Why would you go to a conference that you have to pay for?

A co-worker of mine asked me last week, “You are paying for NFJS (http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/)? Why would you do that? Why would you go to a conference that you have to pay for?”

This took me aback. How do I answer this? Where do I begin. Was he missing the big picture of being involved with technology? This guy is a very bright guy. Has his Masters from MIT, has worked on open source projects, and continually impresses me with his development skills.

I first began to list out the items laid out in Jared Richardson's talk about Career 2.0 (http://qik.com/video/1009098) which I had just happened to catch at NEJUG (http://www.nejug.org) the previous week. I suggest following the link on qik.com and watching that video as he is a much better presenter than I and can make his case much more eloquently than I could here.

However, one piece of Jared's talk that I felt was missing regarded money. During my college career, I spent over $100,000 on tuition and I didn't even get a degree in Computer Science (Geography for those interested). The biggest lesson I learned coming out of school was that I have to continue to learn or that $100,000 might as well have been thrown away.

So how can I continue to learn? I read books, go to lectures, listen to podcasts, do some side projects to learn new languages, and go to conferences. Conferences tend to be a concentrated time to find out what languages to learn, what practices to improve upon, and what books to read.

I believe the question should not be, “Why am I paying for NFJS?”. The question should be, “How can I afford not to go to NFJS?” If my company is not going to pay for me to improve, who will? How do not waste the initial $100,000 investment?

If you know a better way, then please let me know.