This is a question that I’ve been struggling with for years. Through my life as an entrepreneur, I’ve had the opportunity to be a TEDx speaker. I have good friends that have organized tech conferences themselves, and I’ve obviously been an attendee of a fair share of events and even part been of those Startup battle segments.

So, are tech conferences worth it? That depends on the expectations you have going in.

With time, I’ve learned that the best thing you can do is set accurate expectations, and have a clear action plan in place as to what you want to accomplish at the event.

Here are some of the goals we’ve set at Slidebean when investing time/money in attending a tech conference, and mostly succeeded at:

1. Networking: meeting relevant p...