12: Ep. 12 | Maximizing time at tech conferences and events

Brittany Ellich (00:00) Welcome to the Overcommitted Podcast where we discuss our code commits, our personal commitments, and some stuff in between. I’m your host this week, Brittany Ellich, joined by…

Jonathan Tamsut (00:10) Jonathan Tamsit?

Bethany (00:11) Hey, I’m Bethany Janos.

Erika (00:12) And I’m Erica.

Brittany Ellich (00:13) We are software engineers who initially met as a new hire group at GitHub and found a common interest in continuous learning and building interesting projects. We continue to meet and share our learning experiences and discuss our lives as developers. So whether you are pushing code or taking on new challenges, we are happy you are listening. Today’s episode focuses on tech events, how to decide on which to attend, what our experience has been at them, and how to maximize your time at them.

And as a bonus, we’ll also talk a little bit about speaking or volunteering at these events. So these events, just as an aside, include things like conferences, but also meetups with your own team. If you are a remote company and you sometimes go to an offsite, then that, I feel like, falls into this category. And then also just general meetups in your area. So let’s start.

by talking about how you decide which events are worth your time and that you want to go to. Erica, do you want to go first?

Erika (01:08) Sure, this has been top of mind for me because I am deciding whether or not to go to GopherCon. It switches coasts every year and this year it’s on the East Coast and I’m based on the West Coast. So it’s a long way to go, but I really did enjoy it the last time I went and…

I’m trying to decide whether the benefits primarily in networking and what I would get out of the conference sessions would be worth it. I am interested in getting involved in Go Open Source, but I also know that so much of

Networking happens online and in slack and I definitely don’t need to go to a conference to get involved in open source so that it’s the benefit of having a good time and Being in New York and seeing people and meeting people in real life So those are kind of the trade-offs and the way I think about What’s worth my time and not I

I also thought about going virtually, but it’s almost equally hard to make time for attending virtual sessions. Something about being there, you block off the time and really feels like you’re making a commitment versus trying to sort of tune in on the side or something. So that’s generally how I think about.

how to spend my time at tech events.

Jonathan Tamsut (02:32) So this may be just the most programmer introvert question, but how do you guys network? Because I was recently at a conference and I’m like, I don’t think I’m an introverted person or extremely introverted. I’m like, how do I network? Do I just go up and talk to people? Which I guess I feel comfortable with. I don’t know if you guys have strategies or mindsets. It can feel sort of just like kind of random.

Like you’re just kind of randomly bumping into people and chatting. But I don’t know, do you guys have any like mindsets when networking or strategies? I also just don’t like the idea of fully transactional interactions. Sometimes I just want to talk to people and maybe you can get nothing out of it, maybe just get to know someone. I don’t know, what are your guys’ thoughts on our approaches to networking?

Erika (03:21) I try to avoid the small talk questions of like, where do you work? Where are you from? Cause I feel like those don’t build as much connection versus trying to connect about things that we might both be interested in. So if I go to a conference or an event, like say I go to GopherCon, like I more likely ask people like, so how do you use Go? Or like, what are you interested in? Like, what are you here for?

what are you hoping to get out of the conference? Those kinds of questions. But yeah, generally I am more on the introverted side. So clearly I think ahead and have questions prepared instead of vibing it out.

Jonathan Tamsut (03:57) See ya.

So good to have canned questions.

Brittany Ellich (04:03) I usually do stick with some of those.

small talk type questions. And I think one of the things that really helped me is understanding that every single other person there also is down to talk. Like nobody would show up to a conference or a meetup or anything if they’re like, I don’t want to talk to anybody. So knowing that everybody else probably wants to start a conversation too, I think is really helpful. So yeah, I usually just go up to anybody who doesn’t look like they’ve been talking to anyone and say, hi, I’m Brittany. Who are you? Why are you here? And then, you know.

Go from there. And it’s worked pretty well for me in the past.

Bethany (04:32) I struggle a lot with social anxiety so I relate to this question so hard,

And I still very much struggle with just approaching people randomly. Like if there’s an inn, I I staffed a booth at Build for GitHub this past month actually. And that was fine because there was an inn already. Like people were approaching me and I’m great when that happens. But I am bad at approaching other people. So, okay, I struggle with it. I shouldn’t say I’m bad at it. I’m working on it. One thing, my husband, shout out Bobby.

