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IT Professionals are an interesting breed—and I’ve had plenty of opportunity to study the ‘species’ recently at the FUSION11 conference in Washington.

Of the 2000 attendees, there was a group of people who clearly enjoyed the personal interaction and social aspects of attending a conference, but there was another group (probably even larger!) who appeared to be very single-focused: attend the sessions, take notes, and go back to the hotelroom to work a bit more. You didn’t see them at the social events; they didn’t attend the networking sessions. You didn’t even see them at the motivational keynote events…they showed up at the breakout sessions, which were specifc to their current job role.

It made me wonder…if attending a conference is only to gain more knowledge, aren’t there better options for you? There are some really great webinars around, many of which are free to attend. And most vendors that have a booth at the conference have all the information available on their websites or through corporate information portals. Alternatively, you can enrol in online learning classes to quickly increase your knowledge and skill level for a specifc subject. You can even do this outside of work hours so your peers don’t know how you got to this new level of knowledge and understanding.

Direct learning is not the main reason for attending a conference, that is not where the value add lies…

• Is it the schedule of industry specifc learning interlaced with motivational keynote speakers? • Is it the fact that you can distance yourself from the daily ‘grind’ in the ofce?

• Is the value more at a personal level to build trust between people—a relationship that can’t easily be forged through email, blogs, and tweets?