Some of the same arguments about engaging with the community (Re^2: People who write perl, Perl and PERL) will carry over to attending conferences. 'Engaging with the community' is the bulk of the rationale behind attending academic conferences.

To get work to pay, think about it in business case terms: will the long term financial benefit of attending (in motivation and work-contentment terms as well as improved skill and productivity) outweigh the immediate financial cost of attending?

Sure, employers often send employees on what appear to be entirely pointless training courses (mandated customer service courses run by people who wouldn't recognise a customer if they were bitten by one, for example), but they perceive some definite benefit from this. At least there's a defined objective (improving ones customer skills in the example), where the learning objective of conferences tends to be rather more vague.

There's also the argument that attendance at a perl conference is likely to be cheaper than attendance of an MS approved MCSD course ;-)

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"If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."

John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider".

In reply to Re: Convincing your boss to let you go to Perl conferences by g0n
in thread Convincing your boss to let you go to Perl conferences by cog

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