Conf Report: IndoorAgCon 2017

May 9, 2017 Jamey Alea 0 Comments

I just got home from a long weekend in Las Vegas, attending IndoorAgCon and I’m excited to share a little bit about what I saw there! Though I’ve been doing a lot of conferences lately, IndoorAgCon was my first agricultural trade show. Not having an actual background in agriculture, I was a little worried that everything would be too over my head to get anything out of it but that wasn’t the case at all! In fact, I met other tech people there, I learned a lot about indoor ag and people were interested in my background in tech and how I was applying it in the agtech sphere.

Agrilyst had a booth there and not only did I get to hang out with the Agrilyst squad, but I got to meet a lot of customers and farmers which was an awesome perspective that I don’t always get to see as a software engineer. It was super gratifying to hear about the good experiences that people have had using the platform I helped build – and to see new people get excited about the ways it might be able to help their business. As a developer, I think it’s easy to lose sight sometimes of why we’re actually building what we’re building and how our code is actually used, so the chance to chat face-to-face with the people who are using my product is something that I was really grateful to have.

Plus I got to see a lot of plants, which is all I really want to do in life! And better yet, I got to learn about plants so I can grow my own and see them every day. I was particularly interested in learning about the in-home consumer section of the industry because (spoiler alert!) I’m working on a new series of product reviews for beginners who want to get started growing some herbs and greens at home!

And I had a great time! I met some really amazing people at the conference (and at the awesome Agrilyst happy hour!) and I even found a little time to explore a bit of Vegas, which is a place unlike anywhere I have ever visited before. Hoping I can attend again next year after I get my feet a little wetter in the ag industry!