I was surprised to see that Texas would have a couple of Ayn Rand Institute sponsored conferences this year.
The first will be this coming Saturday in Dallas. It’s a one-day event, with about half a dozen speakers.
The second event will be later this Summer, in Austin, and appears to be the “main” ARI conference this year. (It looks like they are trying to have mini-conferences around the nation, rather than just the one big, yearly conference.)
I was unable to attend the 2019 OCON due to conflicts with my work schedule, but I attended the 2017 (my first) and the 2018.
I’ve been reading and thinking about Ayn Rand’s ideas since I was about 15. I didn’t expect to learn anything particularly “earthshaking” or novel at the prior two conferences I attended. I looked at them more as social events, in which I’d have an opportunity to be around a large number of people who are sufficiently sympathetic to Rand’s ideas to pay out a good-sized chunk of money for the admittance fee, plus pay for a hotel and airfare.
I was curious to see what that would be like. In my everyday social interactions, I sometimes get a feeling of being a permanent “outsider”, but I also suspect that may just be my personality. The OCON’s gave me a chance to see how I reacted when everyone around me is, at least ostensibly, holding the same worldview.
But, I was pleasantly surprised to find that listening to some of the lectures at the 2017 and 2018 conferences was a real stimulus to my thinking on several subjects.
There were also additional “intangible benefits” from the previous two conferences that I have trouble fully articulating with words. It was like a “mental afterglow” or just general “good feelings” from attending the conferences, that lasted for a while. (I’m guessing this is something like what religious people feel after coming back from church camp or some other such event.) I wasn’t necessarily impressed with every single person I encountered at the OCON’s, but being in that social environment sort of helped me to see myself a little bit better.