I can't speak to your field, but I loooovvee conferences for my own field. They can keep you really energized and engaged and help me stay more cutting-edge because you hear all the latest news from around the country/world, and have this larger frame of reference than anybody back at your organization has. They are super for networking, though I don't think you should think of them as yielding immediate job opportunities. It's more like you go to gradually build a peer group that you can then stay connected with, and then in the long run that peer group can be pretty instrumental for job-getting. Also, I think they are good at helping you develop specialties, which are just getting more and more important in every field. You'll be exposed to a lot of angles and niches within the industry, and can find the people who are working that angle and connect with them and learn from them, gradually becoming expert on that angle or niche.

P.S. I wish I'd started going to conferences at a much younger career age - I didn't start until employers sent me, and I should have just gone on my own to start getting a leg up.

All this about "why you should go" is also a different question from "what should you DO while you're there," which is something I'd like to read (or write) a how-to on. There are ways to go to conferences and be basically untouched by the entire experience and just run through a bunch of money, and then there are ways to make them really productive for your work. Once you decide to go to your first conference it may be worth posting an AskMe about how to get the most out of conference going, how to prepare, how to talk to people, what to do, what to skip, etc.

thanks! i'm 32 but after getting laid off, i'm back in school for web dev. my undergrad was communications, but more rhetoric than PR, so i've long been fascinated by *how* something gets communicated and what works.

i'm more interested in programming the back end and maybe having some design ideas, but not so much interested in learning the ins and outs of photoshop and illustrator as much as learning how to do neat things with code. i still have two semesters of school so i have some time to network before i'm job hunting.

i'm hoping those aren't conflicting interests professionally (usability and programming), but perhaps a conference like this is a good place to talk to people and find out!

conferences in tech aren't for technical learning. you can just read blogs for that. they're for meeting people. don't worry about the specifics of what the'yre talking about just go and talk to people, tell em what you're up to and learn from them

ooh that conference looks great. ALA is a very high caliber organization although to be honest the 3 day setup looks much sexier than the accessibility one-day thing. Only do the Day Apart thing if you're actually interested in accessibility per se (of course as someone coding for the web you *have* to be but depends on how deep you wanna go sometimes)

I have to echo what Frias has said about ALA. The guy behind it is Jeffry Zeldman on of a very few guys that put web standards and usability on the map. Personalty, I would not want to miss a conference that he attends, let alone one that he is putting on. (just my 2 cents)

I miss going to tech writing conferences. There's something about being with people who understand that's really energizing.

Plus DC is awesome and our museums are free.

i'm hoping those aren't conflicting interests professionally (usability and programming)

No, they're not: the web industry needs more coders who understand usability, and more usability practitioners who grok some coding.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of conferences, but that's largely because I'm not the kind of person who enjoys striking up conversations with lots of strangers. I've been to some, and I know they are good for re-energising your excitement about a field. But given that I don't end up getting much of the networking benefit out of them, and often the presented technical content ends up on the web anyway, the only thing I'm really getting is that re-energising, and I can't justify spending hundreds of £/$ on that.

I have been excited about a conference for the first time but I haven't the slightest idea of how to behave at one. I suppose it's all up to how sociable people want to be with strangers. I'm fascinated by the subject matter and I think I'm a little star struck with the guests.

sounds like this is something i should definitely go to.

i thought the lineup looked pretty spectacular, glad to hear i'm not the only one.

thanks for the feedback!