I've just completed several weeks of conferences and in-house training, and I'm finally back home for a while. It's amazing to me how many sources of inexpensive learning there are.
- Conferences. Conferences are amazingly cheap for learning about a wide variety of topics and techniques, especially because you have an opportunity to network with and speak with not just speakers but all the other people at the conference. If you use your time well, you can meet people in a similar position as you are, and learn from what they do. The speakers generally take excerpts from their workshops to use in tutorials, so you have a chance to audition the speakers. Think about it: it may cost you a max of $3000 to participate in a week-long conference, assuming you did not take advantage of early-bird discounts for registration and travel. If you learn something at a conference that saves you a week of work over the course of a year and you tell one other person about that tip and it saves them a week, you have more than made back the cost of the conference. Many of you are probably thinking I've gone off the deep end (since when is $3000 cheap??), but think about the potential return.
- Books. Books that are well-written and explain how to do things first, second, third, are worth way more than their cover price. And, given the electronic readers and pdf books out there, I'm astonished more people don't buy books as a matter of course, when they want to learn something. It's hard to get cheaper than a book, but some local meetings are free.
- User group and other affinity group meetings. If you would like to learn about a small area in a field, check out some user group or other group meetings, such as agile, or testing, or project management. Generally, the cost to attend a meeting is about the cost of a book, maybe a little more depending on how nice the dinner is. You will not get the breadth of a conference or a depth of a book, but you will learn something. BTW, if you are looking for a job, these groups are also great for networking.
You can also learn from searching the web, and it's harder to know if what you are reading is correct :-) So before you think there is no money to learn new things, rethink. See what ways are good for you and fit your budget.
And for those of you with conference money, I'm a host of the
AYE conference, and the conference chair for
Agile 2009.
