Highly agree with the post. I discussed almost the same thing with a friend during the conference. Basically, the typical “don’t attend talks, most of them are recorded and you can just watch them online later” advice isn’t great imho—it seems like a fake alternative to me, in the sense that you miss out on a talk because you tell yourself “ah I’ll just watch it later”, but in probably >90% of cases this just won’t happen. So the actual alternative you’re choosing is not “watch online later”, but “don’t watch at all”. Because by the time the talk is online, you’ll have forgotten about it, and even if you remember it, just deciding to watch a 30 minute talk at home on your own requires a lot more activation energy to overcome than, in comparison, the act of just walking to another room while you are at a conference.
Indeed 1-1s will be more valuable most of the time for most people, and it’s important to make this point to first-timers who otherwise might fill their schedule with talks and workshop. But if there’s a talk or two or three that are especially relevant to you, there’s a strong case to be made that you should attend it. Even if you’re sure that you would indeed watch it online later, it may still be worth attending merely for hearing the talk a few months sooner than you otherwise would.
Plus, you can also schedule virtual 1-1s with people after the conference, so it’s not necessarily that you’re missing out on anything. (and I’d argue a “hey, my schedule is pretty packed, would you be available for a zoom call some time next week?” message to an actual person will yield a much higher chance of actually happening than a vague “yeah I’ll probably watch this talk online at some point!” intention)
I actually do every so often go over the talks from the past several EAGs on Youtube and find it does better. Some important additional benefits are turning on speedup and subtitles, being able to skip forward or bail more easily if the talk turns out bad, and not being blocked from watching two good simultaneous talks.
In contrast, a lot of people really love in-person meetings compared to online video or phone.
Highly agree with the post. I discussed almost the same thing with a friend during the conference. Basically, the typical “don’t attend talks, most of them are recorded and you can just watch them online later” advice isn’t great imho—it seems like a fake alternative to me, in the sense that you miss out on a talk because you tell yourself “ah I’ll just watch it later”, but in probably >90% of cases this just won’t happen. So the actual alternative you’re choosing is not “watch online later”, but “don’t watch at all”. Because by the time the talk is online, you’ll have forgotten about it, and even if you remember it, just deciding to watch a 30 minute talk at home on your own requires a lot more activation energy to overcome than, in comparison, the act of just walking to another room while you are at a conference.
Indeed 1-1s will be more valuable most of the time for most people, and it’s important to make this point to first-timers who otherwise might fill their schedule with talks and workshop. But if there’s a talk or two or three that are especially relevant to you, there’s a strong case to be made that you should attend it. Even if you’re sure that you would indeed watch it online later, it may still be worth attending merely for hearing the talk a few months sooner than you otherwise would.
Plus, you can also schedule virtual 1-1s with people after the conference, so it’s not necessarily that you’re missing out on anything. (and I’d argue a “hey, my schedule is pretty packed, would you be available for a zoom call some time next week?” message to an actual person will yield a much higher chance of actually happening than a vague “yeah I’ll probably watch this talk online at some point!” intention)
I actually do every so often go over the talks from the past several EAGs on Youtube and find it does better. Some important additional benefits are turning on speedup and subtitles, being able to skip forward or bail more easily if the talk turns out bad, and not being blocked from watching two good simultaneous talks.
In contrast, a lot of people really love in-person meetings compared to online video or phone.