Jonathan Tamsut (04:52) Thank you.

Bethany (05:02) would, told me, or gave me an advice on at, I think I was at All Things Open a couple years ago. And he was like, well, why don’t you just go up to the vendors? It’s their job literally to talk to you. And so I’m like, what if they think I’m dumb or stupid? it’s, but they’re kind of there to push their products on you. I mean, what, how dumb could you really be? And that’s a new idea. So.

I found that helpful as like a warm up almost of getting used to talking to people or going up to people. And definitely applied that at DEF CON last year, that was really helpful. So looking forward to doing that at other conferences for sure.

Erika (05:37) you

I also sort of yeah, make it a point to like have number of connections as like a metric for my own success at a conference. Like if I don’t tell myself like I need to exchange LinkedIn information or like, you know, contact information with like at least, you know, fill in the number, like depending on how ambitious I’m feeling, like three to four people for the day. Like I am absolutely one of those people who would like show up to a conference and not talk to anybody.

So, yeah, that’s another way to sort of like force myself into that mindset.

Bethany (06:13) I think one thing to also call out, because I was the same way kind of during the copilot offsite in terms of like, want to meet everybody, want to collect everybody’s like information and get to know people. And it was great, but I got so tired after the first two days and like the last two days I was a shell of a person. So I think it is important also to set boundaries. It’s okay to…

sit in your hotel room for an hour and not talk to anyone. It’s okay to just be in a corner and just be. That’s okay as well. So I think it definitely goes both ways, but I’m definitely taking that tip of having little metrics for yourself to encourage yourself to get out of your comfort zone. That’s awesome.

Erika (06:54) Yeah, well, guess it works the other way too, where you can say like, hey, I’ve talked to, you know, three people. I don’t have to talk to anybody else now. So, I guess it works for the boundary setting too.

Jonathan Tamsut (07:04) I’m just kind of laughing at this mental image I have of you, Erica. Just like walking up to someone and then like kind of looking down at like maybe like a piece of paper and just asking them like a really detailed, inorganic question. You know, that’s like obviously been scripted.

Bethany (07:17) Okay, maybe I’m over-engineering this, but I’m like, you can have a QR code that people can scan and you can track metrics. ⁓

Brittany Ellich (07:18) Checking a box.

Jonathan Tamsut (07:19) Yeah.

Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (07:28) I think there are whole businesses built around that, about like, lead gen and stuff, but that might come off a little bit less genuine.

Erika (07:35) Yeah, I’d like to think I have a little more tact than that and hopefully, yeah, usually it goes pretty well when I start with my questions, but you can also tell if somebody’s wholly not interested and then you stop and talk to someone else.

Jonathan Tamsut (07:38) Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (07:50) I think it really depends on the event too. I think that there are some events that are just much better for going to go meet people at. Like for example, I’ve gone to a few conferences now. I went to Epic WebConf in March this year and I have never had a better time like talking to people. That was a great conference to go to meet a ton of people that were all down to talk. So that was great. think also when it comes to like local meetups, I’ve started going to the PDX code and coffee and I think having

something that is less, I don’t know, less, there’s less stuff going on. Like it’s not like you’re going to see a talk or something like that. Everybody’s just meeting to hang out and it’s super casual. think those are way better events for meeting people than if you go and sit at a talk and then sit at a talk for 45 minutes and then everybody’s like, well, all right, we’re gonna go for the day. It’s nice to see you all. So I think that the type of event, if you’re trying to meet people is really important.

Jonathan Tamsut (08:41) And to answer your original question, Brittany, I think you asked like what conferences are you interested in going to? I think one conference I have my eye on is Norex, which is like maybe a little bit more of like a researchy conference, but I think like, I think I would learn a lot. And I think I’d just be exposed to a lot of like ML research. I mean, it’s basically like a, you know, ML research.

conference where people are presenting research, lot of deep learning stuff. I think that be cool to go to. That’s a conference where I think in terms of learning, that would be really cool. I imagine there would be cool people to meet. it is interesting to think there’s some conferences that are maybe more social oriented. There’s some that where the focus is more on learning some kind of better combination.

