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Subject:RE: Orlando Conference and Exhibits - Why they go From:"Kieffer, Barry" <Barry_Kieffer -at- adc -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 5 Jun 2000 08:57:08 -0700
I was once told be a professional presenter that there are three types of
people who attend conferences:
Prisoners
Vacationers
Those who really want to be there
1. Prisoners are there because the boss said go. This is usually for stuff
like diversity training and team building. Nobody really wants to be there
(except for that group of perky people we all secretly hate).
2. Vacationers are there because it is a day out of the office. This is by
far the largest group. I once met a woman who said she attended every
conference she could, on her companies dime. She had just come from one
conference, and even attended a conference in the U.K. that year. I have
been to one conference; you can not convince me that you can attend a
conference a month and really learn anything new.
3. Those who really want to be there. For the 1999 Seattle STC conference,
that group included me. I paid for my own hotel room, the conference, and
travel. We are the (somewhat stupid) minority. I can not tell you how may
technical writers I met who only wanted to talk about the next conference
they planned to attend. How do these people ever get anything done?
I say one conference every few years is quite enough.
Have a great week.
Barry Kieffer
-----Original Message-----
From: renee -at- e-sim -dot- co -dot- il [mailto:renee -at- e-sim -dot- co -dot- il]
Renee wrote: <snip>
Some of us weren't able to make it to the conference and would love to hear
substantive reports about it.
Hearing about the temperature in the rooms and whether the food was pricey
or
not is okay, but didn't you learn a few good tech writing tips that you'd
like
to share?
