The portfolio analysis of industry events

I was taken aback by the modesty of Stan Swete’s question

“Would you invest multiple days in a future Workday technology summit?”

My answer was an easy yes. Workday, with a consistent track record of 3 releases a year and all the projects they showcased Monday,  should be thinking about a longer session. But I appreciated his respecting it is also an investment of time on this side 

Other vendors, I am not so sure my answer would be similar.

With SAP, I personally cannot justify the 8-9 days (including travel) some of my colleagues have invested across 3 events in Palo Alto,Las Vegas and Madrid, Spain – just in the last quarter!  It is a large vendor, but is there so much development or customer momentum for that much briefing frequency?

I like the Oracle format – once a year summit for Analysts, and then another at Oracle OpenWorld. Microsoft moves to a similar  rhythm according to colleagues like Frank Scavo who get invited to those.

I like what Judith Rothrock does. She brings several analysts together for a day or two to listen to 3-4 vendors like Syspro. On their own, those vendors probably could not afford to do a full day briefing or longer.

I wish  vendors would do more regular updates via webex and conference call. But failing that, I set aside 25 days or so a year for industry events (in line with the 10-15% of total posts they generate for this and the New Florence blog – see this post for all the other sources I mine for my writing)

I try to go to 2-3 new (to me) events a year. As you can see, the 25 days run out pretty quickly. So, I appreciate Stan’s question. In his case, though, justifying another day would be pretty easy