Brittany Ellich (09:29) agreed the type is very important. So we already sorry go ahead. ⁓

Bethany (09:32) I think.

sorry.

I think you all kind of covered the general basis of how to choose conferences or whatnot. It’s usually kind of a mix of applicability to your field and whether talks sound interesting or the people there might be interesting to network with. I will say a lot of having a partner in tech, a lot of times I’ll just will choose it based on, you’re going to this conference, sure, I’ll join you. Which is how I ended up going to DEF CON.

last year, I’m not a security engineer by any means or a hacker, but it was so much fun. I was so surprised by that. There was so many opportunities to like hack on things, even though I didn’t have previous experience. Lots of really cool groups, like there was a little women’s meetup that was fun to attend and we made friendship bracelets, which was really fun. So I think.

Sometimes I’m surprised by how much I like a conference that I wasn’t expecting to like, just purely because I’m like, yeah, I’ll tag along to this conference and it ends up being an absolute joy to go to.

Brittany Ellich (10:35) That’s cool. I don’t think that my husband would be very interested in going to the conferences that I go to. Maybe. So we already sort of talked about the networking side of things, but how do you maximize your time at these events? Are there any other tips or anything that you recommend to anybody who’s going?

Jonathan Tamsut (10:54) This is maybe sort of a negative thing, but I do think you should allow yourself to leave talks. Like if you’re sitting in a talk and maybe you feel like it’s not, you know, it’s not really like worth your time. I do think that very politely and discreetly leaving, I think is okay. You know, as I mean, I guess if it’s like a really small talk, maybe you’re stuck there because you don’t want to, you don’t want make the

the speaker feel bad. Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe you don’t care. That’s kind of up to your individual discretion, but I think in sort of these big conference rooms you should be able to…

Erika (11:22) I totally agree. Because I think there’s like an idea of like really engaging with any talk that you are attending. And I think especially when you get to that point and you’re tired and maybe like overstimulated or something like that, like it’s really easy to tune out and

I think at that point you are wasting your time and it’s better to like step away, take a break, go get some water, get a snack, get some swag, whatever you need to do to kind of like refresh and then come back. Because yeah, ideally at least conferences I feel like…

the talks are a big part of the draw and like I like taking notes during the talks, not like exhaustive notes, but you know, sort of like active listening notes to make sure that I remember the key points and stuff like that.

Yeah, and then it’s also like a good opportunity to talk to people afterwards about what you listen to or about the different talks if you found them engaging and that’s another networking opportunity. Yeah, I guess also…

Sometimes people who do the talks also are interested in having follow-up conversations. So if you found somebody’s talk particularly interesting, you can always go up to the speaker too and talk to them about what they talked about. And that’s a great opportunity to make a new connection and also maybe learn something more that they didn’t include.

Jonathan Tamsut (12:55) I think Erica also made a really vital vital point. Conferences are often about collecting swag. I love free stuff, I’m sure you do too, listener. So just make sure you visit every booth, get every swag item. I think some people feel shame or bashfulness, but it’s there for you. Get the socks, get the hoodies, get it all. That’s something you should not miss out on.

Bethany (13:18) I can confirm as somebody who’s staffed a booth, we are trying to get rid of these things, so definitely don’t feel ashamed doing that.

But yeah, I feel like for me, I do like taking a look at the schedule. I think like some people are very anti going to talks. like, I’m just about the hallway track. And then some people think, you have to go to the talks, which is also not necessarily true. So I think it’s a mix of both and really like balancing your time. I think one thing that’s important is

Are these going to be recorded and posted? If there’s something that you’re kind of interested in and it’s going to be recorded, then I’d say you can feel freedom to skip that. Or if you’re just about to go into a talk and you’re like, I don’t know if I have the mental energy to do this, if it’s recorded, then you can give your elic-

give yourself grace, like allow yourself to tune out a little or come back to it later when you’re feeling more up to it. So I think that’s always good to keep track of. If it’s not gonna be recorded or it’s more like small group interactive, I think I’ll definitely spend more time or prioritize it a little better. But I think it’s all about kind of balance and what truly will benefit your attendance.

with the energy and time you have.

Brittany Ellich (14:33) Yeah, I almost always try to plan ahead a talk that I’m planning to skip, especially if it’s recorded, and then go back to the hotel if possible and take a nap. Especially if it’s a really long day with a ton of talks and then there’s like some social event in the evening, which a lot of them will have, having time, especially like usually like right at that after lunch spot is just the perfect time to go power nap and just like decompress a little bit and be alone. That said, I’m also preparing for GopherCon EU next week, and I

I have the first talk on the first day that’s right after lunch, so don’t skip that one. But, just kidding, you can’t, it’ll probably be recorded. But, you know, I think that’s usually a good time to like take a breather, and that’s really helpful for me.

Jonathan Tamsut (15:11) I also think one other thing is like, you know, there’s different conferences. I think conferences that are held by companies, I mean, what is the value proposition for a company? It’s sales, right? They’re selling you stuff, whether it’s their software or cloud services, et cetera. I think that I naturally just don’t like being sold to. It kind of grinds in my gears.

And so, know, I think, right, like, keep that in mind, you know, there’s, maybe the talks will be less interesting. I don’t know, you know, and, you know, maybe they’re going to be going over sort of, you know, the minutia and small features of their product line in order to sort of, you know, that, that would be interesting for maybe a potential customer, but like not for you. So I think like the distinction between conferences that are, you know, run by corporations and are basically meant as ways to generate.

revenue for the company and interest for their products versus conferences that are just about a topic and they’re not trying to sell you anything per se. It’s just people who are interested and maybe they’re trying to further community building and stuff like that. So I think that’s a really important distinction.

Erika (16:23) And like, you bring up a point that made me think of how we started this conversation of how you decide to even go to a conference or not. And the thing that I mentioned was fun, having fun. And I think that that is a way to judge whether or not you are.

using your time effectively at a conference. The question of, I enjoying myself? Am I having fun? Or whatever it is that’s your goal at that conference. Maybe your goal is to get a job or really learn as much as you can about something. But yeah, whatever that is, connecting with that throughout your time I think is a way to make sure you’re staying aligned.

Brittany Ellich (17:01) Agreed. Yeah, and so Erica, you kind of touched on this a little bit earlier about with taking notes, but how do you approach turning the learnings into action when you return if you’re listening to a bunch of talks in one day?

Erika (17:15) I feel like I always get itchy when I’m at a conference and I want to do everything and hack on everything when I’m there. So it’s true. You have to be there when you’re there and then follow up after. And yeah, I think having those notes…

is helpful in prioritizing what you want to learn more about or follow up on and then having some kind of practical application for it, whether it’s a project or a blog post or something, something that caught your attention and you want to dig into it a little bit more.

Yeah, like maybe choosing a few things that you really want to focus on and then applying that to something that you do after.

Jonathan Tamsut (17:58) think here, conference choice is a key aspect. Like, I, we, had a coworker, uh, Rob, and I remember he went to GopherCon and learned about, test containers. And that was, like, directly relevant to, you know, we we were all Go developers building a Go service, trying to make our tests better, more robust. And, you know, he came back and was like, Hey, like, I learned about this thing. This is helpful. We like, you know, implemented it and, you know, we added it to our code base.

And so I think, like, you know, go to a conference that is related to what you’re currently working on is one way of just integrating the knowledge.

Bethany (18:33) Yeah, I agree completely. think there’s always going to be things that spark your interest and you should definitely write those down in the moment, at least like if in the case of test containers, like, this could do this and that would be a good idea to go off to. I know my husband, we went to All Things Open and he was learning about Othel and he ended up taking that with him to his company to like kind of start seeing if they could integrate into Othel. And this might be a little less relevant

relevant to big conferences and more relevant to like the offsites and the meetups, but I think also relationships can be a tangible outcome from these events. I know with the past couple events I’ve been doing like my copilot offsite and Microsoft build, I actually got to spend so much time with people that I don’t tend to work with very often or didn’t know at a personal level.

