Smart Conference Attendee Experience - Tips
Here are some tips to help you maximize the return on investment from your conference attendance:
1. Early booking - It is best to stay at the Conference location for “after-hours” networking.
2. Conference Objective – What challenge are your trying to solve by going to this event? Communicating what you seek and set an objective before heading out.
3. Pre-schedule – Review and research the vendors in advance for possible solutions. And schedule meetings with key exhibitors in advance to get more attention.
4. Learning Sessions – Plan the session schedule beforehand and highlight the sessions most relevant to the problem you are trying to solve.
5. Innovation - Seek for emerging solutions and inspiring new ideas to consider in addition to your problem solving.
6. Meet People – Spent time for genuine, in-depth conversations with peer attendees and jot down notes on business cards.
7. Social Media – You can use Twitter to follow up the sessions, tweet about the session highlights to your followers.
8. Self-Pace – Get some good sleep, eat right to keep energy up and take time to step outside and breathe between sessions.
10. Follow-up– Take the time to drop your thank you email to new contacts. Doing so helps your next show be even more productive plus builds your personal reference library of industry experts.
11. Action Plan - Review your findings and formulate a plan to further investigate and evaluate solutions. Share your knowledge and resultant action plan with co-workers who didn’t attend the show.
