At Microsoft Ignite, I'm reminded why tech conferences are chicken soup for the technical soul.

I'm at my first Microsoft Ignite conference. It's massive. my throat is hoarse from talking. My cheeks hurt from smiling. And I don't even want to talk about my feet. I'm only two days in and already it's been beyond worth the price of admission. I have access to all the slides and presentations. I've attended sessions where I learned more in the first five minutes than I did trying to navigate the help file back at home.

There's real value in things I've learned here so far. The Bing for Business browser demo looked useful and fun.

However, there's so much more. I can watch the keynote at home. And I could read about the key takeaways in reports later. But there's just something about being here that can't be replicated behind a screen. Actually, there's a few things.

It's recharging to see things moving forward, even if your company isn't the one doing the forward moving.

At the Microsoft Ignite keynote, CEO Satya Nadella spoke on emerging technologies, and how they're being used today. The talks and demonstrations went from things we can use today (updated applications), all the way to quantum computing and using a HoloLens in a mixed-reality environment to engineer a car.

There's a sense of excitement from being at a conference that just can't be conveyed through a computer screen if you aren't there. Just like all group dynamics, a stimulated crowd creates an electrifying atmosphere that can be felt.

The vendor showcase is a great way to get hands-on experiences at what is coming next. Seeing both the keynote with its state-of-the-art demonstrations and the vendor show floor with lights and sounds is almost an overstimulating experience.

Seeing what these companies have created and are doing in an almost other-wordly setting, I feel the need to go home and create something. I feel the overpowering sensation that I can do it.

In fact I having the feeling a little a bit like I've wasted the past year on some things. I still haven't gotten around to cleaning out my spare room, and in that time, a team of people at Microsoft are working on a way to embrace quantum computing so that bits of information in various states of existence at a sub-atomic level can work simultaneously.

And then there's me with my messy room.

The takeaway here is that even if your company isn't quite ready for an upgrade, or isn't ready to embrace Office 365, Teams or Azure, just knowing that these companies that are out there making amazing things happen can be incredibly motivating.

No amount of Skype, Yammer, Teams, Outlook or texting can ever even come close to real face time with colleagues, peers, and other professionals that are just like you.

As we were setting up our LinkedIn Learning booth, I could see the photo station being assembled, where professional photographers were taking new headshot photos of attendees for their LinkedIn profiles. I went to the hidden side panel to get our booth attire and ran into a fellow LinkedIn staff member, who I had never met. The door opened. "Hoodies!" we both proclaimed happily. A beautiful friendship was born.

As a remote worker, I'm home all day, every day. A busy show floor reminds me what civilization looks like, what energy is out there, and how much fun it is to make small talk with likeminded people. I've been having conversations about good conference shoe brands, new apps to download, the latest Microsoft technologies, and things I very rarely get the chance to talk about at home.

It's also invaluable to get offsite time with co-workers.

I have monthly remote meetings with co-workers. I do learn things there, of course. And a water cooler conversation is sometimes short and trivial. But in a conference setting, after the show ends at night, there's still a night's worth of value to be had. In an after-hours social setting, I get completely uninterrupted quality time with my co-workers. In just a half an hour's worth of conversation, I've discovered hobbies I didn't know we shared, key helpful items in our company's benefit plan I didn't know about, and I can definitely put a price tag on the health benefits of all the laughing I did.

Technology can only get you so far, the rest is up to people - the real value of it all.

Once you start to meet people, a conference becomes more than just this technology show you went to once. It becomes a yearly tradition. A chance to see friends. A reunion. A happiness at realizing how much you needed to see these faces. Friendships forged at conferences become friendships during the rest of the year. You can use the technology you learn about at the conference to keep in touch with them, until the next time you can see them in person again (at a conference, of course).

You'll be ahead of the curveball in terms of upcoming skills to learn and knowing what you don't know.

Attending sessions and hearing keynotes can sometimes help your professional road path become abundantly clear. Key topics are repeated at an almost hammering pace. The same product names come up in session titles, both basic and deep dive. Paying attention to what is clearly a point of focus and attention for Microsoft can help you see what skills you should be sharpening to stay relevant in the tech world and ensure that your users are up to date.

Are you here? What are your thoughts? Why do you return every year?