–ed

I’m Vlogging at LISA this year…if you see me, come talk to me! I love to ask and answer questions. I’ll be asking questions of a lot of presenters at LISA, and posting the answers in my blog at USENIX. If there’s a session you can’t make but you want to ask questions on, stop me – I’ll ask for ya!

—p

Mary: I find that I always bring my pocket camera — even if I don’t use it, I hate worrying that there will be things I want to take pictures of and can’t. (Hey, some lunch photos are fun!) But I am pretty much always carrying my backpack with me anyway, everywhere. Also, if I get a photo of something interesting, other people will approach me to ask about photos, which I like since I hate to do the approaching myself!

Also, definitely agree with bringing snacks even if you’re promised a meal — either the food is unsuitable (I can’t stand mayonnaise), or you end up going off talking to people during the break, or you have something you need to get done and the meal break is the only time to do it…

It also took me a while to figure out that it was OK to spend a lot of time in the “hallway track”, that it wasn’t a waste to go to a conference and miss a bunch of sessions.

Where I don’t know anyone I’ve had good results finding out who my friends’ friends are and striking up conversation with them.

You may also like this exchange between Asheesh Laroia and me: what makes for a good time at a conference:

http://www.asheesh.org/note/software/packaging.html
http://www.asheesh.org/note/people/great-time.html

* At SXSW, I discovered far too late that these were the “Core Conversations” talks — why wasn’t that explained somewhere obvious on the schedule?
* Many events have BarCamps or WhateverCamps running either just before or simultaneously with the event, where there are likely to be small group conversations rather than huge lecture theatres.
* At OSCON, the Community Leadership Summit held on the previous weekend was a great way to meet a few people before the hugeness of the main show — somewhere around 100-150 people rather than thousands.
* At one non-work-related convention I went to there was a “newbies dinner” on the night before the proceedings really started, where I went and met not only newbies, but a handful of welcoming people who’d attended before and were helping ease us into it.
* If your travel plans allow it, see if there are any relevants meetups or user group meetings in the week preceding the conference. If you’re speaking at the conference, that might even give you the chance to do a practice run with a smaller group, and they’ll appreciate getting an out-of-town speaker.
* See if the event has opportunities for room-sharing or carpooling, and put your name down for them if it makes sense. That way you’ll know at least one other person from the very start.

Watching twitter hashtags, blog search feeds, mailing lists, or wikis associated with the event can be a vital way to find out about any of the above and even to start to know some other people who’ll be attending. Ideally you’d start watching at least a month ahead of time, but you can still get useful tips right up to and even during the conference.

Some conferences (not enough) come with handily sized minischedules that conveniently let you have one day’s worth of events visible though your nametag slip.

It’s partly because my laptop is heavy, but I find having a laptop with me a mixed blessing. It means I can blog or tweet or get the inside deal on lunch, but it means worrying about charge and theft. I don’t have a PDA or smartphone, but that could be an option. Consider how many times a day you really need to check your email.

The ubiquitous conference SLR can be skipped: bulky. A smaller camera may not be worth bothering with either: lighting in most talks is too dim for them, and photos of people eating lunch aren’t very interesting. Carry a card reader if you’re worried someone will get a great photo of your talk or something, and ask them if you can copy the images.

I’m interested in tips for people who don’t have a network of people at the conference, I guess some are:

Prior research, you can start with the speakers and figure out who their colleagues are via Planets or blogrolls or mailing lists. Then you know what names you’re keeping an eye out for.

Volunteering is a mixed blessing: some tech conferences ride their volunteers hard and you may not get to much of the conference. But if there is pre-conference volunteering (like bag packing, shuttling gear around), that’s probably useful for getting an elementary network in place.

There are a bunch of tradeoffs with accommodation in terms of expense, your travelling companions, noise etc, but staying within a few blocks of where everyone else is staying will maximise your ability to do things after hours and to get your disco naps in.