I used to manage the audio conference department for a publishing company that sold legal reference guides. The guides covered everything you needed to know about the topic, and had monthly updates. If you needed instant information, you could call the editor.

Nevertheless, we had a successful business selling 90-minute audio conferences on some narrow topic that was already covered in the guide. And our subscribers were our best customers.

So why listen to an audio conference when you can just read the relevant section of the book?

I ask myself the same thing when I see a conference that interests me. Why go? I could spend 1/4 the time and virtually no money scouring the internet for articles and white papers on the topic, and probably learn more than I’d learn at the conference.

And this has made me wonder if companies should give employees a day every once in a while to spend entirely on their own, off site, just studying some topic. I’ve done this sort of thing myself, and I’ve learned a lot.

Still … there’s something about a conference. You come away from a conference with a different perspective, and it can’t all be explained by the content. So what is it?

Maybe it’s a matter of different learning styles. Some people learn better by hearing, or seeing, or being shown how something is done.

Maybe it’s the ability to focus on the topic. When you’re at a conference, your attention is corralled into a narrower band, without the distraction of phones and emails and such. I find that I think more creatively about a topic when I’m listening to someone speaking about it. Somehow it’s easier to let my mind wander and think about related issues and their application to other things.

Sometimes you’re not hearing anything new, but the focus reminds you of things you know you ought to be doing.

Maybe it’s the presence of your peers. We like to think that we’re independent thinkers and come to our own conclusions, but we’re just kidding ourselves. We’re incredibly influenced by our peers, so perhaps seeing all of them concentrating on the same topic reinforces the gravity of the topic and helps us to be serious about it.

But there is definitely something different about a conference, and I think it’s worth the money.