And that made things so much easier to approach them in the future and built some really solid friendships as well. I think also just making sure you’re keeping up connection with people that you meet at these conferences who you really want to build a connection with. I think that’s also really valuable.

Brittany Ellich (19:38) I love that. All right, and then I also wanted to talk just a little bit about speaking and volunteering for conferences or events and what your experience is with it and do you recommend it, which ways are there to do that to get involved?

Erika (19:51) feel like you have the most experience speaking.

Brittany Ellich (19:53) Fair, can talk a little bit about speaking. I actually haven’t done a ton of speaking events, but I will say that speaking is a really fantastic way to get to go to conferences that you might not get to go to otherwise. I was on Bill Kennedy’s podcast earlier this year, and he’s the one who actually recommended, I told him, my brother’s in Berlin, I’d love to go check that out. And he was like, hey, you’re in to go, go for Connie, he’s gonna be in Berlin, you should check that out. And so.

I like, yeah, that’s actually great. So I applied and ended up getting chosen to speak at it. So that’s how I’m going to get to go to Berlin next week, which is really cool. So it’s a great way to travel if that’s something that you’re interested in.

Bethany (20:26) I think from a volunteering perspective, it’s probably a little different than speaking and your attendance is probably a little different than a regular conference attendee because you do have to staff a booth for a certain amount of hours and be available for people to approach you. I do recommend it. I think personally, it was great to chat with customers and get their insights and feelings around Copilot. And it was really exciting to just

understand their perspectives. And as an engineer, I think that’s super valuable. We don’t often get face-to-face interaction with customers. So I thought that was really cool. I will say it was a lot, especially as an introvert. I was very drained most days. And it’s not like you can really attend if you’re depending on your schedule. You can’t attend like a bunch of talks or whatnot. So that’s a downside. But I think the

person, like being able to interact with people aspect was so valuable. So I do recommend it. think you should understand if you want to benefit more as an attendee or volunteer definitely before you necessarily sign up for that if you’re planning on going as an attendee. It’s a very different experience. So definitely understand that about yourself, but definitely recommend.

Jonathan Tamsut (21:32) I also like the idea, I’ve never volunteered at a conference, nor have I given a talk. But I do like the idea of giving a talk in that you kind of like, like in an ideal world, you get to think really deeply about a topic and then like present it, present your perspective and to like a wide range of people. And then like maybe like attract people who are also interested

in what you said or it resonated with them in some way. So it’s kind of a way of just like meeting people who have similar interests or even have like interesting thoughts on topics that you also have. So I think that’s cool.

Erika (22:09) Yeah, I theoretically love the idea of speaking, but I also know that public speaking is scary to me. But the flip side of that is I know that it only gets better the more you practice. So it is a goal of mine to do that more and get out there and get more.

get more practice, get more comfortable with it. But yeah, I haven’t. Outside of like internal presentations, I haven’t done any talks. So I’m inspired.

Brittany Ellich (22:41) Finally, this has been a really good conversation. It’s fun to hear about everybody’s different experience with different events. That’s been great. So let’s move on to our fun thing of the day. And I have been…

listening to a ton of Go Time recently, old Go Time episodes, and I have been really enjoying it and miss it, wish that they were still doing it. And so I thought that it would be fun to do some un-pops at the end of this one because you know what? That was one of the best parts was everybody’s unpopular opinions. So you can have an unpopular opinion about, you know, about conferences specifically or about, you know, about anything.

And I’ll start so that you all have a moment to think about something. But my unpopular opinion about tech events is that I don’t really like… At conferences, I enjoy going to talks, but I hate meetups that have talks. I think both as somebody who’s previously organized them, because it’s extremely difficult to continuously organize meetups with talks at them, but also as…

somebody who goes there and wants to meet people, it’s a terrible way to meet people, to go to a talk. Maybe if somebody really interesting is there, but it’s just, it’s really hard. So that’s my unpopular opinion and I just don’t go to those anymore as a result.

Bethany (24:01) So mine is that stickers are dumb. Stop handing out stickers, please. I think this is an unpopular opinion because people at Microsoft build love the stickers and I was just like, why? Where are you going to put them? They feel like waste of paper. Like if I put it on my laptop, it’s there forever. So I just can’t do stickers. Yeah.

