Software conferences and learning seminars

I just came back after attending the third annual Amazon Developer Conference in Seattle. Wow! I really like this feeling of your 'inspirational cells' come alive and boy does that feel good or what. I feel like a child who went to the zoo for the first time. I think as grown ups we need impetus like this to keep us going and making our journey more fun-filled. I am so glad that I work for a company like Amazon that promotes such conferences. I think every software company needs these for the following reasons:

i) Fuels your knowledge appetite: I think as software Engineers we constantly need to feed our insatiable knowledge appetites. This is like fuel and it is partially a responsibility of the organization that you work for, to feed your appetite. In this way the company keeps raising the bar within.

ii) Keep up or miss that train: I think this has been the 'mantra' in any tech related field. Especially in software the playing field shifts quite rapidly. If you don't keep up, someone else will and win over the market.

iii) Meet the 'software Einsteins': I think intelligence has an equilibrium effect like temperature. When you have a group of people with varying IQ's together to come up with an idea, the final output/solution will be comparable to the one with average IQ. This is specially true with the outcome of software projects.

In the same vein, meeting the 'Einsteins' in your field can certainly make you aspire to be one and make you strive better.

iv) A 'techation': Its like a tech vacation from your workplace. Its a vacation from your work and it recharges you just like your other vacation to Hawaii (minus the belly dancers...)

v) Free internal advertising: I think its a great venue for some of your internal tools and programs that never took off to get noticed and get the spotlight.

vi) You love doughnuts and freebies :) Who doesn't? Take a piece of conference history with you :)

So I think this is an extension of the regular ' friday learning series' which we have at Amazon. If a conference can do so much good, imagine having the same effect on a weekly basis. Of course because of the constraints they cannot have the "Steve Jobs" and "Bill Gates" for weekly seminars. Think it of your annual conference like the superbowl and your fridays like your regular monday night games. In no time you will have employees asking "Is it friday yet?".