When the boss sends repeated e-mails telling you to sign up for a conference, at some point, you can no longer ignore them. So you sign up, knowing full well, it will not be a pleasant experience.
And it wasn’t.
I spent the last two days at the Air Vehicle Engineering Conference here in Jacksonville. It continues tomorrow, but I’m going back to work. I can’t take it any more. Of all the presentations listed in the program, only one was remotely interesting to me - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. And it was interesting enough that I have a point of contact for a possible new job when I move to Maryland. I’ll be sending off an e-mail tomorrow.
One man was discussing the history of carrier aviation. That could have been a fascinating session. However, he was not a very good speaker. I nodded off twice. I wish I had recorded his monotone for use on a sleepless night.
There was the admiral who gave the opening talk (I was stationed with him when he was a lieutenant commander 20 years ago) and he wandered thru the crowd asking questions and pointing fingers. We were not well prepared for that fiasco! But he made one very good point - we need to stay more in touch with our customers - the fleet sailors and pilots. He spent over an hour making that point.
Other bits of the conference that stand out in my mind - the overuse of the word “basically” - I hate that word! Then there was the materials engineer who kept saying “manufracturing” - like stuff being broken as it was being made.
Another good feature was that today was chocolate snack day - they had chocolate chip cookies and brownies and chocolate mousse in dark chocolate cups, and candy bars, and even YooHoo! So after I got my chocolate fix, I left. I’d already been there 8 hours, so I figured that was enough.
I guess I’m unprofessional - I didn’t get much out of the professional conference. Oh well… whaddya gonna do??
I once had a manager come and tell me I needed to go to a conference. He didn’t care which conference, I just had to go to a conference, preferrable something related to what I did at work. I think the reasoning was that he got the funding for a conference, I was next in line to be sent somewhere, and it looked good on paper for his team to be going to conferences.
So I did some Web searching, and found a conference in a city that was about a 2 day drive from me, at a kick ass resort hotel. I could drive to it in my brand new kickass convertable. I could sit by the pool when not conferencing. Whoohoo!
It was great. The hotel kicked ass. I went to the conference during the day, and lounged around at night. I partied. Mr. Athena flew down 2 days before the conference was over and hung out by the pool. We drove back together.
I learned some stuff there, too. So everyone was happy!
I can usually find something at engineering conferences to hold my interest enough to keep me awake, but I know what you mean. You’re not unprofessional, you just have a highly developed sense of self-preservation.
I’d offer you my sympathy, but I was once forced to sit through the ultimate Seminar From Hell.
You don’t know deathly dull until you’ve listened to an economist for six hours.
See, that’s why you have to have a job so obscure, that nobody knows what you do. That way you can schedule your own conferances, and go places you like. Much like Athena, the one big conferance I go to a year (in Orlando in December), is more like a mini-vacation. The wife flies down with me, and we spend an extra couple of days before the conferance starts enjoying ourselves. That way we really only have to pay for a few extra days lodging on our own. I have another one in Orlando coming up in July, and we plan on doing the same thing.
