How to Get Value Out of Any Conference Part 2

There is no part one to this post. Rather, this is a follow up to a post written by David Horne on the Social Fresh blog, published just before the Social Fresh event in Charlotte last week. David’s tips for getting the most out of this or any other conference were:

1. Set a Goal
2. Network Like It’s Your Job
3. Come Early and Stay Late
4. Take Notes
5. Exercise Long-Term Thinking

Some of my tips will be expanding on David’s based on my experience at Social Fresh in Charlotte last week, and others will be tips that I learned on my own.

Laptop

Bring a laptop if you can. I would have been lost last Monday without mine. Taking notes by hand is way too slow to keep up, and you can’t publish them until you have access to a computer. (More on that later.) Bringing your laptop can also aid in the networking process. (More on this later also.)

Advice for bringing your laptop: Make sure you bring the charger and try to sit near a plug during the sessions. Charging while taking notes was a great time saver for me, and I wasn’t constantly worrying about how much battery I had left.

Live Blog

Live blogging got me a lot of exposure at Social Fresh, along with exposure for the event. The technical form of live blogging is some application you can embed in your post so that others can watch it appear as you type. This is not what I did. My version of live blogging (imparted to me by David B. Thomas) is taking organized notes during the sessions. As soon as the session is over, cleaning it up into a blog post and publishing it. Then tweeting the link. While everybody else is tweeting quotes, you’ve got a post documenting the whole session ready to go. A lot of times the speaker or event will retweet you. It even helped me network with people who attended—and even those who missed—the event. I was retweeted and linked to for days.

Networking

David Horne discusses networking in his post. Explaining how to network: focus on the other person, remember names and listen, be friendly. I’m not very good at networking. I’m working on it. I met a great lady named Mary Catherine at the Social Fresh pre-party who took me under her wing and taught me a little bit about in-person networking. A couple of her rules:

1. Be the friendly one. Just walk up and say hi.
2. If it’s a group of just two, they may be having a private conversation. It’s better to stick with approaching groups of three or more.

Another thing I learned about networking is contact the people you met as soon as possible after meeting them. I took all the business cards and Twitter handles I had gotten at the pre-party and reached out to them with a quick tweet or email the next morning (although Mary Catherine did it when she got home from the party). The faster you connect, the easier it is for people to remember you. When connecting with people, I like to add a comment about what we had discussed or about something I saw on their website. It shows them that I was paying attention and that I’m genuinely interested.

Video

One of the fun things I did at the event was filming video interviews. I shot three of these interviews. They were short and required no editing so that I could post and tweet them quickly. I brought my video camera and a four-foot tripod, and asked three of the presenters for their main message for the conference. This was a great way to share the experience of the conference with those who could not attend, add some variety to my recap notes, and meet some great social media professionals. I’m still in contact with all three.

I was recently given some advice on attending conferences during a job search. “Attend as many as you can afford.” That was followed with an amendment to seek out the events that have the most opportunity for networking. That’s where the real magic happens. So take these tips, and get going!

Are there any important tips I’ve left out? How do you get the most out of a conference?

Photo by jasonkeath