate with. You’ll leave the event having enhanced your technical skills.
7. Enhance your career development
We get to meet with other companies and brands at events, and with the chance to network with new firms and people, it’s a chance for us to create future opportunities. For our personal career development, attending these events helps us showcase that we are actively involved in the developer community. Our careers benefit from these conferences because we get to complement our existing skill set with new skills, make a presence in the developer community and network for future opportunities.
8. Reconnect with others
Life is busy so sometimes we don’t always get to meet up with friends or colleagues. We hear from many developers who attend our conferences that going to events and conferences is one way they stay in touch with those they rarely get to see. So, as a way to stay connected, we can plan ahead and go with others to events and conferences as a great way to meet up.
9. Encourage teamwork
Attending conferences is one way for our teams to bond. Going to events and gaining new experiences together is the perfect opportunity for our teams to get to know each other outside of the work environment. This is one of the most exciting ways to do team activities and strengthen relationships with our colleagues.
10. Collect stickers
This reason might sound a little funny – but hey, who are we to judge – one reason many of us attend conferences is to add to our sticker collections. So, obviously attending conferences is the best way for us to get more stickers.
And… have fun
Last but not least, the cheesiest reason to attend a developer conference is for us to have fun. Conferences are a place to have a great time while learning and meeting new people.
While we know that everyone has their own individual approaches on how to benefit from conferences, this feedback we’ve collected over the years is a good summary of why it pays off to attend developer events. At the end of the day, events provide us with a lot of different opportunities, so it’s up to us which ones we take and what we make out of them.
