There are a slue of reasons to attend a conference like MAX.

• It’s geek fun to the Nth degree ( I was going to say, “to the max”, but no.)
• You can learn a great deal about your field
• You get a good cross pollination of ideas. Designers hanging out with developers and visa-versa.

But I find the best reason to attend conferences is the connections that are formed. Here’s an example.

On Tuesday at MAX I ran into a friend of mine, Chris Hughes, that I originally met at the 360Flex conference in San Jose. I didn’t know that Chris was going to be there or I would have made a point to hook up with him earlier.

While we were catching up he mentioned that he would like to be involved in getting a volunteer group together in the Los Angeles area to do some coding for one of the local charities.

I told him that a group at the 360Flex event in Seattle had done something like that and he should look them up.

Ali Daniali is the Flex Users Group leader here in Seattle. He and I have meet only a few times locally and planned on meeting up at MAX. We were both distracted during the conference and never called the other to set up a time/place to meet.

On the final day of the conference we bumped into each other in the sponsors room. He was on his way to get some presents for his kids and didn’t have much time to hang out. So we planned on getting together later in Seattle.

As he was leaving I remembered what Chris had told me about doing some charity work. I ran after Ali and brought him over to meet Chris. The two talked for 5-10 minutes and then Ali took off.

Chris told me that they were going to talk more later but essentially Ali was going to help him set up a charity code jam at a conference in Los Angeles next summer. Just as Ali had done at 360Flex in Seattle.

The timing was near perfect because they were in the room together at the same time. I introduced them and as a result they will work together to help feed the needy in the Los Angeles area.

You never know who you’ll meet and what will become of it. A chance conversation in the hallway could lead to a startup being born, or charity work, whatever.