Home Inspiration

4 Tech Conference Attendee Personality Types

You’re sitting in a cavernous room with huge monitors all throughout – waiting for a keynote.

You look around. What are all these other people thinking?

I’ll give you the answer: there are 4 personality types sitting in that auditorium.

See if you can find yourself…

#1 – The Skeptic

The Skeptic

“Yeah, it’s all vapor-ware. Can you believe this? Two developers, two weeks and you can write an app to cure cancer!”

 

 

The skeptic believes it’s all smoke and mirrors. The technology du jour is a waste of time. Next year it will just be something else.

#2 – The Wide-Eyed Enthusiast

The Wide-Eyed Enthusiast

“Wow, when we get back we’re going to convert that corporate site written in classic ASP to containerized, Angular 4, TypeScript, ASP.NET Core running on Ubuntu by a week from Thursday.”

 

The bright-eyed enthusiast drinks the Cool-Aid by the gallon. They may be in management. They’re probably your boss.

#3 – The “Realist”

The “Realist”

“Yeah, this is definitely the future, but it’s not my future. You get spun up by the bright and shiny, and when you get back to your desk you’ve got 12 stored procs to fix and 6 bugs in an SSRS Report.”

 

The “realist” sees the potential future, but can’t get past the limits they’ve created in their own mind to see how they can move forward with it.

 

#4 – The Inspired

The Inspired

“Wow, this is some sweet tech. But it’s not quite there and it isn’t going to be easy to bring it in to our environment. What can I do to get there?”

 

 

The inspired has a bit of all the other three mixed in:

  • She has the experience of the skeptic without the cynicism
  • She has the optimism of the wide-eyed enthusiast without the naiveté
  • She has the awareness of the barriers of the “realist” without the lack of imagination

In the end, it is the inspired that go places.

Architecting and developing software takes a bit of faith, and inspirational energy is as important as physical, mental or emotional energy.

A conference can be a great place to stock up on that inspiration energy – but it takes a particular personality type.

Next time you are heading off to the big show – pack the right personality!