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Comment by swanson | Hacker News Reader

Just to flip it around, for the fully-loaded cost of sending 2 people to 1 conference that requires travel by plane, you can hire the keynote speaker to come to your office and train 40 people for 2 days. This kind of arrangement is generally more cost-effective and inclusive since it doesn't require multi-day travel commitments.

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But a single keynote is far less effective than a 2 day conference in terms of what you learn. Send 2 people. Have them prepare conference notes and present to the 40 when they get back. It will be keynote x 10 (things you learn outside a single keynote) x 40 (all the employees that get to learn from the 2 that went).

Keynote is such a minor part of attending a 2 day conference that 10x is a conservative estimate.

Edit: And that's just "things learned" that doesn't even count the 20-30 conversations had that can spark collaborative efforts.

Keynote is minimal.

Sending two people and having them paraphrase the talks they saw based on the partial notes they took doesn't exactly sound like an efficient process.

I don't think the OP was suggesting you hire the keynote speaker to come, deliver their keynote and leave. The point is that you could do a lot more than that.

> Sending two people and having them paraphrase the talks they saw based on the partial notes they took doesn't exactly sound like an efficient process.

Don't think of it as education. Think of it as spies debriefing the station crew at the embassy.

This is the right way to think about it. The talks are probably recorded anyway. Really, you want to get some people to go out, see how others are doing things and solving problems, and bringing back the parts that are relevant to your current problems ("Oh, this guy solved problem X, which is really similar to what Ted was stuck on when we left!")

I mean, if I'm thinking about it that way, why am I sending developers on a spy mission?

I'm not sure developers are naturally skilled at parsing presentations (done by other developers, who also often aren't fantastic presenters) into meaningful presentations to give back in the office. Not that conferences aren't worth it, I'm just not sure they're worth it for that.

Attending conferences isn't about watching a few keynotes many of which are recorded anyway.

Exactly. It's about the relationships you make there.

And most businesses don't benefit from the relationships you make there enough for them to pay for you to go.

Yes it could happen - but mostly it doesn't. Particularly if we're talking about engineers in tech.

You do have a point there about travel costs and hiring a speaker. But consider that sending those employees to a conference is not just about training.

Those employees are representing the company when they attend, network, and quite possibly sell the company's services or products to others that they meet.

If those employee have speaking spots (they're speaking at the conference), then the company has an even better chance at getting the company's name out there in front of a lot of people. In that case, the company can benefit even more when it comes to branding and other benefits that speakers give the company.

I think you have a point there. In a previous company we had Scott Meyers come in for a week for a lot of money and I felt the level of C++ skills in general and also the willingness to learn went up a lot.

Keynotes are all too often (depends on the conference, of course, but I see it a lot) either marketing stunts by well known people or companies, or high-level philosophical talks (which can be extremely interesting, but typically less useful for actual learning). So you miss out on all of the other, potentially better for learning, presentations.

You also lose out on the (IMHO) most important and useful part of conferences: the hallway networking.

What do you mean by fully-loaded? Are you counting the cost of those 40 people taking two days away from work? If not ... ($200 per hour * 16 hours + $1,000 travel) * 2 employees ~ $8,400. Is training that cheap? To paraphrase a few folks from Hacker News, "Y'all need to raise your rates."

Yes but then 40 people learn stuff instead of 2. So I think the benefits side has some additions, not just the cost side.

If you're giving up $128k in lost labor, you should make sure to hire an expert instructor. It's a rare keynote speaker that can also be a highly efficient teacher for 16 hours.

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