Ask HN: How does your company handle conference attendances? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How does your company handle conference attendances?

2 pointsharmw1 comment

At our company (based in NL), we just have a per-team budget that essentially comes down to EUR 1.000 per person. With around 25 in this particular team (most other team are <10) that comes out at a nice overall budget we get to spend as a team.

However, it's still next to nothing as most decent conferences are EUR 500+ entry, in which case we're limited to just 1 or 2 visits a year. Not even taking conferences abroad into account.

So the question now rises, how do other companies handle their employees wanting to hit up multiple conferences a year? There are many ways to implements a lot of different aspects and factors here. I'm primarily just looking for different angles of approach, input, inspiration (like, for our HR team) :)

View on HN

Here are some quick thoughts

It feels anecdotally to everyone I have worked with that the law of diminishing returns applies. For this reason, there rarely seems any reason to send more than 2 (maybe 3) people to a conference. So with that in mind...

Regardless if booking is undertaken by your team or by HR, there is opportunity for wheeling and dealing. Whoever makes the booking can try to organise discounts through the conference organisers. Can also try to organise a joint trip with a supplier / partner, funded by the partner

Secondally, I tend to encourage notes and debriefs - The team and culture have the expectation that whoever goes to the conference will knowledge-share with the team. With this expectation ingrained, all attendees return with a page of notes to jog their memory and run through with us all (semi-informally). This reinforces the value from only one or two attendees.

2-3 pax (dependent on conference) seems the sweet spot at which it is still worthwhile, people don't get too homesick or lonely, the guys bounce ideas off each other or fill gaps the others have, etc.

There are a) Often unsold tickets and b) always many many no-shows. Therefore it is always worth trying to get last minute cheap tickets for conferences. Usually if you see '$495 per ticket' for a conference, somewhere there are still people getting in without paying a cent. And the more corporate the event (i.e. if held by a single vendor), the easier it is to get discounts (as compared with governmental, non-profit events etc.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com