Gary Sheynkman dot com

As promised, I am going to share some insights as to what it takes to kick some serious ass at a conference. I just returned from MIPTV in Cannes and, despite the awful weather, we had a terrific show.

This post is meant to be a timeline guide to avoid anxiety in planning a conference appearance for your company

8-9 Weeks out

Prepare your budget. Make sure you know exactly how much you want to spend on a show in total. This includes:

• The stand itself
• Per Diem for your team
• Space at the show
• Size of team
• Accommodations
• Team dinners
• Lead generation events
• Advertising and promotion
• Transportation

7-8 Weeks out

Book your space and register your team with the conference.

Determine what sort of printed materials and document you will need at the show. These include:

• Brochures
• Business cards for the entire team (we had our booth on ours)
• Product sheets
• Price lists for services
• Template proposals
• Printed in depth presentations for on site follow up meetings

5-7 Weeks out

Work with your booth builder and creative team to create the design for the booth.

Click Read More to read about the next 5 weeks!

4-5 Weeks out

Book your apartments. This is your best chance to get apartments that are walking distance to your venue for an attractive price.

3-5 Weeks out

Book your flights. This is important as you can use miles to book tickets as long as its more than 2 weeks out.

Order your printed materials and toys/giveaways

2-3 Weeks out

Create a shared calendar for your team and have everyone use a centralized calendar. We use a Google calendar that we all sync to our BlackBerries. This way people can book meetings for each other if they see an opportunity to have greater expertise present at a meeting.

Encourage people to use the conference attendee list or intranet to book meetings upfront.

2 Weeks out

Make sure all the printed materials and toys/giveaways are perfect. If people aren’t checking them on their flights, ship them.

Order Internet to your booth (if you must use a separate vendor)

Order a printer to your booth (if you must use a separate vendor)

1 week out

Make sure people are using the calendar.

Re-confirm your flights

Re-confirm your apartments. Make sure to know:

• exactly where they are in town
• how you will get in
• inform the landlord/rent company when you will pick up the keys

Weekend before

Arrive on location.

Check booth for:

• Internet
• Printer
• Working TVs
• Keys to all storage areas
• All electrical outlets

Pick up keys for rented apartments. Make sure they are good to go (clean, working internet, etc)

Have a very expensive dinner (red meat, wine, fancy desert)

Get some well deserved sleep

ROCK THE CONFERENCE!

FYI: I did all of this in exactly 1/2 the time. I did not sleep much two weeks before the conference (office couch got some usage 5am-8am).

Good luck. If you have any questions, suggestions, etc … leave a comment or drop me a line, I would love to hear from you.

P.S. Don’t forget to have some fun and enjoy the location where your conference is held