When 2020 happened, a lot of things came to a standstill. Working at the office, going to a bar or a movie, and attending in-person events. Before we knew it, everything went online. Work from home became the standard, services like Netflix and movies at home boomed, and data events were available through Teams or Zoom.
Since 2022, many events have returned to in-person formats (or are attempting to), but I’m hearing from numerous organisers that attendance is declining. And this puzzled me. Even though I’ve been working from home (because the office is busy and has too many distractions), I still enjoy attending in-person events. There are a number of reasons for that, but for this specific blog post, I decided to put my own reasons to the side and ask the community to chip in. And the community delivered.
I hope the reasons shown here will help you decide to give an in-person event, conference or even meetup a go.
If you want to check out what’s going on in your neighbourhood, check out the following links:
SQL Saturdays
Data Saturdays
Data Platform Meetups
Summary
So let me start with the summary of the reasons. If you would like to view the raw data, scroll down to the end of this blog to see the responses. I’ve tried to summarise the replies below in a few paragraphs. And, I did this myself, no AI involved. Which also means, if it’s bad, it’s me. Ah well, let’s go!
Networking
The main reason from the responses is networking. Meeting community friends, keeping in touch with them, learn from other experienced organisers how to improve your own event. Also, to make an in-person connection.
One responder noted that the quality of interactions is superior to that of online events.
Connection
Another reason in the responses is the interaction with speakers. Both in precons and regular sessions, you can have a chat, get more context around the things presenters are speaking about, and you have the opportunity to (in a positive way) derail a session to get more details.
One of the best examples of going to an event is from my session at Data Saturday Gothenburg. After the session, an attendee walked up to me and told me that the session really connected. And not even on a technical level, but on a human level. In the session “What they should have told me about becoming a DBA”, one of the closing remarks is that you can do this too. My background is in human resource management and psychology, not the most usual background for a technical job. But if you like what you do and are willing to put in the effort, there’s no reason you won’t succeed. And this rang true to this person.
If this person hadn’t gone to the event, this would never have happened. If it had been online, the subtle non-verbal cues would probably have been missed, as the windows in Teams or Zoom are too small to see them all.
The other side of this is that, as an attendee, you get to meet new people. This also ties in with the previous paragraph on networking.
Hallway track
When you read through the results, you can see that most, if not all, people write about socialising, interacting, meeting people and strengthening the connections with people they already know. It’s a favourite part for many people. And don’t forget it’s an excellent place to collect swag or expand your sticker collection!
In short, face-to-face interactions are irreplaceable. Body language, spontaneous hallway chats and building genuine relationships with peers and speakers just don’t work that well when attending online.
Learning
A few respondents mentioned that in-person works better for them when learning. Not only is there a different setting than online (for me, it helps to focus better on the content), but there’s also a mention that different viewpoints can improve understanding of a topic. Also, when being there with the speaker, there’s a better chance for a deep dive after the session, having follow-up conversations or, again, creating a better connection with the speaker.
In general
It’s all about human interaction that doesn’t work (as well) online.
Thank you!
In alphabetical order: Abdouramane, Alex Powers, Alexander Arvidsson, Andrew Bibby, Andy Levy, Azar Rzayev, Barney Lawrence,Ā Celia Alves, Craig White, Edine,Ā Els, Fabian Gutierrez, GrĆmur SƦmundsson, John Martin, Justin Bird, Kev Riley, Kristyna Ferris, Lonneke, Luc Debois, Mala Mahadevan, Mate Toth, Mohamed Azarudeen Z, Peter Ć kerlund, Peter Kruis, Peter Ward, Simon Frazer and Vlad Drumea.
I also asked the people who filled in the basic questionnaire in what role the were active in events.
| Role | Number |
| Attendee | 8 |
| MVP | 1 |
| MVP and Speaker | 4 |
| MVP, Speaker and attendee | 4 |
| Speaker | 2 |
| Speaker and attendee | 8 |
I think there’s one thing wrong with this data, as I believe that every person who is present at an event is an attendee.
The raw results
Maybe this was just the part of the blog you were waiting for.
- To learn more and share with others
- Networking
- Mostly the variety of content that I can choose from paired with the opportunity to expand on things with the speaker afterwards. This isn’t quite the same online – we have less time post-talk for questions and there’s no corridor chat. **Note, I don’t consider myself any of these roles primarily – most of the events I go to is as a helper, but I ticked attendee as closest to that**
- Networking with people face-to-face. Actual conversations where you can read body language and inject personality into the interaction. Getting out of the (home) office.
- Learn new things & Learn new people & Search for speakers for the Power BI User Group Belgium. Learn how to organize events (Tips & Tricks & …) for the Power BI User Group Belgium
- In person interaraction with other data(base) professionals. Both speakers and other attendees.
- To have meaningful conversations with speakers and attendees to increase awareness, expertise and motivation on data related topics.
- ThisĀ is purely based on my experience at Data Saturday Croatia 2025: the quality of the interactions is superior vs online online-only, plus, especially for the pre-con part, it’s way easier to ask questions with more context that can lead to follow-up discussions with the presenter and/or other attendees.
- Aide conversations with the communityĀ
- The hallway track, a.k.a meeting other humans. Second reason is to learn things in a setting that is not either blog/youtube or similar, nor made useless by AI slop online.
- To network, learn and make connections face to face. When so much has become virtual/hybrid since Covid, the face to face side at events has become even more important for me.
- Networking, talking to people, meeting with community friends.Ā
- In-person events are unmatchedāeveryone stays engaged between sessions, networking opportunities are abundant, and nothing compares to meeting and greeting people face-to-face instead of just staring at screens. I do run a community and we only do inperson events.Ā
- The hallway track, love meeting new people!
- Seeing other community friends and meeting new people
- The opportunity to connect to people one-on-one and face-to-face.
- Making new connections, talking people I only dee at events, asking questions and discussions with peers. Doesn’t matter if I’m there for MVP activities, speaker or just as an attendee.Ā
- Networking
- I think networking and staying up to date of all the new use cases and features of the toolsets I’m working with, in my case Power BI
- Networking with other members, asking them questions about why THEY are excited to be there, learning about topics from different viewpoints from my own to inform a more rounded understanding.
- Connecting with other attendeesĀ
- Direct contact with other community members
- Presenting, networking/socialising, getting swag/stickers
- Keep in touch with people and latest innovation or solutions
- Learning new things
- Networking
- Connecting with other people
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