What can a conference do for me?

In response to Julia’s McIntosh post “The pros and cons of conferences” Conferences are not only a way listening or even getting to know personally someone you have read about, but also are an incredible source of learning and networking.

This new era of mass and multimedia communication has brought a variety of ways to get trained, be up to date and get in touch with international communities no matter where you live. When I was young and visited the US for the first time, it was an accomplishment for me to visit Barnes and Nobles to be able to read the original Balanced Scorecard from Norton & Kaplan. Nowadays you don’t even need to leave home, just checking tweeter you can read daily messages from your preferred author. You can even listen to them online though free webcasts. Still, international conferences keep growing in attendance, what makes them so interesting?

I usually try to visit the same conferences every year, and try new ones as much as possible. Ted talks, entrepreneurship conferences, the International Team excellence award, Small business seminars, university conferences, you name it. Last year I travelled to the US to attend to the Deming Institute 2014 Fall Conference in Los Angeles and the experience was so enriching that kept me working for a long time (I am still working on ideas that started there!).

Webcasts, tweeter are Facebook are great, but never as motivator and inspiring as a face to face conference.

What can a conference do for me if I own an small business?

1. You get to know personally people you may have read or heard about. Once that has happened, you build a bond with the person that will last forever. They already know who you are, so they will be more open to read your emails, blog posts or at least keep in touch later on. And you will be even more a fan than before!
2. The environment help you focus on what you are up to, while watching at work with some many things going on you may be reading emails while watching the webcast.
3. Learning happens in a different way. You are far more motivated to learn when you are not alone, when you are surrounded with hundreds of other professionals and business owners like yourself.
4. Getting out of your day to day and grabbing new ideas help you see things in a different way while back at the company. Never underestimate the power of seeing with fresh eyes.
5. If you get to have breakfast or lunch at the conference, you will get to learn in informal conversations much more on the subject from many others that didn’t make it to be speakers, but still have a lot to share.
6. Networking is unlimited. I have met lots of people at conferences that have introduced me to new clients, co-workers, business, ideas that have covered by far my investment.
7. If you are not local you can use the conference as an excuse to visit companies or universities close-by and hold some interviews to meet even more people, like potential customers, or to do some benchmarking! 

The con of course is the big investment in time, money and planning if the conference is not local.