November 16, 2020 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Virtual Experience
November 16, 2020 at 9:08 am
Totally with you on that Steve. Remote working will suit a few people all of the time, and all people some of the time. But as a way of working creatively it's a pale shadow of doing it in person in a collaborative space. It works better for piecemeal work but in the longer term it is terribly isolating. There's very few people can get by without the human touch, let's hope we can get it back soon.
November 16, 2020 at 9:14 am
I'm not good with time management. No matter what I am doing I feel I should be doing something else. This means that I am easily distracted. The feeling that I should be doing something else makes me feel guilty when attending virtual conferences even though the conference material is stuff will be used for my work. I find the virtual conferences draining.
When I am at a physical conference venue I find that I am absolutely focussed. I come out energised.
As in the physical world some virtual conferences are better organised than others. Some send clear, precise communication as to how to join the conference whereas others bury it 3 pages down in the marketing material they want to thrust upon you.
I find there are more ways to miss something important in a virtual conference
November 16, 2020 at 11:09 am
Personally I prefer virtual conferences. Mostly because I can limit my attendance to the pieces I'm interested in, but also because they're accessible. More often than not it's a choice between attending a virtual conference and not attending a conference at all.
November 16, 2020 at 1:24 pm
I doubt this will be a completely permanent situation. Humans are simply better at communication face to face. That efficiency will reassert itself over time. In short, we'll be back at in-person events eventually. Some virtual events may stay that way. Some events may become more hybrid. However, that more efficient communication mechanism will inevitably come back. Big, in person events, training, rock concerts, football games, are not gone.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
November 16, 2020 at 1:36 pm
I'm not good with time management. No matter what I am doing I feel I should be doing something else.
This will sound strange but I'm actually really happy to know I'm not the only one with that particular problem.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
November 16, 2020 at 2:15 pm
I'm not good with time management. No matter what I am doing I feel I should be doing something else. This means that I am easily distracted. The feeling that I should be doing something else makes me feel guilty when attending virtual conferences even though the conference material is stuff will be used for my work. I find the virtual conferences draining.
There should be a name for this syndrome, I suffer from it almost constantly!
I do however, find that I have attended more "events" this year than in the last ten combined, simply because I can find half a day or so to attend from home, whereas I would have struggled to get time/budget to attend one I needed to travel/stay overnight for.
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries."
— Samuel Johnson
I wonder, would the great Samuel Johnson have replaced that with "GIYF" now?
November 16, 2020 at 3:01 pm
Steve, I appreciate your point of view and see it as valid. However, it all depends upon one's circumstances. In my current job I was the first developer to go anywhere for a conference, Ignite 2019, in at least 30 years. This year I didn't stand a chance of repeating that, except that the Coronavirus made it possible, for my employer, to allow myself and others to attend. My employer would have been dead set against my going and only at most, one other person. This year it was different.
Do I love being able to attend virtual conferences? EMPHATICALLY, YES!!! But that's because I didn't stand any chance before, now I and others could go. I've been to other conferences before, with other employers, so yes, I miss the hall conversations. But virtual conferences much more than compensate of no conferences, ever.
Just depends upon ones perspective and circumstances.
Rod
November 16, 2020 at 4:34 pm
I participated in the PASS conference last week. While I enjoyed the content of the sessions there was definitely something missing in the experience.
Was it better than not having the conference this year? Most definitely. Did I save a bunch of time, and my employer $ by me not having to travel, yes. But much of the benefit, for me anyway, goes well beyond the session content in allowing me to disconnect from the daily grind of my work and recharge. I don't really feel like I got that as much from last week's experience with PASS.
November 16, 2020 at 5:02 pm
David.Poole wrote:I'm not good with time management. No matter what I am doing I feel I should be doing something else. This means that I am easily distracted. The feeling that I should be doing something else makes me feel guilty when attending virtual conferences even though the conference material is stuff will be used for my work. I find the virtual conferences draining.
There should be a name for this syndrome, I suffer from it almost constantly!
