Business offline events stopped due to the pandemic are gradually returning (we hope it will be final). Many entrepreneurs consider participation in them as an opportunity for networking and meeting potential partners and clients. But these and other results do not come by themselves, they also require certain efforts from the business owner.
Make friends
Participating in a general business or niche conference is quite simple. You need to buy a ticket and find the strength to drive on the designated day to the venue. You can also be glad that, unlike the organizers, you are spared from solving complex organizational issues. People come to conferences for different purposes. If you want to make new acquaintances, you need not be a “beech”. Chat, get to know each other, exchange business cards or contacts with neighbors, change places after a break if possible, and get to know your neighbors again.
Prepare a short self-presentation – for a minute, to quickly introduce yourself and be remembered by your counterpart. Please tell us who you are, what you do, where you work, and why you are here. Chat with other participants during your coffee break. This is a great time and place where you can discuss the theses heard and get to know each other.
Get insights
Some entrepreneurs and their team members go to conferences to get new information. To do this, you need to turn off your “internal skeptic” or at least calm it down a bit. Often when speaking, it seems: “Oh, these are all banal things. It’s obvious, it’s been known for a long time, well, what’s there to tell from the stage? Sometimes that’s how it is. But sometimes such reasoning is just a defensive reaction of our brain.
He does not want to waste energy and instead of thinking about new theses and ideas, he clings to something familiar and calms us down. He says: “Yes, this is all banal, we already know this, we have already heard and tried it. You don’t have to start thinking. Relax, nothing interesting is happening, better scroll through Instagram. But not when a CMO conference is happening.
Fill up the “bank of ideas”
It is normal and even excellent when ideas and solutions come up during a speech that is completely unrelated to the topic of the speech. I don’t know why this happens – you hear about hiring programmers, and suddenly the thought comes up about what kind of report is missing in project management. This happens to me often. I write down my thoughts and ideas during conferences.
I fix on separate pages or in a different color all the ideas, tasks to be completed, articles, and books mentioned by the speakers. You can do it electronically. And after the end of the conference, I go through everything that I wrote down in order to formulate work tasks and assignments. I put them in my plan for tomorrow, next week, or next month. Something I can put aside in the “collector of ideas.”
Additional PR and rest
If you are a manager or owner of a company, then consider participating in the conference as an additional PR for yourself and your project. More people will learn about your company and what you do. If you can be interesting to strangers, perhaps one of them will become your client, partner, supplier, or bring you a client in the future.
Also, participation in the conference is a good way to “emerge” from the RAM. Disconnecting from the constant stream of notifications, emails, and calls is always helpful. At a minimum, you will see which areas in the company do not work without you. As a maximum, you will rest (yes, you will rest at the conference, because rest is a switch to another activity), and you will return to work fresh.
