There are ways to manage the industry conference that can make it interesting and rewarding for both presenters and delegates alike. Cannings Purple’s Investor Insight team explain.
We’ve all had to sit through what seems like a never ending PowerPoint presentation at an industry conference, with the speaker rambling on and on in over-the-top technical detail padding out their designated 20 minutes.
We have also all done the exhibition space meandering wander, moving around looking at what appears to be the same booth over and over again, trying to avoid eye contact so that you don’t get stuck for another 20 minutes.
There are, however, ways to manage the industry conference that can make it interesting and rewarding for both presenters and delegates alike.
Keep your presentation relevant to the audience – If you are presenting to a group of non-technical investors, keep it simple and lose most of the OTT technical terms. If it’s a mixed group, try to tone it down a bit. Avoid pages and pages of text and bullets – the audience can read it quicker than you can say it. On relevance, don’t just add slides to fill time – the audience will be appreciative if you cover the main points and then stop, even if a few minutes early.
Make your booth stand out from the pack – With some conferences having up to 150 exhibiting booths, many in the same industry sector, having the same booth layout as your competitors isn’t going to cut it. High quality oversized images that describe your product, project or culture are going to be more effective than an A4 map on the back wall.
Plan your day ahead of time – Conference organisers usually publish the details of the presenters and exhibitors on their websites well before the event. Take some time to research which talks you want to see and which booths to visit. If you have a clear strategy of what you want to get out of the conference, it will likely be more rewarding.
Follow up after the conference – If you want more information from a presenter or company, send them an email after the event with a request for follow up information and/or a meeting. It is often hard to get quality time at conferences to properly discuss concepts in any great detail, so a follow up is likely to get a better quality response.
For exhibitors and presenters, leaving with a collection of business cards is no good unless you actually use them to your advantage. Send them an email, connect on LinkedIn or follow on Twitter – just make sure that you don’t just add the cards to the pile.