Going to a Conference? A Lesson in Preparedness

Posted on September 23, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

It was my first time to BlogWorld Expo. I didn’t fully know what to expect, but as an entrepreneur I don’t have time or the money to attend a conference for the sake of “just checking it out”. I have to maximize everything I do. I didn’t necessarily do that at this conference, but I did learn how to better prepare for the next conferences I attend.

Set Your Objectives Before Arriving

Make a list of your top three objectives for attending the conference. Once you’ve set your objectives engage in making a plan to meet each of those objectives. You’ll want to allow some room for flexibility but you should hit the ground ready to meet your objectives.

I failed to do that for BlogWorld Expo. Looking back on BlogWorld Expo these are the three objectives I should have set for myself:

1. Meet Five New CEOs I Don’t Know

As the CEO of a startup – some of the best people for me to network with are other CEOs of startups. They are wonderful people to share knowledge and resources with, learn from, and cooperate with.

What I should have done was take a very close look at the list of exhibitors and figure out who the CEOs were for each of the companies. Then, I should have looked into their background, read their bios and prepared a list of questions and information on each CEO I wanted to meet.

I ran into Daniel Ha the founder and CEO of Disqus but I didn’t maximize my conversation with him. It would have been good to ask Daniel more about what his journey has been like in the last year since launching Disqus. Micah introduced me to the CEO, Todd Vernon of Lijit and again, I wasn’t prepared to make a good impression to start building some rapport.

2. Been Clear on What I Wanted to Learn

This is a no brainer. I really should have taken a closer look at the schedule of sessions before arriving to the conference and done some homework on who the presenters were that I didn’t know and been clear on what I wanted from each session.

I ended up attending too many sessions and not learning much. Had I done my homework a little better; I would have successfully leveraged my time in and out of the sessions.

Going the Extra Mile: If you are very session focused, you could start your blog posts before attending…getting the background on the presenters (or panels), the topics and then wrap up your blog post during or immediately after a session to include all the live twittering from the session.

3. Additional Contacts with Key Attendees

I was in a hurry to get to the bathroom after one of the sessions and coming out of the bathroom on his cellular phone was Guy Kawasaki. I knew he been a speaker on Friday but I hadn’t realized he would be there on Saturday. As soon as I saw him I said “Guy” and shook his hand. That’s it. I said his name, shook his hand and went on my way.

A few steps later I was thinking DOH! Ann, you didn’t even introduce yourself. When I came out of the bathroom I caught up with Geoff who introduced me to Brian Solis. They were both there for the book signing of Now is Gone. I shook Brian’s hand but again, I didn’t make my mark. I might have redeemed myself a little with Brian. I managed to get him to follow me back on Twitter so we’ll see (he has over 6,000 followers and follows only about 400 back). I do plan on building much better rapport with him over time.

An hour later, I was sitting outside when Adam Hirsch and Sharon Feder from Mashable came out and sat with me. We were chatting when Scoble came out. We all went to say hello. Again, I missed the opportunity to leave a good lasting impression. Two other people who were there were ready with a Flip to get Scoble on camera. I had my Flip in my purse but didn’t know what I would have wanted to ask him – on hindsight, I should have just recorded what the other two were recording. Obviously, my mind and ability to react were out for the day.

This all happened on Saturday. I didn’t have my A-game on Saturday because again, I hadn’t prepped myself. On Sunday, I arrived with my A-game and that made a huge difference but I wasn’t able to recoup my missed opportunities from the day before.

I should have prepared myself to meet the key attendees I didn’t already know. Once more, this would have involved knowing what I wanted to say to them and what type of conversation I wanted to engage them in.

Live and Learn

Piss poor planning equals piss poor execution. Yes, I’m an extremely busy person but having taken the time to plan and prepare myself would have resulted in having a higher yield on the investment of my time and money.

Hopefully my experience will help you so that you don’t have to pay the same price for the lesson.

Comments

Leave a Reply