Rarely does one managerial action have the potential for payoff in three different areas of value to an employer. While the focus of this paper is on the last payoff, a short elaboration of the first two benefits of conference attendance are provided.
Technological obsolescence is a constant fear of dedicated scientists or engineers.
A major tool in keeping technological obsolescence at bay is conference or workshop attendance. In many cases work being presented at the conference will not appear in any open journal publication for up to 6-18 months. Information about new research analysis techniques may never appear in any publication and so conferences may be a very important source of this category of information. It gives them some insight into quality research as judged by their peers. The formal presentations or the more informal conversations with attendees may reveal interesting areas of research which the attendees' laboratory my wish to pursue.