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The Ultimate Pre-Conference Checklist

by

by
Rosemary O’Neill

SOBCon NW Here I Come!

As you read this, I should be happily rubbing elbows with Liz, Terry, and tons of other smart enthusiastic entrepreneurs and small business owners at SOBCon NW in Portland.

The trip inspired me to share my personal pre-conference to do list.

I hope it helps make your next conference experience more productive!

  • Try to connect with other attendees in advance (Twitter is my weapon of choice).
  • Start following the conference hashtag (if you’re really hardcore, make a Hootsuite column for the conference stream).
  • Charge all devices and pack chargers, cords, Mophie juicepack, and a power strip.
  • Download a movie or two to the iPad.
  • Re-look at and update all social profiles, since they’ll hopefully be getting looked at a lot. You want to make a good first impression.
  • Back up your laptop and phone, in case either gets misplaced or stolen. You should already have your important stuff stored in the “cloud” on DropBox or elsewhere.
  • Try to arrange specific meetups in advance (sometimes in the heat of the action you can lose out on meeting specific people).
  • Consider whether you want to capture some content for your blog (be ready to shoot impromptu interview videos or live-blog a session).
  • Include flat shoes that can be tossed in a briefcase (I saw you do that, Gini Dietrich!).
  • Always bring a couple of powerbars (good if you get stuck in an airplane, or if the conference food is bad, or if you skip lunch to meet with someone).
  • If there’s an attendee list (check the event site, or Lanyrd.com) scan for new people you can meet.
  • Decide what your ‘ask’ is, in case anyone says, ‘so what can I help you with?’ (I learned this one painfully ).
  • Brush up your two-sentence pitch for when someone says, ‘what do you do?’
  • Scan the session information and think in advance of what smart questions you might ask if the speaker does Q&A at the end.

Note that this is the ‘attendee’ version of the list. Mitch Joel posted the definitive ‘speaker’ version of this list a few months ago.

What do you do to make the most of your conference attendance?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss