2018 was a good year for my conference speaking schedule, I spoke at some new events as well as some of my old favorites. I decided to cut down on travel expenses last year, and tried to primarily speak at conferences that were somewhat local to me, or at least within a few hours drive. This worked out pretty well, as I only flew to 3 conferences and got to attend a few more local events as a result. I plan to continue this trend in 2019. Also, since I’ve been traveling more with my job, I decided to limit myself to 6 speaking events, which is something else that I plan to continue in 2019.
One thing that was new for me in 2018 was helping to plan the Music City Data conference. This was the first time I’ve volunteered to help put a conference together, and I really enjoyed working behind the scenes with Kevin Kline, Louis Davidson, and Joe Web. Music City Data turned out to be a great conference, and I consider myself fortunate to have had a chance to see how it is put together and what all is involved.
As for 2019, I’m still planning on keeping to a lighter speaking schedule. I typically try to speak at one or two new conferences each year, so I’ll probably keep that up, although my list of “old favorites” is growing each year. 🙂