Conferences

I booked myself into dConstruct 2013 today. This beings my EventBrite account up to 3 upcoming events; UX Oxford (Thursday), TEDxBrum (June), dConstruct (September).

Laura Kalbag on her site describes herself as a conference addict, saying:

"I attend as many as I can, I think they’re a great way to stay up-to-date with the latest on the web, meet other enthusiastic web folk and it gets me out of the house."

I do like my conferences, and I agree with what Laura says. But it's not just specific to web conferences. Regardless of the topic you get to interact with a group of people are are engaged with the topic, are striving to learn, but are also willing to teach. These kind of environments really challenge me, they remind me that there is still so much to learn.

In Oxford there is a really great set of local events, such as UX Oxford and Oxford Geek Night. Both are super cheap (free) and really high quality. Over the last year UX Oxford has had some stellar speakers talking about some really relevant topics. Through it I've been able to interact with other people in my field, doing the same kind of job that I'm doing and we've been able to learn from each other.

In short: conferences and similar events = very worthwhile.