Yeah, I actually did get a case for my laptop. was like, maybe I’ll be a sticker girly one day, but I still have not stuck anything on it because I can’t commit to anything. So, yeah, that’s my unpopular opinion.

Erika (24:33) Yeah, that’s gonna be hate mail inducing, I think.

Jonathan Tamsut (24:34) Bye.

Yeah,

Bethany (24:40) I did,

Jonathan Tamsut (24:41) we just lost half of our listenership right there.

Bethany (24:44) so we have like two people now. Just our parents again, man.

Brittany Ellich (24:46) Ouch.

Bethany (24:49) I will say, I like, this is a little embarrassing, but I did come up with that a long time ago because I was like, if I’m ever on GoTime, I need an unpopular opinion to have, so I’m glad I finally got to use that one.

Jonathan Tamsut (25:03) I would say, yeah, I am a related one. I don’t like kind of low quality swag. It feels overly consumeristic, if that’s a word. Like, you’re just kind of, know, like, this, you know, this is probably gonna end up in a landfill, like choking a sea turtle, you know, maybe, maybe.

you know, less swag, but higher quality things that people will use. And yeah, I mean, stickers on a laptop, I think it’s just hideous. I also, stickers on a car, like sometimes when people have a lot of bumpers, even if they’re funny, like sometimes I look at, think that I’ve seen actually a lot of funny bumper stickers recently, this just isn’t a side. But I think when you have too many, it’s like, you’re just trying to, like, you know, you’re just like, what are you trying to communicate? Like, who are you? Like, are you just trying to show off who you are to everyone?

It’s like in traffic. I don’t know. Yeah, I’m not. It’s kind of a peep.

Erika (25:52) Well, Isabelle’s definitely going through a sticker phase, so anything that you don’t want, can send to me and I will give to her. She’ll put them on her hands, face, whatever, doesn’t matter. toddlers are another use case for stickers.

I’m not sure if this is unpopular or like something that everyone holds or something that is gonna make me sound like a bad person, but I’m gonna use this that I think at any meetup I’ve been to there’s always been like one person that I like really don’t want to talk to ever again.

I think especially when I go to more tech meetups instead of software developer meetups. But even still, I’ve had this experience pretty consistently where I’ll have a fairly enjoyable to like…

very enjoyable conversation with like a majority of the people and then there’s like one person in the room that I’m like I actually don’t want to talk to you ever again like please stop talking about blockchain and like please never contact me.

Brittany Ellich (26:56) It’s very valid. Now every meetup you go to, somebody is going to be wondering if they are that one person.

Jonathan Tamsut (26:57) I

Erika (27:00) Is there that

Jonathan Tamsut (27:02) I do especially dislike the person who feels like their sole goal in conversing with you is to show off how smart they are. It’s like this isn’t really relating, like cool, but this is not a real human relationship. Just yeah, you know, there’s, yeah.

Brittany Ellich (27:15) Like people who don’t ask you questions in return, I feel like that’s a really, it’s very easy to like have a conversation. So if you ask somebody a question, they ask you a question, but then there’s a lot of people that you interact with that you just like ask them questions and then they answer and they’re just like, you get nothing. So.

Erika (27:29) Yep.

Brittany Ellich (27:30) Also a tip

on how to talk to humans.

Erika (27:33) I want

to talk to you.

Jonathan Tamsut (27:34) which surprisingly, I’m sorry, I was just gonna say, a surprisingly large number of people have struggled with. I feel like not to be more controversial, but I feel like maybe at a tech conference, sometimes it feels like there’s a lot of people who are not great at that.

Brittany Ellich (27:34) Well, this is…

Erika (27:49) Fair.

Brittany Ellich (27:49) The remote

tech world, I am also guilty of that. am extremely awkward in person. Who isn’t though? Everybody feels like that. Well, this has been great.

Definitely if you have a favorite event, tag us in it online because I’d love to hear about it because you know obviously we’re all looking for more events to go to. Thank you so much for tuning in to Overcommitted. If you like what you hear please do follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is you’re supposed to do on the podcast app of your choice. Check us out on Blue Sky and share with your friends. Until next week.