I recently read a post that another tech writer wrote about the great value he got out of attending a conference, and it got me to thinking about whether I missed the academic conferences I used to attend when I was in Higher Education, that conference-heavy publish-or-perish world that used to frame my professional life.

I do rather miss those conferences, but not because they helped in my professional development at all. I miss them because they were rather fantastic social networking events where I got to visit nifty cities and see old friends, meet new friends and make some cool connections that would become Facebook pals I’d never see again anywhere other than social media. I’d occasionally hear a good lecture, but more often than not I would gain little professionally and more socially from those conferences. Even the ones where I was a presenter. Don’t get me wrong – there is assuredly professional gain. It is a boon to my resume that I gave a talk at The Rhetoric Society of America. That I delivered a conference paper at The Conference on College Composition and Communication when it was in New York City. It’s kind of a big deal. I did my share of networking, it’s true.

But it is also true that when I was at a conference for Professional and Technical Writing programs and a primary speaker was delivering a talk about women in the professions and helping each other through academic networking I sought her out afterward, only to email her and never hear from her again. Talk about deflating. I did, though, enjoy the venue and the cocktail hour and I made a friend there who is totally into mountain biking and lives in Colorado and we are Facebook pals and we swear one of these days we are going to get together and bike in Utah which we both love. We’ll do it, too, I just know it! The experience of making that Facebook friend is obviously the more valuable experience. Totally worth the money I spent on the conference.

In my professional life, I gain much, much more from networking threads like Slack and Google Plus or Google Docs because I get actual work done there. I collaborate on the daily with other professionals who do what I do, who think like I think, and they interact and respond in real time without the hotel bar chit chat and the façade of friendly. I’ve yet to have a Google hangout with my colleagues fail to result in real feedback, but I’ve definitely had conferences end with “sure, I’d love to look at that manuscript,” only to have neither party send a manuscript or even reach out with a professional email. At conferencing events, offers of reach-out are made, but they are sometimes disingenuous. With options like LinkedIn or Slack, the work is in front of you and the gift is made. It’s in print – albeit digital print. It is more difficult to retract if the ask is not made with a glass of pinot noir in one hand. The work is sincere and the response is real. We work hard in this business, or in any business, and time is short, days are long but wide. It is time to put shoulders to the grindstone if we want real results.

Digital is the new real, and though those professional conferences sure are delightful if they are in Vegas or New Orleans or New York, I’d rather get my work done from my Pittsburgh home office and go out to celebrate after the amazing writing hits the screen – like it just did!