tldr;
You could skip every session at Rising and still win the week, if you had the right ten conversations.
The sessions are the excuse to be in the building.
The un-Googleable stuff (the failure nobody documents, its 2am workaround that held, how they got Finance and HR to agree on one headcount number) lives in people’s heads. The only way to extract it is to stand next to them.
The best conversations have a little structure. A roundtable. A small room of people who do your exact job with one real question on the table. Spend your time where the ROI is higher.
I'm writing this from a recliner with an ice machine where my arthritic hip used to be. Nobody warns you at 20 that the warranty runs out earlier than you expect.
Ok. Enough whining.
Five days ago, a very competent man in a mask (thanks, Dr. Vikoren) rearranged part of my skeleton. The instructions were clear. Rest. Ice. PT.
Don't be a hero.
So naturally, I'm building my Rising conversation list.
Here’s what I figured out somewhere around my fourth Rising: the sessions are not the point. The sessions are the excuse to get everyone into the same building at the same time. What happens between them is the actual event.
The sessions are the brochure.
Everything on the main stage will be online by November. Replay exists. Release notes exist, and they’re written more clearly than any keynote, because nobody’s reading release notes to a room with a light show.
You know what’s not online? The person who leans over during the session and says “yeah, we turned that on, here’s what actually happened.”
That sentence is not in any deck. It’s in someone’s head. And the only way to get it out is to be standing close enough to hear it.
The un-Googleable premium.
Everything you can look up, you can look up from your couch. (I’m on my couch. I’m something of an expert.)
What you can’t look up: the specific way it fell over. The workaround someone built under deadline that somehow held for two years. How they got Finance and HR to agree on a single number without anyone updating their resume.
That knowledge doesn’t live in documentation. It lives in the people who already made the mistake you’re about to make. Rising is the one week a year they’re all in the same zip code. That’s the whole value. Proximity to people who’ve been burned the way you’re about to get burned.
Your permission slip.
So here it is, official: you are allowed to skip a session.
You are allowed to walk out of a breakout to keep talking to someone who’s three years ahead of you on the exact thing eating your Q4. That’s the highest-ROI thing you’ll do all week. In fact, buy them a Starbucks. You'll make a friend to boot.
Nobody’s manager has ever asked for the list of sessions they attended. They asked what you learned. Those are different questions, and they have very different answers.
The good ones have a little structure.
Not all conversations are equal. The random hallway bump is good. The organized one is better.
A roundtable. A small room. A group of people who do your exact job, one real question on the table, and nobody in the corner trying to sell you a platform. That’s the format that turns “nice to meet you” into “here’s the thing that just saved you six months.”
Seek those out. Some are on the official agenda (braindates, meetups). The best ones usually aren’t. (Keep your eyes open at Rising this year. There may be a room or two worth finding.)
Back to my ice pack.
I’ll be at Rising. Moving slowly, but I’ll be there.
Bad hip, good schedule.
I’ll be the guy you can actually catch, on account of I physically cannot run away from you.
Come have the conversation. That’s the whole product.
— Mike
Director HR Tech | Bad Hip, Good Schedule
P.S. When one of Justin’s prints fails (I have gallons of ruined plastic in my house), he doesn’t rewatch the official tutorial. He goes and finds the one person online who already broke it the exact way he just did. Ten minutes with someone who’s made your mistake beats an hour with the manual. He’s twelve and he already gets it. The manual tells you how it’s supposed to work. The person tells you how it actually breaks.
The Department of First Things First. For the people who do the work.
This right here!!