How to Make Use of Conferences
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Nothing was happening here for more than a week as I was experiencing quite a painful mixture of scheduled business trips and flu. Now I’m using the weekend to reduce lag in my commitments and to repair health a bit before the next trip, which is planned on Monday.
One of events I attended recently was a multi-day conference organized by one of our main business partners. As you can expect being two days on the road and another couple sitting in the conference room you lose a direct link to information about what’s happening in your headquarters. Quick email checking during brakes and urgent phone calls are all you can get. You become less productive considering standard metrics.
However the last event was for me another proof you can easily exploit this kind of situations to get valuable results. Here’s why:
• New ideas. No matter how poor is the content, you can actually find at least a couple of new ideas when you look for them. If not directly from presenters than basing on your loose thoughts or on discussions with other attendants.
• Ad hoc discussions. Coming to the conference in a group (even a group of two) gives you a chance to discuss every out of the blue idea instantly. You will either find a supporter to your idea or an adversary who will force you to better reasoning.
• Time and atmosphere for serious discussions. During everyday work it’s always wrong time to switch off and talk about important things which unfortunately aren’t the most urgent ones usually. Being somewhere far away and time to spare during evenings (or while traveling) there’s actually good chance to have those important talks.
• Networking. That’s obvious but still usually undervalued one. Very often the most valuable outcome is brought not from planned presentations but from informal meetings with hosts and other attendees.
As far as you don’t go to the conference just to nap during presentations and drink a lot of beer in hotel bar during evenings it can be really valuable even when the set of presenters isn’t a very good one. It’s almost all in your hands.
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