Of course, they are held, but their number in comparison with autumn and spring is very small. I would like to change this trend, as everyone in our team is confident that summer events are great. In this short article we will state thoughts on this subject and will be happy to discuss.
For the second year in a row, our team has been actively attending various IT conferences, participating there both with a stand and with presentations. In some months of the most interesting events for us, especially from April to May and from October to November, almost half of our office dies out. And all because some conferences, intersecting each other, put us before the choice of which teams to send there to participate and how to separate the stands and handouts. Therefore, the question has arisen why all the top conferences are held precisely in these months and why some of them are not held in the summer?
Despite the fact that our team attended more than 50 events of various sizes, I can say that we began to take such an active part not so long ago, only in 2018. What we did not know before, but I didn’t find any information about this on the net. Perhaps some conferences were already held sometime in the summer, but the result did not live up to the expectations of the organizers. Therefore, they refused this format.
But now it’s not about us. Let’s try to figure out why conferences can still be held in the summer. Before they may say that it is unprofitable and inconvenient to hold them in the summer, as many participants and speakers will go on holidays, and the organizers have a break after the spring conferences and time to prepare for the upcoming autumn, I want to express my thoughts on this .
To justify the benefits of hosting conferences in the summer, I offer you a few thoughts as follows.
Ability to attend more conferences than now
Take the abstract C # programmer who wants to go to the November conferences of DotNext, Highload ++ and CLRium. The first two are held in Moscow on weekdays, and the third in St. Petersburg on Friday and Saturday. In total, a person drops out of the workflow for at least a week. And if he is from another city, then even more. Given that DotNext and HL ++ generally overlap, the choice becomes even more difficult. It turns out that the programmer needs to spend time to analyze all the reports and decide where to go, because all conferences deserve attention, and let the employer release the employee for a week or more. Most likely, the choice will be largely random.
Even if a person decided to visit “everything”, the employer is unlikely to be delighted when in one month the employee falls out of the work process for a long time due to attending several events. He may simply prohibit attending several events. Although he would not mind if a person attended the conference gradually.
It turns out that everyone wants to hold a conference out of season. Because of this, there is competition between conferences. And it may turn out that in the holiday season (summer), it will be even easier to gather students.
Smooth conferences throughout the year
The large organizers of the conference go almost continuously, reaching five or more per month. Participants whose field of knowledge is not limited to one programming language, as well as partners who want to offer these participants something, can attend conferences more evenly, and not one after the other, driving themselves this way on the groundhog day. Arriving at them throughout the year, you can better absorb the materials of reports and accumulated knowledge, as well as analyze work and communication. All tasks do not fall off in one month and there is no effect "sometimes thick, then empty." And this I am not talking about meetings, festivals and exhibitions.
Even distribution of budget funds for small companies
As a rule, not only large companies with thousands of employees speak at conferences, but also those with 50 or fewer employees. When approaching, when for two and a half autumn months you participate in six or more conferences only as a partner, and in the same amount as a speaker without a stand, you directly feel the costs of all the preparations in the spring and fall.
Nice warm weather
Agree, it is more pleasant to listen to reports and network when the weather is nice in summer. It is clear that the reports themselves are held in a closed room without windows, and the venue of the entire conference can also be isolated from daylight. But there are various pre-parties and after-parties that end not only in the territory of the conference. You won’t feel the stuffiness of the day in the usually hot months, since usually the rooms where the conference is held are air-conditioned and well ventilated. But on a pleasant evening, you can sit down with your like-minded person and your favorite drink on the open veranda of a good restaurant and have a good discussion of various sore topics.
In cold weather, you have to stand in line at the end of the day after the end of the official part of the conference for your outerwear, soar all day in warm street shoes, unless, of course, you take a shift in advance, and then continue the evening with a full backpack merch + shift .
Also, according to geographic data from the organizers, the average attendance of participants who live in the city of the conference does not exceed 50%. Which suggests that the rest are newcomers. I am sure that most of these people arrived here not only during the days of the conference. And not just for the sake of the conference itself. Surely they arrived a certain number of days earlier or later, so that there was time to relax, tune in and acclimatize if there was a change in time zones. And during this time you can see the city, as most of the events are held in the most beautiful cities of our country - Moscow and St. Petersburg. After all, it is more pleasant to enjoy the architecture and views of the city when the weather is nice, and not spring-autumn dullness, slush and rain.
Conclusion
Let's hold conferences in the summer too!
And finally, I want to ask a question. Interestingly, is this all competition between large organizers for the attention of participants and partners, or are there any reasonable arguments in favor of such a conference schedule? In this regard, I would like the organizers themselves to give feedback and tell their thoughts about this.