
Ask HN: Have you been to any conferences that changed your life in some way? - caser
Ask HN: Have you been to any conferences that changed your life in some way? How?
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SyneRyder
I went to the first World Domination Summit in 2011, a conference in Portland
for readers of the "Art Of Nonconformity" blog. It was popular with one-person
businesses, people who created & sold their own products (typically online).
Though when I got there, the crowd had lots of life coaches & people starting
their first blog.

It changed my life in that I got a job out of it - I ended up being hired by
someone I met in the hallway between talks. We bonded over how much we _weren
't_ enjoying the talks, finding them to be more "motivational" than actionable
& substantial. (Something about people singing "Kumbaya" a lot.)

I've since realized the value in conferences is usually not in the talks
themselves, but the people you meet in the "hallway track" or the conference
social events like evening drinks, bungee jumping, skydiving, etc. The talks &
speakers are there to attract like-minded people and provide a shared topic of
conversation. I've always made more business contacts & friends from the
skydiving, and learned much more from the private conversations over drinks at
the bar.

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mbrock
Somewhat spontaneously attending the GF (Grammatical Framework) summer school
gave me a totally different appreciation for natural language formal grammars.
Now when I’m learning a foreign language I can actually look at its GF grammar
and understand it in the same way I’d understand a purely functional program
library. And I hope to use GF in future businesses and projects.

