Waste of time (Score 1)

The majority of conferences in my opinion are a total waste of time, money and effort, regardless how good the speaker are. The reason is, the human brain forgets, deletes, generalizes and distorts, hence the delegate leaves with only a fraction of what was presented. The saying is “Apple a day not seven on Sunday) hence a conference (assuming it is good content) is information overload, hence a waste. The majority of conference organizers do not have the foresight to record and capture the conference for delegates. If a conference is worth attending, it should be worth capturing e.g. audio, Power Point, video etc. Additionally many conferences are multi-stream, which means automatically you miss 50% of more of the content. The majority of conference companies in my opinion are simply parasites that offer no real, lasting value for delegates. The charge huge fees to attend, pay most speaker nothing to present and charge outrageous fees to exhibitors. Some think they are “cutting edge” by providing delegates a copy of the Power Points on CD, which was possible 15 years ago. I am yet to attend a single conference that was designed specifically with the delegate in mind, whereby delegates could interactively create their own version of the conference, personalize the content and collaborate with others in real-time. The conference industry is total joke, for the amount of money to attend a conference, plus airfares & accommodation etc, you could easily purchase 20 to 40 great technical books and have the ability read and re-read as often as you want. Or better yet, learn how to search effectively and find the information you require online for free.