On October 7 and 8, I attended one of the biggest start-up events in Southern Europe, South Summit, in a rather unusual venue: the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid. It drew a huge number of attendees from all over the world, and the agenda was packed with fascinating talks from top-level speakers, representing both well-known companies and venture capital investors and business angels.
There were established companies and all kinds of start-ups, but most had a technological foundation that incorporated software as a key component in one way or another. People still ask me whether computer science has a future.
I was struck by some of the queues I saw, with people waiting to pitch their projects to investors in the usual format, which can last no more than a few minutes.
Speakers ranged from the dazzling Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX to Adeyemi Ajao, now at Workday and one of the founders of Tuenti (Spain’s Facebook), as well as Paul Ford of SendGrid and Jeroen Merchiers of Airbnb, who gave a fascinating talk titled “Disrupting Markets: The Sharing Economy,” along with many others from different fields and markets.
Inspiring people who’ve undoubtedly experienced plenty of failures on their way to achieving any kind of success.
I wanted to talk a little about my experience at South Summit, but also reflect on why we should make time in our schedules to leave the office now and then and attend talks or professional meetups.
I always try to keep an eye out for interesting seminars and events I can attend. It takes a lot of effort to find time in your day-to-day life and organize yourself to attend any kind of talk or session. Often you feel you’ve wasted your time; other times, you come away delighted by the interesting people you’ve met or the fantastic initiatives you’ve discovered.
Seeing what others are doing helps you steer your own new projects and initiatives in a better direction, whether you think of yourself as a lone wolf or as a true intrapreneur who proposes ongoing improvements at the company you work for.
I’m not going to repeat the tired line that we live in an interconnected world. We don’t always understand that being interconnected doesn’t mean sending mass LinkedIn invitations to people you think might be useful to you. In my opinion, wherever you work, attending events related to your day-to-day profession—and, from time to time, events a little outside your sector’s orbit—is part of the job. You end up meeting people who face the same problems you do, as well as people who’ve already reached where you want to go (if you have a professional goal, of course). Every one of them has made progress by solving problems, creating value for clients, and seeing things differently.
Is there a connection between people who achieve better results and their regular attendance at forums, seminars, events, professional meetups, and the like? I’m sure there is.
As for me, I try to attend every event that looks reasonably interesting, although scheduling sometimes makes it impossible. I often leave with useful and valuable information that improves what your company does; I consider it a form of professional development, too.
Recently, I was also in Madrid for a Microsoft seminar for ISVs (independent software vendors). We came away delighted, among other things, by a talk from Omar Mahout, author of Lean Pricing (which, incidentally, they gave us as a gift), and by Microsoft’s strong commitment to Azure and the opportunity for software development companies to be present in the Azure Marketplace.
And it’s not just information you bring back; you also make connections with companies and people you may be able to collaborate with someday. You also come away with homework in the form of a great deal of information to digest and investigate further on your own, if you think it might be useful.