Keep Your Conference From Being a S**t Show! My Tips, even a NEW one.

I’ll be attending the HR Technology Conference and will be speaking at the Fall ERE Recruiting Conference over the next few weeks.  As a speaker for ERE I participated in a virtual QA for all attendees.  Of course many were interested in how to prep for this great conference.  I am here to serve YOU, so I’m happy to share a handful of the tip we all had. Some I’ve never thought of.

1. Download the conference app. If you don’t, you must love winging it.  Winging it can be exciting, and it can be a shit-show.  You’ve paid money > Time is money > don’t waist time.  If you don’t prep a little with the app, or during the conference refer to it often — you’ll end up sitting on a bench on the 2nd floor of the conference, behind a plant trying to figure out what to do next.  By the time your figure it out the session is over.  Tell that to your boss when she asks you what you learned.
2. Bring your phone charger. When your phone dies, it is like you’ve entered some world that is dark and scary.  And you can’t use your app (See bullet point one).
3. BEST NEW ONE >> Be sure you don’t accidentally give out someone else’s business card when you are networking.  This one made me laugh out loud.  If you are gathering lots of cards, separate them from YOUR cards.  This can happen a lot at recruiting conferences. Who knew?!
4. Have LinkedIn up on your phone at all times.  This is the best way to gather contact info from folks you’ve spoken to or heard drop some knowledge in a session.  This actually keeps you from even having to bring cards.
5. Determine the ONE pain point you are trying to solve in your organization.  Then be sure you come up with 2-4 solves for that pain point from the conference. To me the operative word is ONE, because you then have a fighting chance of implementing that ONE thing at the office.

And don’t wear heals (unless they are sexy aerosols, life stride, naturalizer, bjorns, sketchers….).  And when I say sexy, I mean not-sexy.  Didn’t you know not-sexy is the new sexy.

And bring a jacket.

And have a cocktail at the end of the evening.

And go see one thing in the city you are traveling to outside of the conference.  #getcultured ; #wonderlust is a great thing.

And have fun.

DB