David R. MacIver's Blog
A Conference Survival Kit
(Advance warning: Yes, these are all affiliate links, but I’m writing this post because I think this stuff is genuinely life improving and not just to make a quick buck)
I’ve been to a lot of conferences over over the last year. Conferences are great, but they’re also really hard work and I often end up feeling quite broken by the end of them.
I’ve learned a few things to bring that help me to survive the
various trials and tribulations of conferences and emerge feeling
somewhat less broken.
Hydration
The number one thing I recommend everyone bring to a conference is a
refillable water bottle. There will generally be lots of sources of
water throughout the conference, and you will almost always get teeny
tiny plastic cups to drink it from. As well as making it very hard to
get enough water, this is also not great for the environment. Bringing a
water bottle you can refill helps you get enough water whenever you want
it, and helps the environment too.
I use this Siggs classic traveller bottle. It’s extremely basic, but I’m a big fan. That said, you don’t really need a water bottle to be fancy and almost anything works.
Hint to conference organisers: Water bottles make great swag. I’ve
seen them given out at Europython and I’ve seen a few DjangoCon Europe
ones floating around, and they’ll be well received and will make your
conference attendees healthier and happier.
Food
Whenever you are on someone else’s meal schedule it’s basically a recipe
for getting hangry. A meal will be too late, or too early and thus leave
too long before the next meal, etc. The breaks might have
snacks in them, but they’ll be something that’s basically white flour
and sugar and so they’ll perk you up a bit and then half an hour later
you’ll sugar crash and be back to where you started.
I really like these Cliff Bars (note: Contains mostly peanuts. Avoid if you have a peanut allergy, and be considerate of the people around you. There are also non-nut protein bars that should work well. I’ve used these chocolate protein bars before and they’re... OK). They contain sugar for the immediate pick me up and fat and protein for the long-term stability. They’re also reasonably tasty.
Occasionally if I’m too exhausted at the end of the day to deal
properly I will retreat to my hotel room and a protein bar becomes
dinner. It’s not the healthiest of dinners, but it works.
Handling Crowds
Conferences are noisy places. Not so much in the talks, but in the
social and the hallway tracks you’ll be surrounded by an onslaught of
background noise. The amount of socialization going on around you makes
it really hard to hear and talk to the people you’re actually trying to
socialize with! Fortunately there’s a solution to this: Musicians’
Earplugs. They will cut out the background noise much more than the
conversational noise and you’ll be able to hear again. It’s amazing. I
use these
ACS hearing protectors.
More speculatively: I’ve been trying taking theanine during the latest PyCon UK. It’s supposed to have a non-sedative calming effect, which should help with social anxiety and generally being able to deal with a large number of people. It seems to help? It’s hard to do a subjective evaluation of this. I’ve definitely felt calmer and more able to deal with people this conference, and I’ve not been socially exhausted to even close to the degree I would expect to be, but there are a whole bunch of reasons that could be. It might be worth trying though. I’ve been taking the Solgar ones here at PyCon UK because they were the only ones I could buy locally, but they’re outrageously overpriced and I recommend finding a cheaper brand. e.g. these ones are almost certainly absolutely fine.
Theanine is also a good idea if you’re taking a lot of caffeine at
the conference. Theanine + caffeine is a known very beneficial
combination, it’s just theanine without caffeine that is a bit more
speculative.
Sleep
Conferences will drain your energy. This makes sleep even more important
than it usually is. Unfortunately, you’re also in an unknown and
possibly quite poor sleeping situation: Hotel rooms are often noisy, and
they’re almost always full of annoying bright LEDs.
It’s important to bring tools to counteract that: A sleep mask and ear plugs. I use this sleep mask and these ear plugs. They’re both great and I can recommend them.
Note: Try sleeping with these at home for a few days before going to
the conference. I found it took 3 or 4 days of sleeping with the mask
before I stopped waking up to find I’d taken it off during the night
(which isn’t the worst thing in the world as it’s mainly important while
trying to fall asleep, but it helps if you’re prone to waking up in the
night).
Caffeine
If you don’t use caffeine you can ignore this one. But most people who
go to conferences are addicted to caffeine (this isn’t just a developer
stereotype - a significant majority of the west are, and probably
outside the west too), and given how tired you’re going to be during the
conference you may want caffeine anyway.
Bring caffeine pills. Seriously.
Conference coffee is almost never good. At best it might be mediocre, more often it’s awful. This isn’t anyone’s fault it’s just logistically rather challenging (and consequently expensive) to produce good coffee at conference scale. I recommend you just don’t bother with the coffee and stick to water and caffeine pills.
I use these
caffeine pills. They’re quite strong though, so you might want to
take 50mg ones instead. I’ve used Pro
Plus for that, but honestly caffeine is caffeine and whatever you
take is fine.
Your Phone
You’re going to be using your phone a lot. It probably won’t last the
day. Bring an external battery pack. I use this
one currently but honestly can’t strongly recommend it.
Additionally, WiFi is going to be unreliable. Your life will be
better if you have a phone SIM that works where you are. If you’re in
your home country, that’s not a problem, but abroad you want to avoid
roaming charges. You can probably easily buy a local pay as you go SIM,
or you can use Three who have a lot of different countries that it will
just work automatically in. Otherwise, this
wiki will tell you what you need to do to get a local SIM.
Attitude
You’re there for your benefit. Take things at your own pace. Relax. It’s
better to have a great experience attending half the conference than to
burn yourself out trying to attend all of it. You don’t have to attend
every talk, you don’t have to meet every person. If you need a time out,
go for a walk or retreat to the quiet room if there is one. It’s OK.
Comments
Humphrey on 2016-09-17 11:47:58:
Thanks David. Will definitely use some of the advice above as some who has just started attending tech conferences.