In other words, we attend some conferences for certain reasons, and we attend other conferences for other reasons.  Often, these reasons overlap, and just as often, they do not.  Don’t expect every professional need you have to be satisfied by every conference; you need more than one, to wit, a combo of conferences.

In the long run, however, by attending various types of conferences for various reasons, I have learned far more than I ever learned in graduate school.

At first, everyone at every conference was new to me; even those whose blogs and websites I’d been reading for a while, but had not actually met, seemed new in many ways.   No matter what kind of conference it was, though, I felt I already knew these people somewhat because of their online presence.

Now, since I’m no longer a conference newbie – well, not as much of one as before -  I feel almost as if it’s Old Home Week when I go to a conference.  It’s wonderful to see familiar faces, and just as wonderful to see unfamiliar faces which I know will be familiar at the NEXT conference.  I’m far from being an A-list writer,  but the actual A-list people don’t seem to know how A-list they are and are really, really nice.  (This attitude can be different, though, depending on what kind of conference you’re attending and what kind of expectations you bring to the table.)

I guess you might say I’m thoroughly hooked on conferences.

They have greatly enhanced my ability to do my writing gigs, my social media gigs, my watchdog gigs, my teaching gigs, my help-my-students-become-writers gigs, and my time-to-surf-and-find-new-things gigs.

At each conference, I’m agig agog at the awesomeness of the attendees and presenters.  I’ve never met such smart people in my life.

For a small-town chick like me, it’s been a whole new world.  Alert Aladdin at once.

Another reason I love conferences is that because I’m a small-town chick, there really isn’t anybody close to home who understands what I do for a living.  At conferences, I can have actual conversations with actual people who actually understand!

Conferences help me hone my mad skillz.  Come with me next time and we’ll hone together.

It’s rare that any piece of knowledge you pick up pertains only to one aspect of your life.  I went to WordCamp Chicago to hone my mad social media and computer  skillz, but I also learned a great deal that I can take back to my college students and use, as well.

There’s no such thing as knowing enough.  Nobody will ever know enough about anything.  No matter how much we know, or think we know, there is always more to learn.  It doesn’t matter what the topic is; there’s always more to learn.

At  WordCamp Chicago this weekend, I learned so much my head is spinning.  This is good.  As my head is spinning – EXORCIST – I am extracting tidbits of coolness from it like water from lettuce in a salad spinner.  And once I soak up all the water, I’ll start in on the lettuce.  When the lettuce has been absorbed, I’ll go to another conference and start again.

Nobody ever knows enough about anything.

And I shall add:  those who think they know enough had better be careful.

Businesses have clients and customers, and schools have students.  Clients, customers, and students know an awful lot, and if  the time comes when they know more than we do. . . . well,   we’ve succeeded, actually.  They won’t need us any more.  And then, we go to another conference or take a class and catch up and then we’ll be needed again and it starts all over again.

I’ve heard teachers say that certain students or whole classes made them nervous or even annoyed them because the kids knew more than the teacher.  Whose fault is this, I might ask.  A teacher who doesn’t continue to learn, year after year, for the entirety of his/her career, is not an educator.  He/she is only a lecturer, and probably a boring one that the kids could run rings around.  I know teachers who’ve used the exact same lesson plans for over thirty years.  I’ve worked with people who refused to learn even how to access their email.  I have had colleagues who hated it when there was a really bright kid who already knew every minute detail of the textbooks, tests, and topics in a class.  I’ve known teachers who resented it when a child asked a question the teacher couldn’t answer.  As for me,  I LOVE it when my students have questions I can’t answer.  It means we all go nuts figuring that answer out, together.  Cool!  Get to the lab, people and activate your schema!

When your customers/clients/students are able to run rings around you, and you permit it, and you don’t do anything to make yourself more knowledgeable, you’re not going to be good at whatever it is you do.  You won’t even be passable.  I don’t want you teaching my children, and I wouldn’t trust you to be competent at running a business.  Frankly, I don’t even want you dressing my cheeseburger.

If your business is kids and you don’t know what they’re reading or listening to or playing, what excuse do you have?  You have no excuse.  I don’t mean that you have to be one of them, because we’ve all seen THOSE pathetic souls, age 54, in Miley Cyrus jeans, Tinkerbell t-shirt,  and pink-tipped hair.  I mean, if you’re going to be able to communicate with your clientele in any kind of place, YOU have to learn some new tricks, old dawg.

In fact, I personally think that if your business is kids, you not only need to know what they’re reading, you need to read it, too.  How can your excited students talk to you about the Black Family Tree permanently stuck to the wall, with some of the faces burned away, and why, if you don’t know what that is?  And frankly, if you teach and you DON’T know what that is, shame on you.  You’re not keeping up.

Keep up.  Never, ever, ever stop keeping up.

