We are well into “conference season” when us avid learners hit the streets and land in a semi-comfortable chair in a meeting room or ballroom to do what we love to do most when attending an event: stare at our phones. It’s so tempting, right? You have the choice of listening to a panel of speakers share ideas on the very topic that you signed up to hear about; at the same time, there are screens to be tended to, be it your laptop, iPhone, iPad or, if you’re lucky, your Google Glass.
Being at a professional conference gives us an incredible opportunity to:
- Meet new people
- Hear amazing speakers
- Hear mediocre speakers, thereby inspiring us to hit the speaker circuit
- Develop new ideas
- Crystallize strategy
- Forge partnerships
- Learn about new technologies
- Un-learn bad habits
- Create a notebook full of smart tactics to take back to the office and implement
Likewise, attending a day-long business conference also allows us to:
- Catch up with old friends on Facebook
- Create a new Pinterest board with summer vacation ideas
- Email your child’s teacher about a homework assignment
- Scroll through Instagram and like a lot of photos
- Take a BuzzFeed quiz
- Check out eHarmony (for the singles set)
- Catch up on news via Twitter and search for retweetable items
- Complete an overdue work project -- finally, you have time!
- Daydream
Surely, we can take advantage of both opportunities: there’s no law preventing you from liking your sister-in-law’s latest status update AND listening to panel of speakers share presentations prepared over weekends and late nights (we presume). There’s nothing unethical about taking that BuzzFeed quiz about which Game of Throne character you are (I got Arya Stark) while writing down the 7 Barcelona Principles. Nothing wrong with that at all. Except do you now understand what the Barcelona Principles are just because you sat in a room in which it was discussed? My point is that there’s a time to Buzzfeed and there’s a time to feed your mind with new ideas that will make you smarter, better than your competitors and a valuable contributor to your team.
Next time you’re at a conference, try to be “all in” – which doesn’t mean 100% listening and engaging. That’s impossible, IMHO. If you could just shed half of the bad habits that you personally engage in at conferences, you’ll be way ahead of your peers. Maybe I’ll see you at our April 8 PR News Measurement Conference and we can share our progress on this front. I will spot you right away – you’ll be the one taking notes, asking questions, nodding affirmatively at the speakers and setting goals (which, by the way, is one of the 7 guiding principles of PR).
-- Diane Schwartz