Running a good conference

sheynk — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:10:19 +0000

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

Cannes, outside the Palais de Festival

Making calendaring on mobile devices more useful

sheynk — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:00:07 +0000

Hello, its 2009. Why is technology still so passive?

To date, I am a huge fan of the paper PDA (I’ll touch on why in another post) for my to dos and notes. Meetings, however, are kept on mobile devices. Google Calendar, BlackBerry, and Outlook meeting invites rule the day.

If you are not a couch potato and not a cubicle dweller, you meet people. You take a meeting here.. .a meeting there. You might be meeting someone for lunch. If you are active and up and about you are ruled by your mobile device calendaring.

Here is an idea. RIM, Apple, Palm, Microsoft, Nokia… Listen up!! I am giving away a free idea so that your customers love your devices more.

If I have a meeting in 30 minutes, my Blackberry tells me “Hey you have a meeting in 30 minutes”. That’s it! What a waste!

How about a single click option to send a “I’m running 20 minutes late” email to everyone on the meeting invite… and automatically send a text message to them as well if they are in your phone book. This saves valuable rush hour/vital phone call minutes on actually getting there on time and finishing the conversation without having to send an email or make extra apologetic phone calls. Shit happens. People run late. Everyone understands… now how about a mobile device that eases the process?

You are welcome.

Gary Sheynkman dot com » productivity

Running a good conference

Making calendaring on mobile devices more useful