Conference season is upon us.
I don’t have official stats, but it feels to me that the calendar is jammed with events from mid-winter through spring.
This week I depart for a back to back. First leg is Austin for SXSW. Unfortunately I’m only going for the first half of Southby as it conflicts with IEG. The annual sponsorship event, held in Chicago, is the second leg of my trip.
It’s a busy time. I was also to be in NYC for Leaders in Sport last week, but a launch for a new client property scuttled that plan. The next three months feature several more conference events, including Experential Marketer, CSTA, SMCC, and World Congress of Sport. It culminates in June at our event, CSFX, being held in Edmonton this year during the opening weekend of the Women’s World Cup.
Why so many conferences? I know my itinerary is a bit extreme. But I love conferences. It’s not just for the fun, because there are a lot less expensive ways to have fun.
I love conferences because of the impact on my business. For me, ROI is always measured based on the benefits an investment will bring to my clients, my staff, or my industry. If a conference can’t benefit me on one of those three parameters, than its just a frivolous road trip.
To extract real benefit from a conference, I believe you actually need to invest some time and energy in developing a strategy. Think about it as your own personal gameplan for attending. Because conferences are much like any pursuit. You get out of it, what you put into it.
I unabashedly recommend you develop a gameplan for conference attendance. It’s personally proven to be a successful tool for me. How else to ensure that when you arrive home, you’re not left with that feeling of having wasted a few thousand dollars. More so than the money, the time dedicated to conference attending is no small resource investment either.
Having a gameplan isn’t just essential for attending the conference. It can be extremely useful when pitching your organization on the real costs related to attendance. Those include the true financial outlay beyond registration fees, the investment of your time, and any potential work disruption while you’re away. Building this case will help ensure you get the green light for the investment.
A conference really is an investment. You shouldn’t get on the plane if you can’t see yourself coming back with a new idea, learning, supplied contact, or sales lead that you would not otherwise have gotten. Many times it can be a combination of these opportunities. Add to that the soft benefits related to motivation, recharging your love for the industry, contacts made, and personal exposure.
To secure that quantifiable result, get into your conference planning early. Identify how you want to approach the conference. Research from past attendees the secret mechanics of the event. What sessions are useful? Which ones are a shameless sales pitch? Which receptions are conducive to networking? Are their unpublished social events where the A-listers hide? How many sessions in a day should you attend? What sort of delegates will attend which workshops. Sometimes smaller sessions provide more opportunity to meet people.
Is there a speaker you want to meet? Pick their brain? Leverage their network? Start connecting with them today. Follow them on social. Learn more about who they are. Find someone in your network who could facilitate an introduction.
Don’t be afraid to ask in advance for the event delegate list. If the organizer won’t provide, ask a sponsor or supplier of the event. They have probably already pitched you on meeting them at the event. So it’s time for a value exchange. But if the price of that becomes too costly, there are several pre-conference discussion groups to join. An active participant in those groups often winds up with a large number of pre-event connections, just waiting to be consummated at the actual event.
Bring back a slew of best practices from your conference sessions. Present them to your colleagues, to your clients, to your bosses, to your board, to your industry associates.
Ask speakers directly for decks and reference materials. Don’t distract yourself by taking notes during the session. Do you take notes when you watch a movie? Sit back and absorb the session. Thoroughly absorb the session summary, speaker bio, and online discussion ahead of time. Read the deck and watch video of the presentation after the conference. But during the actual presentation, stay in the moment.
Lastly, schedule your work around the conference. Plan a daily ninety minute window to skip sessions and reply to email. Plan it based on the relationship of your office time zone to that of the conference event. Don’t miss conference time for non-urgent issues. Your desk will be there when you get home.
Start building your own agenda today for your next conference. I maintain it’s critical that you not delegate the value you get from a conference to the conference. Delegate to the delegate if you’ll pardon the double entendre.
I will see you on the road soon!