When you stop keeping up, ie when you stop learning, call the mortuary and have them drive over to pick up your useless self.  You’re certainly not making viable use of yourself any more, nor any part of yourself.  Even if you’re working out three times a week, if you’re not learning anything, you’re not using your brain, and once you stop using your brain, you’re dead.  Worse than dead, really, because you’re not doing your fair share of thinking, participating, and contributing, but you’re still using up oxygen, resources,  and space on the planet.

Harsh?  Not really.  In this economy or any other kind of economy, what school or business can afford to keep dead weight?  And why should they bother?  Dead weight brings everybody down, and nobody has the right to do that to other people.

Get rid of the dead weight in our schools and replace it with learners.  Learners on both sides of the desk.  A teacher who doesn’t continually educate himself/herself throughout a lifetime?  Not possible.  I mean, not if that person is a REAL teacher.

No matter what line you’re in, make sure you are a lifelong learner.  Keep up.  Ponder.  Suppose.  Infer.  Make connections.  Rejoice in learning as many new things  as you can, every moment you’re lucky enough to be alive.

Never.  Stop.  Learning.  And never stop loving learning.  And if you do decide you’ve learned enough and you’ve earned the right to stop learning and just sit around watching tv and yelling at the weatherman and the referee and drinking beer and feeling great that you don’t have to learn anything else ever again, please, for the love of all that is holy, keep away from my children.  And everybody else’s children, too.  You’re toxic, and I don’t want your poison to infect or infest anyone else, least of all an innocent child.

Learn things.  And when you’ve learned those things, learn other things.  Etc, etc, and so on in patternlike fancy.

And while you’re at it, learn to use and understand proper context.  I mean, holy scheisse on a stick, there are some really ignorant cusses out there.  Let’s eliminate them all with education.

I’m hooked now on writing conferences.  Social media get-togethers have become my crack cocaine.  No longer do I have to cook my meth in my neighbor’s front yard, over an open flame in full view of passing state cops – hey, it IS Indiana, remember, and near the river to boot – for now I can get my high by mingling with and listening to smart people talk about blogging, writing, social media, and all things such as them there.  Not to mention honing my mad grammar skillz which have gone to poop pot in just these past few days of what might euphemistically be called “My Vacation.”

WordCamp got me hooked.  BlogHer made it worse.  Science in the Rockies helped me realize just how important social media connections can be; besides which, it was an absolute BLAST, and the most educational of all educational conferences I’ve ever attended. (Hurry and sign up for 2010!!)    BlogIndiana will give me a much-needed fix. (It’s not too late to sign up!)   And in October,  I’ll be getting my blogging high on in Las Vegas at Blog World Expo, the Big One.

Someone recently asked me WHY I was so keen to go to the Expo. I highly respect this person and have for quite a while, so even though I answered her directly, I’ll answer her here as well, and not merely by saying “please see above.”  Although I guess I just said that.   I will then add that even though the social media thang is a few years old, it’s still pretty much brand-new, and those of us who are addicted are hooked pretty hard.  Around these parts, at least, it’s impossible to find others with whom I can squee and ooooh and exchange points of view about social media and blogging and making all kinds of connections for my clients and doing the business thing with it and using it for things other than the “My babies are so beautiful this morning and I just HAD to tell everybody here” or “I’m having scrambled eggs this morning; what are you having” kind of communication, although such Twitters are interesting and informative to be sure.  There is also so much more to it than having a My Space and selecting the appropriately goth/sparkly/NASCAR/DisneyPrincess/Hogwarts/polka-dotted background and making the dizzying decision as to who will be your TOP FRIENDS this week.

Side note:  If you have a business and have no online presence, you’re losing out on a lot of connection  opportunities.  Get with it, old-timer.  Put down your slide rule, slip that cover over your typewriter, get a phone that isn’t fastened to the wall, replace your Windows 95, and hire somebody who knows how to make your existence known without shelling out tons of money.  Some money, thankyouverymuch, but not tons.  Seriously, you’ll save tons and get megatons back.  Hello, my email is on the sidebar.

Do you like baseball?  Then you’ll LOVE Ultimate Baseball: The Game.  Seriously.

But I digress.

School has already started for many of you. . . . nah, that’s another post in and of itself.  “Never mind.”

Writing conferences.  Come on, meet me there!  You’ll also meet JustHeather, and maybe she’ll take a picture of YOU with a pickle hanging out of your mouth!  If you’re lucky, that is.

Don’t be afraid.  I’m harmless.  I’m nice, really I am, apart from my terrible taste in pie, and. . . no, wait, that’s from Love Actually.

I am nice, though.  Harmless, nice, eager to learn everything I possibly can about social media, business, giving YOUR enterprise an online presence to be valued and envied, blogging, and looking forward to next week for many, many reasons.

One of those reasons is the people.  It would be really awesome if a lot of YOU were there.