Heh... I have a word for it.. "Fugowi" as in "Ok... what was I doing and where the Fugowi"? 😀
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
November 16, 2020 at 8:33 pm
This year was my first PASS Summit. I've wanted to go for quite a while but there was no way my employer would spend the money needed to attend the in person Summit. The fact that it was virtual and the cost was lower enabled me to go when I would not have if it was a real onsite event. I would LOVE to attend the in person event but I know that will never happen. The early signup of $899 with two pre-cons was a bit of a stretch for me to pay out of pocket but I was able to do that. I could never do that previously. My hope is that PASS Summit will eventually be a hybrid of onsite and virtual. There may be some fear that allowing a virtual component would eat into onsite attendance but it does allow those of us without a chance of attending in person to get the benefit of the conference.
And I got a surprise this morning when I logged back into work and found my employer decided to cover the $899 conference cost.
November 17, 2020 at 12:32 am
I participated in the PASS conference last week. While I enjoyed the content of the sessions there was definitely something missing in the experience.
Was it better than not having the conference this year? Most definitely. Did I save a bunch of time, and my employer $ by me not having to travel, yes. But much of the benefit, for me anyway, goes well beyond the session content in allowing me to disconnect from the daily grind of my work and recharge. I don't really feel like I got that as much from last week's experience with PASS.
I've never had the chance to go to a PASS conference, so I envy you that. I do grant you that if you had to be at work (in your employer's office) and could attend PASS virtually from there, odds are extremely high that you'd get at best just some benefit from the conference. It is for that reason that I've never suggested do the same thing where I work. If I did, and they OKed me to attend a conference, I'd get nothing out of it.
But that was before COVID hit. Before COVID, developers couldn't go anywhere for any conference. Now that COVID has come, forcing everyone who is "nonessential" to work from home, things like attending a conference virtually is allowed.
I agree with you that the chance to disconnect from the daily grind and recharge at an in-person conference is great! I've been to many conferences in person, in the past, before my current employer. And I loved that chance to disconnect and recharge, while still doing my job. But at least I and some others at work have had a chance, this year, to do what we'd never been able to do before.
Rod
November 17, 2020 at 1:26 pm
This year was my first PASS Summit. I've wanted to go for quite a while but there was no way my employer would spend the money needed to attend the in person Summit. The fact that it was virtual and the cost was lower enabled me to go when I would not have if it was a real onsite event. I would LOVE to attend the in person event but I know that will never happen. The early signup of $899 with two pre-cons was a bit of a stretch for me to pay out of pocket but I was able to do that. I could never do that previously. My hope is that PASS Summit will eventually be a hybrid of onsite and virtual. There may be some fear that allowing a virtual component would eat into onsite attendance but it does allow those of us without a chance of attending in person to get the benefit of the conference.
And I got a surprise this morning when I logged back into work and found my employer decided to cover the $899 conference cost.
Great to hear that your employer covered it.
As to the future of PASS & the Summit, we'll see. It's honestly up in the air at the moment.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
November 17, 2020 at 2:53 pm
It is easier to get answers or insight working in the office. Remotely, there's no way to determine if a person is at their desk to ask a question. I find the use of Skype/Teams to ask questions annoying, probably because I don't use it very much. Distractions can be an annoyance in the cube environment. A while ago, one developer was playing music that sounded like a cat walking on a piano keyboard; he thought the sound was low enough but it could be heard in a radius of several cubes; headphones fixed that problem. My neighbor on the other side of the wall will hum; headphones can't fix that. When he starts humming, I put on my noise-canceling headphones and listen to XM radio from my tablet. If and when work returns to normal, one of the program directors needs to send out a reminder on cube etiquette, which needs revision to specifically include humming and singing.
Working remotely has advantages. I can take breaks and spend time with our dogs; one of them whose days were numbered. There's no outside distractions; I can listen to classic rock on XM radio. There's no commuting which takes about 45 minutes for me versus less than a minute; I go through a tank of gas a week when commuting, whereas, now I get four weeks to a tank of gas. Just once, I was on a conference call when my wife interrupted me and I answered her; one of the participants said "Ralph, we can hear you. You should mute your mike." Easier said than done since I was using a Bluetooth headset and muting the mike is a two-handed process.
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