I admit it, I like conferences Over the years, I’ve attended dozens of them. It’s been a pretty diverse set of professional gatherings: photographers, magicians, and software developers. Although the sessions and tracks of those conferences were quite different, the events themselves were pretty similar.

People come together to share knowledge and experiences with their peers. We delight in meeting face to face, and sharing meals with people that have similar interests.

As a session attendee, I’m usually right there in the front row, ready to ask questions. Or I’m the one milling about in the back of the room, looking at the schedule to see if I should slip away to another presentation.

As a presenter or keynote speaker it’s my job to convey information about a particular topic. More importantly I try to get people thinking (and talking) about the issues and questions raised during session. I consider a presentation successful if people walk away at the end with more questions than they came in with, and now knowing where to look for answers.

What I’m really after, for myself and others at the conference, are those "Ah-Ha!" moments.

The Mentality of Apes

Several eons ago, I was a psychology major in college. I have always been interested in how we discover things and solve problems.

In 1949 Arthur Koestler published a tome called “The Mentality of Apes.” In it he recounts experiments regarding the discovery of using implements by chimpanzees. Here’s his account:

"[A young chimpanzee has not yet made the acquaintance of other animals but remains isolated in a cage.]

A little stick is introduced into her cage; she scrapes the ground with it, pushes the banana skins together in a heap, and then carelessly drops the stick at a distance of about three-quarters of a metre from the bars.

Ten minutes later, fruit is placed outside the cage beyond her reach. She grasps at it, vainly of course, and then begins the characteristic complaint of the chimpanzee: she thrusts both lips -- especially the lower -- forward, for a couple of inches, gazes imploringly at the observer, utters whimpering sounds, and finally flings herself on to the ground on her back -- a gesture most eloquent of despair, which may be observed on other occasions as well.

Thus, between lamentations and entreaties, some time passes, until -- about seven minutes after the fruit has been exhibited to her -- she suddenly casts a look at the stick, ceases her moaning, seizes the stick, stretches it out of the cage, and succeeds, though somewhat clumsily, in drawing the bananas within arm's length.

It is obvious that [the young chimpanzee's accomplishment was not obtained by the trial-and-error method, nor by conditionary reflex. For her behaviour, from the moment her eyes fell on the stick, was unwavering purposeful; she did not stumble on the solution by poking about aimlessly with the stick beyond the bars, but seized the stick, carried it to the bars, stretched it out of the cage, and placed it behind the banana.”

He goes on to point out something important (my emphasis added):

...The eureka process does not consist in inventing something new out of nothing, but in a bringing together of the hitherto unconnected. Nothing is created that was not already there, in the outside world and its mental reflection. Likewise, the so-called 'revolutions' in thought consist not in destruction, but in synthesis: In connecting the hitherto unconnected."

Koestler’s called this bringing together of previously unconnected ideas “bisociation.” The point of realization of a solution is often called the “Ah-Ha! phenomenon.” It’s sometimes compared to a light bulb turning on in a person’s head. Something that was confounding them suddenly becomes obvious… the connection has been made, the path is clear.

"Adults don’t know everything!"

In 1990, my first son was six years old. For some reason, during a talk, he said the following words to me: "Dad, adults don’t know everything!"

He was quite surprised when I explained that fundamentally, we do know everything! Not that any one adult knows everything, but collectively it’s the adults that know pretty much all that is currently known.

I explained to him (perhaps to his surprise) that all of his favorite things, including the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (very popular at the time) were created by adults, weird though they may be, and not by kids.

I continued to explain that if he asks me a question, and I know the answer, I’d tell him. If I don’t know the answer, I’d see if his mother knows it. If not, I don’t hesitate to ask other adults that I know or work with and the research continues. The adults I ask could, in turn, ask others and get back to me… this kind of networking usually reveals an answer. These days, I’d extend the network by also checking the internet, but it wasn’t much of an option back then.

He then understood that as a collective community, “Adults” really did know a lot, and also document much of the knowledge so the information could persist long after the individuals were gone.

I tried to impress upon him what was so obvious to me: the value of community, and that having people to reach out to, to “confer” which is incredibly important.

Conferring and converging

A conference creates a space for interactions to take place. People converge from all over the world. Just think of the combined wisdom and experiences of the people that attend a developers conference. Engineers and product managers who actually build the tools, developers and partners who are down in the trenches using the tools, all get to talk to each other.

I’ll be participating both as an attendee and as a presenter at this year's EMC Software Developer Conference (affectionately known as DevCon 2006.)

Originally, the DevCons were held at the Pleasanton CA campus. Because of facilities constraints, the events sold out quickly and many who wanted to attend couldn’t. This year we’ve doubled the capacity! The Argent Hotel in San Francisco will be a perfect place to hold the conference… a first rate facility in a great city.

The tracks have been expanded beyond Documentum content management. There will be sessions about SMARTS resource management, other recent EMC acquisitions, and how you can use them in your development. There will be an Architects track geared towards end-to-end solution design.

Things I’ve heard

I interviewed several EMC engineers, architects and managers to see how they felt about participating in the conference.

I was pleased to hear how much they were looking forward to it, and they seemed to all point to a similar set of benefits that they get out of it. So from the EMC point of view:

• We get to meet and spend time with customers and partners. We find out how they are actually using the products, including any problems people are facing in the field.
• Some issues become great subjects for code samples, Some problems are fixed on the spot. Often attendees come up with great solutions that they want to share.
• Instead of only seeing support cases (which are generally about problems), at DevCon we get to see the much larger picture of the solutions people are providing. We get to hear the success stories as well as the feature requests.
• We (and everyone else) learn quite a lot by listening to attendees help each other out with technical issues. The innovative approaches offered are often quite inspired.

I expect that most attendees have similar comments about their past conference experiences.

Talk, talk, talk

Real conversations occur all throughout the event. Though there is a lot of information presented in the sessions, much of the value comes outside of the scheduled tracks.

A great deal of dialogue is exchanged during the face to face technical events, exhibitor booths, special conference outings, over dinner, and talking to someone quietly in the hallway while eating a cookie. It seems to me that there is a high correlation between the quality of information exchanged and the availability of food!

Over and over again people tell me about how a quick interaction with someone else at the conference led to an "Ah-Ha!" moment for them. Product managers tell me that previously vague concepts for future features can crystallize after conferring with people who will be using the tools.

Attendees of all types get a chance to talk and listen to some pretty highly opinionated, yet creative people. Although the conference schedule is demanding, people generally end the event energized, anxious to try out new approaches to the projects they are working on.

What’s missing?

I do hear one recurring conference complaint from people both within and outside of EMC. It’s that the conference happens only once a year, and that this level of contact and feedback occurs over the course of only a few days. That’s a short time to make or renew all these connections, and people have difficulty scheduling even these few days away.

We need a way to continue the conversations and bring more people together into the discussions. The EMC Developer Network is working on that. There are more ways to connect the communities worldwide, and we’re going to make them available to you, so stay tuned.

Sessions, food and epiphanies

As for this year’s DevCon, November 13 – 16 is coming up fast. If you haven’t already registered, you can do so by clicking here: http://customernet.emc.com/developer/devcon2006/

I hope to see you at the conference. I’m really looking forward to talking (and dining) with developers from around the world. Who knows how many "Ah-Ha!" moments we’ll have between us?

You bring the stick, I’ll bring the bananas.

Alan Z.

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