It might sound counterintuitive, but face-to-face conferences can be an important component of your remote career. Remote work conferences offer opportunities for you to network and to learn about important issues related to distance work. Additionally, surrounding yourself with new people and ideas can energize you, boost your creativity, and keep you from feeling isolated.
While there aren’t that many conferences that are solely dedicated to the benefits and challenges of location independent work, the four remote work conferences listed below are excellent places to start.
Remote Work Conferences
TRaD Works Forum
One example of a remote work conference is the TRaD Works forum, being held this week (September 27-29) in Washington, DC. TRaD stands for Telecommuting, Remote, and Distributed work, and the forum will feature speakers from a wide range of backgrounds. Some of the featured speakers include:
- Neil Irwin, Senior Economics Correspondent at the New York Times
- Greg Caplan, Founder and CEO of Remote Year
- Trina Hoefling, author of Working Virtually: Transforming the Mobile Workplace
- Ceri Power, HR Wrangler at Automattic
- Jeremy Reither, Talent Agency Director at Upwork
- Stacy Elliott, Executive Communications Director at Microsoft
- Karen LaGraff, VP Xerox North American HR Operations
From the event website:
The TRaD Works Forum will redefine traditional work by facilitating and inspiring conversations between leaders of Fortune 500 companies, fast-growing virtual companies, and “future of work” thought leaders. Not only will discussions review the opportunities, benefits, and challenges pertaining to telecommuting, remote, and distributed teams, the conversation will also be focused on the tactical and actionable frameworks teams use to scale up and optimize their initiatives.
Tickets are by invitation only.
DNX Global
DNX Global is a conference for digital nomads. Topics from this year’s event included:
- Lifestyle Design and Locational Strategies for Digital Nomads
- The Perpetual Nomad: How To Maximize Your Freedom By Minimizing Taxes, Paperwork And Risk
- The Estonian E-Residency Is Disrupting National Systems: How Nomads Can Benefit
This conference is ideal for individuals who run their own location-independent business.
Future of Work Summit
The Future of Work Summit brings together “organizations who are leading the way in workplace innovation to discuss new workstyles, technologies, and how to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the digital revolution.”
This conference features keynotes, roundtable discussions, and fireside chats on topics like:
- Gigs as a Pathway, Not as an Endpoint
- Using Tech to Improve the Candidate Experience
- Digital Nomads: How Best to Support Them
- Virtual Office Parties: Engaging Remote Workers
This event is geared toward managers and executives in companies with digital workforces.
Agenda
It’s not only about remote work, but IDG’s Agenda conference is about “what’s next in digital,” and features technologies “that are disrupting companies, industries and the world.”
- Today’s Data Protection: Inside, Outside and Mobilized
- Digital Transformation Starts with your Workplace – #WorkplaceDigitized
- Building a Digital Business with APIs
- Creating a Culture of Transformation
Agenda18 will take place March 19-21 in Miami, FL.
Can’t attend any of these conferences, or you’re looking for more? Here are some other suggestions:
- Check with your company to see if there are industry-specific conferences you can attend. Attend any sessions on remote work, and if there are none, suggest one!
- Ask your personal connections about past conferences they’ve attended
Tip: If you’re planning on attending a conference, sign up for this free conference toolkit to make the most of your conference experience.
