When you invest the time and resources it takes to attend an industry conference, you want to come back with some meaningful lessons learned—the types of lessons that will benefit not just you as an individual contributor, but your colleagues and clients, too.
Some of this learning must be focused on your everyday role and how to be better at it (especially if you’re under pressure to justify your education budget). At the same time, missing the opportunity to explore new topics that interest you personally would be a mistake.
How do you optimize your conference agendas with this in mind? Keep reading for our top tips.
Put this advice to the test during Relativity Fest Chicago next month. We hope to see you there! Registration is open and the session catalog is live.
#1: Open a dialogue with your team before attending a conference.
Schedule some time with your manager to ask about their expectations for your conference planning. Do they want you focused on client meetings? Software lessons? Roadmap insights? Make sure you’re on the same page about the nuts-and-bolts necessities.
Then, explain the topics that interest you most. Garner your manager’s support by highlighting why you believe these lessons are relevant to the company’s strategy and future and, most importantly, your customers’ needs.
You can also reach out to other team members—including any direct reports, coworkers you frequently collaborate with on projects, or customer-facing colleagues—for their input. What insights could you bring back to help them? What kinds of questions are they frequently hearing? Do any of the sessions in the conference’s catalog address them?
As you’re having these conversations, try to proactively get a sense for how your coworkers would like to receive this information when you return from the conference. Would they like a presentation? Just a distributed deck, or live? Would a working session with guided discussion be more fruitful?
Having some idea of how to share these insights with your team after the fact will help you frame your live notetaking accordingly.
#2: Revisit recent performance reviews and other sources of feedback.
Go back and review feedback you’ve recently received from your manager, customers, or colleagues. What areas for improvement are listed there? How could your execution or support have been better? You can use these insights to inform which sessions you add to your agenda.
For example, if you frequently coach new employees on how to use a piece of in-house software, perhaps a session on crafting effective internal training programs would be useful. Even if your role in this process is technically informal, brushing up on those skills can help you have a greater impact on your team and get everyone up and running more quickly.
Alternatively, if you’ve recently encountered a lot of new data types that were difficult to integrate into your team’s more familiar data processing or review workflows, a session that focuses deeply on multimedia files might be beneficial.
Revisiting the goals and feedback you’ve received in recent months should shed some light on where you can improve and how you can ensure your conference agenda aligns to your professional goals.
#3: Browse industry publications and blogs for headlines that interest you.
You know how you might think, at random points throughout the year, how nice it would be to have this or that item—but you don’t want to spend the money on it right now, so you let it go and forget about it? And then, when someone asks you what you might want for your birthday or an upcoming holiday, you simply draw a blank and don’t know what to suggest? Sometimes our professional interests are hard to pin down under pressure, too. So make lists!
When you get an industry newsletter in your inbox on a random Tuesday morning, which headlines tend to draw your attention the most?
If you’re browsing a trade publication or even a competitor’s website, which topics do your find yourself pausing to explore?
As you scroll through your LinkedIn feed on Friday afternoons, which posts tend to earn your engagement?
Spend the few weeks ahead of your conference making note of these themes. They’ll help you tune into which topics interest you most as you finalize your agenda.
#4: Take note of conference speakers and follow those you admire most.
Go back to that LinkedIn feed for a minute and ask yourself a few questions while you browse through the posts:
- Are there any professional experts you find yourself repeatedly impressed by?
- Who among those you follow is in a role you aspire to?
- What standout names keep coming up in colleagues’ or competitors’ posts?
Write down a list of these folks, and then bring them to your conference’s session catalog. If it’s a big event, odds are good a couple of those names might also show up as speakers. See if you can fit their sessions into your agenda so that you can learn from these shining stars, and maybe even connect with them in person.
Similarly, browse the speakers list to see if there are any familiar names. Attending a session by a former colleague, a key customer, or a partner is a great way to build relationships, cheer on your network, and learn what matters to those close to you.
#5: Look at the role description for your dream job.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
It’s not just a question a recruiter or hiring manager will ask you during an interview. It’s a question you should ask yourself, semi-regularly, as you reflect on your career development and how you’d like to grow moving forward.
Whether you’re hoping to climb the ranks internally or plan to make an organizational or even industry move at some point in the future, formal job descriptions for your ideal future role can be a goldmine for goal-setting. Browse internal postings and other jobs sites to read them and make a list of any gaps you have in your experience or skill set. Then, compare those notes to the session catalog and add a few to your agenda accordingly.
Sam Bock is a member of the marketing team at Relativity, and serves as editor of The Relativity Blog.
