This article is provided to you compliments of Sue Schnorr, Associate for Contacts Count.
How To Get The Most Out of A Convention
By Anne Baber & Lynne Waymon
Use these 10 tips to make your networking at conventions a valuable professional and personal experience.
1. Get ready to GIVE. Make a list of things to share with the people you meet: new resources, your special expertise, solutions to problems, recent successes.
2. Figure out what you want to GET. Jot down what you want to find: answers to challenges, solutions to problems resources you need, and people you’d like to meet.
3. Take along other people’s agendas. Get more bang for your buck and build your relationships with colleagues. Collect their concerns and hunt for answers for them.
4. Pick sessions carefully. Focus on the knowledge you need and the skills you want to develop. Look for the right sessions that will force you to re-evaluate, plan for the future, expand your horizons. Don’t be afraid to skip a session if you are having a great conversation. You usually can buy a tape.
5. Put ideas to use. Get together with colleagues and have a “How ¬are-we-going-to-apply-this” brainstorming session after a keynote or seminar.
6. Think of a question or two to ask a speaker. Let the experts help you solve a problem or meet a challenge. Ask the speaker out for coffee or link up with a couple of other attendees and set up a breakfast or lunch.
7. Design your own session. Before the conference begins, contact a speaker, a leader, an expert, a counterpart from a similar organization and plan to get together. At the conference, ask interesting people you meet if they’d like to get together for dinner. Tell them to meet you at 6 p.m. in the lobby. Then go out to dinner with a dozen people.
8. Volunteer for a job at the conference. Helping out makes it easy to meet people, gain professional visibility, mingle with the leaders, and build a nationwide network. Choose your job carefully so that it helps you, not hides you in the back room.
9. Sit with strangers.
Take every opportunity to meet someone new. Tell yourself that there are no accidental meetings and try to figure out what you and the other person have in common. Agree with colleagues before the convention begins that you won’t sit together.
10. Look for excuses to introduce people to each other.
Find out what others are looking for and help them connect with resources and contacts. Become known as a great connector – - a great networker. Use all these tips and you’ll get the most out of meeting so many!
Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon own Contacts Count, a nationwide consulting and training firm that specializes in business and professional networking, and career development. They are co-authors of six books. The most recent is Make Your Contacts Count: Networking Know-How for Business and Career Success (2007, AMACOM). Fortune 500 companies license their training programs. www.ContactsCount
