Indonesia’s technology startup community did not waste time in kicking 2012 off into high gear by holding the two-day Boost Asia conference which was held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jakarta on 17-18 January. The conference boasted a host of speakers and panelists from Japan, USA, Vietnam, and Indonesia and was attended by nearly 300 entrepreneurs, investors, other business people, the media, and even students.
I’m not going to go into much about the conference, that I’ll leave to Rama who will be able to talk about it much deeper. What I want to discuss however, is the effectiveness and appeal of conferences, especially tech industry conferences such as Boost or DailySocial’s very own SparxUp and whether it’s worth paying to attend them.
Conferences serve two purposes. One is to deliver insights, experiences, and knowledge from industry players who have done the hard work, who have seen the ups and downs and know the challenges being faced by anyone wishing to enter the field.
Speakers are generally expected to also discuss ways to avoid the pitfalls and serve warnings of the dangers that others may come across although some are there to market their products or ideas.
The second function is as a platform to build, enhance, and expand business contacts and networks as well as to update oneself on what is happening across the industry.
Conferences are probably the only time in which hundreds of people within an industry can mingle and interact directly with one another without having to arrange for meetings and juggling their schedules.
Unfortunately the packed schedule of these conferences often mean that the only times to catch up are during breaks and after the sessions and even then, only if the sessions don’t last well into the evening, after which, some attendees are more likely to rest rather than socialize.
On the other hand, the short periods in which attendees can mingle sometimes lead to more meaningful and pointed discussions as people, pressed for time, tend to dispense with the small talk.
A lot of the times, the content of conferences can be easily found on the net across various relevant websites or in books. For those who scour the Internet on a regular basis, often there’s not a lot to take away from attending conference keynotes and talk shows unless the speakers reveal or announce something new or previously unheard of experiences and stories and in Indonesia, these rarely occurs.
Conference speeches and sessions are often broadcast or reported upon on various websites which means if you’re planning to attend for the talks, there’s a good chance that you’ll eventually come across the material anyway without attending.
So is it still worth paying the big bucks to attend conferences? Well, the main take away from events like this often come in the form of the contacts, discussions and insights gained from social encounters.
Perhaps then the real value of conferences is the chance to meet other industry players that you would have otherwise not met. ZDNet covered this very topic last year and came to a similar conclusion: “It’s a chance to cement relationships and deepen bonds with the ones you’ve already met”.
