Many organizations don’t spend much time thinking about the benefits of conferences outside of marketing or direct sales opportunities. However, there is so much more to conferences for employees! Conferences offer:
- Learning opportunities. With experts across the field, a good conference is ripe with new content or new ways to look at industry challenges.
- Networking. Conferences provide ample opportunities to meet with other professionals in your field, whether it’s in poster sessions, lectures, or organized social events. You can find collaborators for current or upcoming projects, and even build your network for future career opportunities. (Maybe don’t use that last argument to convince your current supervisor that you should attend the event!)
- New business opportunities. Particularly for product managers, conferences can open a world of challenges that your company and product could solve.
There are several tricks to successful conference attendance to ensure you wring the most benefit out of being there.
First, you need to choose the best conference for your field. If you’re a JavaScript or Python developer, you may want to look at one of the regional or national conferences within these technical domains. Don’t overlook smaller UX or data science conferences; they may be closer and cheaper while still having high value content with the added benefit of more local connections.
If you are a product manager or executive, it can be a little more difficult to select the right conference. The websites of your company’s partners, key customers, and competitors are a great place to start. You can look at their event pages to see where they go to exhibit or speak. Also examine their Twitter feeds for notices of past events.
Once you’ve registered for your conference, you need to plan your time. Use the website or the conference app to select conference sessions that will challenge you. Remember that session speakers are generally aiming for a beginner to intermediate knowledge level unless otherwise stated, so don’t select sessions where you are already an expert unless you are highly interested in giving a talk on this topic yourself in the future and want to see how someone else approaches it.
Select sessions which are related to current and future projects and look for topics that will stretch your problem-solving strategies in new directions. Most conferences also include sessions on interviewing, hiring, and team diversity – these perspectives can really help you in future group interview settings or whenever you are asked to evaluate potential new team members; try to make time for at least one of these too.
As you identify sessions you want to attend, actually put them into some sort of calendar or planner. Some conferences have websites or apps that allow you to create your agenda. If not, you still need to sketch it out to ensure you are attending the sessions of highest interest while still allowing some down time. For example, if you are the sort of person that needs some quiet time before a networking event, make sure that you build that open time into your schedule. Some unscheduled time is also critical to manage regular work from the office and to allow for impromptu networking or business development conversations.
Now, you arrive at the conference and the real work begins! You need to ensure you get the most out of the sessions you attend. I like to sit in the back of the room, put my phone away, and look around to see who else is in attendance. I bring a small notebook and write each session title and the speaker’s contact information. I know this will all be online, but I’ve found it’s much easier to correlate my own notes with each speaker.
While the session content is important and interesting, the most ‘in-the-moment’ and important part of any session is the people who are attending, not the speaker (sorry to all speakers reading this – you really are important too!). Your fellow attendees had a lot of choices and like you, they chose this session. These are people who may be in search of solutions to the same technical and business challenges that you and your team have. You are in the back of the room so that you can observe them – and take particular note of fellow attendees who ask questions that are aligned with your interests or make you think that you should have asked yourself. If the questions from some of your fellow attendees are so on target that you think they should be working on your team, or you really want to follow up, catch them as they walk out the door to tell them that you liked their question and would like to exchange contact info. You can only do this if you are sitting in the back of the room, otherwise they will be lost in the rush for the door.
Finally, one of your most important tasks is to attend those networking events. Most of us are not ready to load our pocket with business cards and try to meet everybody at a conference cocktail hour; many people find networking to be overwhelming and default to chatting with a few people they already know. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap because these events do give you a simple way to build a network of professionals in your field. Keep in mind that networking events scheduled in the morning tend to be smaller and offer more opportunity for conversation with less shouting than evening events. Break your networking into three simple goals:
- Approach someone from an earlier session to discuss the content or how individual companies are using that technology today.
- Catch up with people who you noticed asking on-target questions in sessions.
- Introduce yourself to your company’s partners. Companies spend a lot of money to set up booths and promote events at these conferences so be sure to stop by and chat as part of your networking approach.
Remember to try also to offer your perspective and expertise to help them with solutions to their problems or help them on the path in their search for new opportunities in addition to accepting their help.
Attending conferences requires time away from family, time away from work, and significant travel costs. Use these tips and work to make sure that you are getting the most benefit possible for your company and for your own personal growth.
Writing and editing services provided by long-time collaborator, Kelly Garrett.
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