As a conferenceholic, I cant miss any opportunity to network and attend any event I can – from the local meetups and toastmaster’s conferences to expos and senior executive conferences.
I have caught myself ‘overdosing’ a few times on conferences. “Overdosing” is when you attend event after event without even having the proper time to follow up with contacts you met, which makes the time you spend wasted…
Another discovery I have is that in some cases you waste more money (time=money) attending a free event than a paid event.
Lessons learned:
Before booking for a conference, meetup or seminar:
A. Calculate the ROI for each event and make future decisions based on your experience.
B. Try to commit to no more than 2 serious events per month (I do not count a small half of day or after work networking events)
What are the valuables to keep in mind when calculating the ROI:
A) How many new contacts you have made – potential customers, friends and colleagues of future customers, future partners, future employers / employee – and the value they can bring to you or your company (has to be greater than the invested time cost and fee for the event)
B) Did you get inspired? Inspiration is good for a day or two but it
goes away fast and if it is not resolved with an action, which lead to process improvements, cutting costs or additional revenue generation, then its not worth it
C) Content: have you learned something new, which you can implement in your work / company / strategies?
D) Understanding the different players in business, for example: for a vendor – understanding the pain of the customers, for a customer – feedback from others about different solutions and offers – you cant put a number or value on it but it can resolve in bigger sales and it can be a good excuse to attend the event with your targeted customers (you need to do research on that, as there are not many conference organisation releasing a list of delegates before the event).
My tip for conference goers: before booking for an event, spend a little time on research to maximise the ROI from it. Be selective and go for best. Free is not always best!