It was the first tech conference I had attended in years. And waiting this long to attend a technical conference was a mistake.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the ITRoadmap conference put on in Fort Worth, Tx. by the fine folks at IDG.

I enjoyed a well-paced day of keynotes, panel sessions, vendor presentations and tutorials.

I had breakfast and lunch with very interesting groups of people and discussed relevant current issues and found out how they are dealing with them.

I even ran across 2 guys who live very near me that I had never met before.

I spent time discussing culture issues with one of the panelists on the “Best IT places to work” panel. He gave me some great ideas regarding culture and employee practices to improve engagement and retention.

I left the day refreshed, better informed and motivated.

So here are my 5 reasons you should attend a conference near you.

1. Meet new people in your market similar to you

As an IT and software development director, it was enjoyable and informative to meet the same type of people who work in my geographical market and get to know them and their business.

I increased my network, made new friends  and learned new things about some of our local businesses.

It was good to hear how those folks are dealing with some of the same problems I have to deal with. I walked away with new ideas.

2. See new perspectives on the same problems you are dealing with

The tutorial sessions and vendor presentations were well done and educational.

I learned something new in every session I attended.

I walked away with new techniques to try, new tools to investigate and new acquaintances to further my reach.

3. Form connections for future business or collaboration

I made connections to people and businesses that will help me in the future as well.

I learned about some new tools from Dyn that can help us with product delivery to our customers.

I came away with new DevOps strategies from Irwin Lazar, Vice President of Nemertea Research.

Dean Shroll of Sophos gave an interesting and scary talk about ransomware and the current threat landscape.

And I met some folks who work very close to me that I can continue to develop friendships and learn from.

4. Explore more in-depth industry trends and issues

Here are just 3 small examples of the talks and tutorials that were given.

Derek Hulitzky provided a talk with 3 short case studies of companies that have made profound digital transformations their business.

Mikel Steadman, Director of Sales and Solutions Engineering at Dyn gave a fascinating talk regarding doing business on the internet and provided some perspective on the recent DDoS that Dyn suffered.

Nicole O. Fontayne, Vice President, Chief Information Officer for  DART described how they deal with the enormous IT complexity of a metro area transit system.

We learned about the trends in hiring, retention, IoT and cloud migration and scaling, DevOps, Security and tons of others.

5. Find a new job

And yeah, you can also find folks who have businesses that need people like you. It can be a recruiting (or hiring) bonanza depending on what you are looking for.

Conclusion

It was so worth missing a day of work and the pains that come with that to attend the IT Roadmap conference. It was a great benefit to me and I will sign up as soon as registration starts next year.

So go and find a good conference near you and attend, and participate. You will be glad you did.