Ideas for a Smarter, Faster World

Blame it on the fact that SXSW is the first multi-day, totally immersive conference I’ve attended since I went to HOW in 1998, but being here has gotten me thinking alot about professional development. It’s an issue that our association clients in particular have been challenged with in the past two years as budgets have disappeared and the technology for other alternatives has improved. That’s because they are often the content providers for PD opportunities. But I would suggest that it’s an issue for everyone, because professional development is one of the greatest total compensation benefits a company can offer its employees.

I started my post-collegiate life at an association, working events like these and trying, as part of the communications department, to get people to “attend and send.” Many of the benefits of these events haven’t changed since then. But I think our (read: the pursestring holders’) perception of their value may have changed. There’s a sense now, with vast communities of thought available to us at the end of a URL, that there’s no reason to wait — not to mention pay — for that once-a-year experience.

So, in defense of professional development given by and for our clients, and as a thank you to the folks who put my name in for what is turning out to be an amazing conference experience, I want to list a few reasons why conferences should remain a part of every company’s PD efforts.

• A group of people you’d never meet otherwise. Even with social media, your circle is limited. Asking friends and co-workers, or checking my trusted online sources wouldnt’t have led me to the handful of new people I’m now following on Twitter because I have things to learn from them.

• Re-igniting your passion for what you do. This hit home with me in yesterday’s session “The Revenge of Editorials” and this morning’s “Why Keep Blogging.” Seeing people who do what I do, who are doing it well — it gets me jazzed. Having employees who get out of bed in the morning eager to do a kick-ass job has got to be worth its weight in gold.

• Stepping back from “do” to “do better.” There’s a theme emerging already at this event of focusing on craft. The pace of pretty much every industry has gotten to the point where it’s easy to go through the motions. It takes more than a lunch hour on a teleconference to break out of your rut. And you walk away from events like this not just with the desire to do better, but also with some pretty good ideas on how to do it.

• Cash equals care. Yes, conferences are costly: airfares, hotels, registration fees, etc. But when you, as an employer, make the commitment to spend that money on ME? That means something.

• It doesn’t end here. Everyone who attends or sends someone to an event like this should be thinking of ways to maximize and extend the experience of it. This blog is an example of that. Sharing information with other colleagues upon your return is another. And, of course, returning to those notes and key takeaways weeks or months after you jotted them down — better yet, making them part of your standard process when you return.

We spend the first 20 years of our lives being immersed in the value of education. And then we get good jobs and promptly stop learning. That’s an exaggeration, of course. There is on-the-job learning, learning by doing, and the continuing education that we give ourselves by reading and talking to others. But every once in a while it’s good to go back to that old fashioned sort of learning: sitting down with a group of your peers, listening to those who know something you don’t, taking notes, asking questions and growing in the process.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 9:38 pm and is filed under General, South by Southwest 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.