Today, we explore the journey of a conference attendee in Toronto just making her return to big events, who found it crowded and disconnected.

Every conference planner thinks about what they want attendees to do. But too few actually ask attendees. And while big-name speakers and snappy session names may sell tickets, if people like Sun are unable to find those speakers and feel hoodwinked by breakout titles—then jammed into tight spaces—they may choose to go without.

Those attendees may simply leave with the people they came with and only be coaxed back with free/cheap tickets. Which means you’re paying more to promote it, and it doesn’t gain word-of-mouth momentum. 

“There was so much happening at the same time that I had to make sacrifices.”

Sun: I’d been sick for some months and this was one of my first forays back into society, as well as the biggest and most organized event I’d been to in a long time.  

The highlights were hearing from experts from companies like Adobe and Mozilla talk about ethical and open-source AI, and getting to meet some of my online friends from a marketing course I’d taken. I got to hear from people I really admire like Kara Swisher, Lisa LaFlamme, and Tegan & Sara. 

On the negative side, some of the talks had pretty misleading titles and ended up being quite boring or entirely irrelevant—just some unstructured fireside chat where the interviewer didn’t direct things. They would ask a question that would go for five minutes and end up being a statement or general observation. (Just ask a question!) 

I was also bothered that the talks were such a far distance from one another. You ended up running around and missing stuff. I wasn’t the only attendee running. It felt like there was too much going on at the same time and I really had to make sacrifices. 

Oh, and the happy hour was crowded. There was a line around the block and then you had to wait 15 minutes for a drink at the bar. There were allegedly snacks, but anytime a waiter put down cheese or fruit people became vultures. My friends and I had one quick drink and left. 

As an attendee, I did a good job of making the most of what was offered. If I had been involved in organizing: 

• I would have offered some way of seeing all the events happening at a particular stage each day (they had an app but you couldn’t sort by location—only time). 
• I’d have secured a larger space for the happy hour so people could actually talk and meet new people (there was no hope of this, with everyone elbowing for a drink). 
• And I would have created far more opportunities to meet people throughout the conference rather than everything being a long lecture. 

These connections are the biggest missed opportunity. Coming through my career path, with no formal background and entering tech from academia, I always felt a bit insecure asking questions I thought I ought to know. At the conference, there was someone interested in exploring edtech and I was able to make introductions, and that felt really good. But those moments were rare. 

Maybe what I’m trying to get at is as an adult, you often feel there’s a lot you have to figure out on your own—the path isn’t clear. And, the world we live in can be lonely because we don’t all live in close-knit communities. I’d like to meet more people doing the same and I see events as a conduit for those connections.

Would I go again? If I can get free/cheap tickets! But I’m looking forward to hanging out with my friends and colleagues in a more communal setting.