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I had a work conference at Disneyworld a few years ago. My husband and 2.5 year old daughter went with and it was amazing! We all flew down together, i conferenced during the day and had time with them in the evening for two nights and then we stayed an extra week!

I have a conference in Hawaii coming up and just dh is coming this time. He’s coming two days after me and we’re staying an extra week.

@codeitall: I travel a lot for work. We have yet to take our LO on a work trip. It would be a LOT of work on my DH when I'm working....and my trips are usually chock full so I don't have a lot of time to play.

I have brought my family along and have gone with DH. The hard part is you have to be in employee mode--so while your kids are doing a fun outing, you will be in a session. If you leave immediately after your session, you will miss out on networking opportunities (which may be frowned upon). The way we normally do things is that I take an early morning flight and do registration, networking, and sessions. DH flies out with kids and meets me at the hotel.i then do 2 half days where we hang out until lunch, I go to work from 1-8 (networking receptions). It's great, but it's not a vacation.

Yes! I have done it. I work in education so typically there aren't conferences in other places, but I got on a book awards committee, and was able to donate $20k of books from that to our school system, so in return they funded the mandatory attendance at the conferences.

My conference schedule was really light--I presented or moderated at 1 session a day, plus had to take a shift helping at the booth during an author signing. But for a 3 day conference, I had about 4 hours a day of work plus maybe an hour of Prep time (tweaking introduction speech, etc).

The first conference was when my oldest was 14 months and was in New Orleans--my husband and would take her out and about in the morning, then we'd have the afternoon and evenings together. Lots of fun. We also did Boston and Philadelphia.

For New Orleans, he bought his own flight of course. For the other two, we drove.

It typically wouldn't work for my husband to tag along due to his limited leave schedule, but I have to go to a conference in a couple of months, am bringing the baby, and bought my mom a ticket with miles. She is SO excited and I'm glad not to have to worry about stashing enough milk for a week. If it works well I will do it again in the future...

We have built small trips around both my work conferences and my husband's. The structure and how much family time you'll have will really depend on what the conference expectations are. In both our cases, the spouse is basically a solo parent the entire time because there are always dinners and evening events that are not family-friendly (or open to family members). That said, it's still been fun. I just hang out with LO all day and we do different things and explore. Often we get room service to the hotel room because by then I need a little break lol

My work had a conference at Disney World a couple years ago and LO and DH came after it ended, so we just extended the time I was there. My company paid for my flight (no additional charge to me to stay a few extra days), and I could use the conference room rate for hotel for the additional days, which saved us a TON of money.

But, like I said. For both of us, it isn't like a little bit conference and then lots of free family time each day. It's like solo parent all day and most every evening. But you get to explore a new place, subsidized somewhat.

I’ve done it before but honestly, it’s really hard. I feel extremely torn between going to sessions, networking, etc and getting away for family time. For my next conferen, I’m going alone so I can stay in work mode and not feel guilty about it

I would never. Ever. Unless the conference was at, like, Disney. The closest thing I would do is bring DH with me and make it a little get away for us.
But when I was working and I had business trips, I never even considered taking LO and I enjoyed every. Single. Second. No regrets.

My DH had a conference in Barcelona a few years ago when we were living in Europe and we all tagged along for about 10 days. He was at the conference all day during the week, so I was solo with the kids during the day (who were then 3.5 and 10 months), but it was actually a lot of fun. We would meet up in the city after he was done for the day and all have dinner together. I think there was only one night when he had a dinner planned. During the day we would go exploring and it was less stressful than I thought it would be. We rented a 2 bedroom Airbnb so that we had a little extra room to spread out. Now that we live in Asia, my DH travels a lot more for work, but with the kids in school, it's a bit harder to make the work dates/vacation time line up. We did go to Cambodia for a quick weekend trip at the tail end of a work trip in January, and I hope we can do a few more tag alongs this year.

Growing up both of my parents traveled for their jobs, especially my Dad. When there were really good destinations the whole family would tag along. The working parent would be gone all day, but we'd be with the other parent, then meet up for dinner.... Then we'd usually tack a day or two onto the end to all hang out!

I don't travel too much for my job, but if I did attend conferences in good locations I would def have the family tag along!

In the past we’ve always gone alone. I have conference in Miami in November and I’m sure I’ll do that one alone. I’ll have no free time and probably be expected to socialize with all the other people who work for my company. It would only be stressful to have my family there.

On the other hand, DH went to a conference in SF a few weeks ago and if he can go again we’re tossing around the idea of all of us going. He wouldn’t have any dinner obligations so we could all meet up in the evenings. But I’d be on the hook for soloing all day long with 2.5 year old and 5 year old. I wouldn’t expect him to leave early and he’s not the type to do it anyways, lol. I’m much more lax at conferences .