What Makes a Good Conference? Part V: Presentations.
Organized presentations mean unexpected opportunities.
GSM:TABRITMIA
[Note: I will be citing the state, the theme of the conferences, and the month/year, but not the name of the conferences or the names of the host(s) or organization(s).]
Of all the conferences and training courses I attended, I felt the one from Texas was the least informative: Either most of the presenters’ material was old news to me, or something I recently had viewed online. When I left other conferences and training sessions at other venues, I felt I had information that was new and interesting to me and could be useful in the future. When I shared what I had from Texas to the private Discord where I’m a member, I asked one of the moderators whom I was recommended to talk to in case he had anything to add: He said, “The information confirmed what [he] already knew.” Don’t you want information you may not have heard? I suspect for the “new” material from the presenters I didn’t follow online, if I was viewing their videos, I might have heard their information without going to Texas in the first place! Honestly, I expected that situation at some level, and I mainly went there for networking.
(Yes, not everyone would have heard all the information before, but I have been listening to various people for several years, so it was a letdown for me to hear most of the presentations.)
Another major setback for this conference was one of the presenters went significantly over his allotted speaking time, so the host had to rearrange the schedule in order to punctually check out of the conference room. That may have been an error on the presenter for not keeping time or on the organizer for not informing the presenters to limit their presentations to their scheduled time slot. As someone who likes to be thorough with my presentations, I can understand how hard it is to cut material in order to stay punctual, but that blunder was compounding an already exhausting experience with little schmoozing for me since I like to listen to the presenters before networking. Personally, I don’t know if the host didn’t have a second breakout room for the attendees to speak to the presenters for their advice or to buy some of their merchandise due to scheduling or pricing issues, but having one could have organized networking during the breaks. It is good to have a separate room for presenters as a networking or business opportunity.
When I asked the host for some advice on investing at the evening cash bar social in the end of the conference, he recommended talking to one of the presenters and visit his YouTube page; however, I was too tired that evening to find and ask him. It would be too late to try to find him afterward as most people from the conference would be flying out of Texas the next morning, and by then, I couldn’t remember that presenter’s appearance. In contrast, an opportunity for me to invest came from a political event in January 2010 at Georgia because one vendor had a booth with a man I remembered his voice via an online podcast ad from a few days prior there. I picked up his card while he was away and started my investment a few days after that event. (I told him there a few hours after I picked up his card once he was at his booth.) When placing an order on the phone one day a few weeks later, the man told me he “realized I was serious" since I picked up his card even though he wasn’t at his booth that moment. Also, it helped me when the presenters stuck to their schedule that day.
Read the rest (nine parts total):
Part I: Backstory.
Part II: Planning and Announcements.
Part III: Venues.
Part IV: The Schedule.
Part VI: Got Food?
Part VII: Entertainment.
Part VIII: Aftermath.
Part IX: Summary.