These days it can be harder to justify attending conferences. Here are a few suggestions that might help towards making the case to go that directly impact ROI.

• You are an asset to your company. Your company should be investing the same percentage of budget towards maintaining and upgrading your skills as they do for the rest of the corporate assets.
• Offer to train others in what you learned when you return. You can pitch your trip to a conference as a way to bring back skills and knowledge to the rest of the organization. Get extra copies of the tutorial notes from other sessions. This is often an easy way to get some extra coverage.
• Trip report. The trip report is a write up of the sessions you attended, written for others in your group. The best trip reports are a 2-3 page summary which will trigger people to come ask you questions.
• Connect the value of the conference to business goals. If product knowledge or industry trends are company or division goals, you can claim that sending folks to conferences on those subjects will help pull in more expertise and knowledge towards helping the business. This argument puts less of the focus on your professional goals, and more on the company.
• Recruiting. One of the reasons to send people to conferences is to recruit for open positions. If your team has had trouble filling certain jobs, or know that new openings are coming for your group, you can offer to do recruiting work while you’re there. The Techno Forensics Conference has different options to rent booth space for your company at the conference.
• Professional development. If you have career discussions with you manager, tie your career goals and future development to specific kinds of training or growth opportunities that you need that are available during the Techno Forensics Conference.