Thanksgiving is the best holiday on the calendar.  And with my favorite holiday only days away, we’re now getting inundated with Thanksgiving-related stories in the media.  One perennial Thanksgiving storyline is the requisite report on the road-choking, airport-swelling glut in holiday travel.  I typically avoid this scene altogether and stay home for the holiday, which may be one of the big reasons I like Thanksgiving so much. For those of you who do plan on traveling this Thanksgiving, I feel for you and hope these tips help.

On the other hand, the option to stay home is not as readily available to me for much of the rest of the year.  Rather, like many of my peers and colleagues in the education technology field, I spend the entire autumn on the road.  In fact, Thanksgiving week will mark the first week since Labor Day that I won’t be playing “planes, trains, and automobiles” in order to attend a conference, trade show, or speaking engagement.  While others will be gearing up for an annual pilgrimage, I’ll be kicking my feet up for the first time in recent memory.  This made me realize: for many of us, the October / November education conference season is kind of like a quasi-Thanksgiving that gets celebrated throughout the entire autumn season. 

Some of the striking similarities (and a few notable differences):

TIME FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILIES

An essential component of Thanksgiving is catching up with family and friends.  In many ways, so are the industry conferences.  Anyone who has attended EDUCAUSE or League for Innovation or NACAC for 10 years running knows that each of these events is essentially a family reunion or homecoming weekend of sorts.  And, although the re-connection to most family members is overwhelmingly a positive experience, it sometimes brings with it the burden of having to mingle with that random uncle or obnoxious in-law (or perhaps the girlfriend your parents don’t approve of). The same is true at these conferences, which sometimes bring us face to face with a former colleague (insert: partner, vendor, client, etc.) or two whom we’d probably do just as well to avoid.

Of course we have our favorite “sides of the family;” and traveling to visit their homes every third or fourth Thanksgiving is a fun-filled labor of love.  Our hosts throw out the welcome mat, and make us feel right at home.  Many conferences take a similar approach to their corporate partner-sponsors; and it is a pleasure to attend these shows as a guest in good standing. A few such recent events that come immediately to mind in this regard include STAMATS, Eduventures, EMBA Council, and the various regional UCEA conferences. Unfortunately, there are also “those cousins” who make you feel like they are doing you a favor simply by letting you show up for a few hours of Thanksgiving food and football: “…oh, and by the way, don’t forget to bring the turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and dessert when you come.” 

Occasionally a similar dynamic plays out for companies attending conferences.  In a recent blog-post, Tim Copeland did a nice job of examining both a good and the bad of the relationship between conferences and their vendor-sponsors.

EAT AND BE MERRY

In many ways, though Thanksgiving is all about food.  A phenomenal meal seems to cure even the longest-standing family squabble.  Conferences are no different.  As any conference organizer will tell you, attendee satisfaction sky-rockets when the program is punctuated with a tremendous sundae fixin’s-bar.  Conversely, if the food is bad at either a conference or Thanksgiving, it’s rare that people come away still raving about the stimulating discussion.  Admittedly, Thanksgiving is more about the protein (turkey, turkey, turkey), while conferences are a giant carb-fest (muffins, bagels, croissants, cookies at coffee breaks, etc.).  Still, the principle holds.

TIME FOR REFLECTION AND RENEWAL (OR IS IT?) 

One thing I love about Thanksgiving is its place on the calendar, and its impact on work.  It’s always on a Thursday, and we can pretty much count on a 4-day weekend year in and year out (unlike most holidays which are touch-and-go regarding when during the week they’ll fall in a given year).  Likewise, people are pretty universal about “playing by the rules” on Thanksgiving; and people actually take advantage of the down-time by letting up on the onslaught of email.  Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth at conferences.  Instead, the unattractive choice of “picking your poison” often applies.  Sometimes we get the “weekend show,” which causes us to be away from home and results in missed Saturday soccer games, dance recitals, spin classes, etc.  Most shows, however, take place throughout the week.  Meanwhile, the pace back at the office remains unrelenting, leaving attendees with the sense that they have two (or more) jobs.  Throughout the show-room floor, attendees and sponsors alike can be heard at the tail-end of a 12-hour day bemoaning the 400 emails that await them upon returning to their hotel room. 

In a similar vein, the pinnacle of Thanksgiving takes place after the meal.  As long as you aren’t responsible for clean-up duty, the focal point of most Thanksgiving celebrations becomes sitting on the couch to recover slowly from the effects of tryptophan and too much good food.  Not so at conferences.  Rather, the inescapable reality at most conferences is that there is far too much to do and too few hours in which to do it.  As the saying goes…you can relax once the conference is over!   In this regard, Thanksgiving wins hands down over conferences. 

All lighthearted observations aside, though, Thanksgiving is about just that: Giving Thanks.  And education conferences can evoke a similar mind-set, in spite of all of the frequent flyer miles, sleep deprivation, and weight-gained over the course of 8 –weeks of education technology conferences.  These conferences bring me face to face with an inescapable truth: I get to work with wonderful people from outstanding institutions who are doing good work in an industry that is undergoing historical changes that are driven by powerful and important global forces.  I wouldn’t trade that opportunity for a month of Thanksgivings.  And for that, I am truly thankful.