Agathon Group - "The Good Stuff"

1) Free stuffed animal keychains

Now we all love swag, and I often laugh at myself when I grab a free plastic bag with all the giddiness of an adolescent selected to tour Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, just so I can fill it with rich varieties of swag. Let's be honest, most of us do this, and most of us actually end up using about two of the 50 to 100 items we procure. Bottle openers, carabiners, and pens are usually the most useful of swag. But one piece of swag I get everytime I go to a conference is a keychain with an oddly large stuffed animal attached to the end of it. The best I could ever use this for is hanging on a wall, as it will never be practical to put on my actual keys. So why even involve metal in the first place and just pass out beanie babies of your company's logo?

A runner up to the keychain stuffed animal is definitely the rubber ball that kind of bounces (in that it bounces similar to the way an apple does, though with enough pressure I suppose anything would bounce), BUT it lights up when you bounce it.

I guess it's unreasonable for me to expect to remodel my kitchen with my conference swag, but nevertheless, useful swag seems more beneficial both for me and the company providing it.

2) Someone who fiddles around on flickr.com (or a similar Web 2.0 application) during seemingly every session they attend

Now we're all friends here, so we can just go ahead and admit that all of us at one time or another have been this person. Some session on security is important, but a little boring so you catch up on your blog, or rss. I always feel bad for the speaker, even when I'm "that guy," but it's not like they're clueless as to what's going on. With our ever increasing collective ADHD, our innate ability to nod in response even when not paying attention, and laptops continuing to be necessary for tech conferences, most regular conference speakers seemed to have accepted this as a necessary evil.

3) Utilikilts

If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say utilikilt, just imagine a mixture between cargo pants and a kilt. At almost every conference I've been to, I've seen someone wearing a utilikilt. I don't understand the association, but I'm assuming it's related to World of Warcraft.

4) Casual Attire

Techie conferences do tend to be more on the casual side. If you show up in a three piece suit, you will feel very out of place. So make sure you pack a Star Wars/Lord of the Rings/Star Trek shirt (or whole costume, really), a shirt with some sort of a reference to C++ or Perl, or any article of clothing referencing google. Also, ball caps, fedoras, and even the occasional beret are all perfectly acceptable, in fact, they are encouraged.

5) Loads and loads of information

This is probably pretty obvious, but you will see a lot of information when you attend a tech conference, and if you're anything like me, you likely won't understand a good chunk of that. My advice is to take lots of flyers, and allow yourself to be a little bit lost. Don't be hard on yourself for not understanding everything that comes out of a sales guys' mouth. Just take it slow, and when you get back to your office, take your stack of flyers, and just go through them. They will eventually start to make sense.

So there you go, you are now officially prepared to go to a tech conference. Just tell them Morgan sent ya, and you'll be golden. (you can also replace the "Morgan" in that last sentence with "Steve Jobs")