Convention Idea – Engage your technology

The roundup of ideas for providing more career/professional elements at conventions is here.

Most of my "convention suggestions" for professional events have focused on, well, the actual conventions themselves.  So as I brainstorm other ideas, something else has come to mind.

Making job and professional elements part of the convention website and forums.  People are going to be going to the website for information and to network on the convention – so add a professional subsectrion if it fits.

Some ideas:
* Add a career section to your forums.  People can discuss jobs, what they'd like to see, etc.  Have people who regularly speak at the con on careers (or organize those events) moderate it.
* Consider a "going pro" section of the website to have pro-attendees network, see events, etc.
* See what kind of job-oriented newsfeeds, job feeds, etc. may be available for the "pro" part of the site or forums.
* Form a mailing list for career-oriented convention information.

There's plenty of other possibilities I doubtlessly haven't come up with.  But if you're going to add serious pro elements to your convention, why not go further with the website?  It'll keep interest, attention, and help promote your ambitious ideas so people get involved.

– Steven Savage

Review of www.techmeme.com

www.techmeme.com

PROS: A gigantic, constantly-updated news/blog aggregator for tech news, putting articles in context and helpful hierarchies.

CONS: Story focus is largely based on popularity of discussion as opposed to relevancy.

SUMMARY: An indispensable news gathering system that gives you a good snapshot of what people are talking about technology-wise.  Unless your career and hobbies are very distant from technology (and if you're reading this they're probably not), you should subscribe to it in RSS feed or read it once or twice day.

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