Tag Archives: Conferences

Conference Warrior Princess

Posted on May 2, 2010 | 2 Comments

‘Tis the season. For conferences.

Flowers are in bloom, winter feels like a distant memory, and suddenly my calendar looks like a bad game of Tetris (must add though that I really love Tetris).

I’m going for 3 in 3 consecutive weeks – having attended Cloud Computing Expo in New York at the Javits, Interop Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay, and last but not least – Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco at the Moscone. Phew. Just typing this list exhausts me.

Having attended many conferences in my life, here is a list of items I’ve come to realize are essential in making a conference successful / bearable / enjoyable for yourself:

  1. Breath Mints: better than gum, because no one likes talking to someone that looks like they are chewing a cud.
  2. Comfortable Shoes: no they are not the sexiest, but even your comfortable shoes will cause your dogs to bark if you’re on your feet for 16 hours.
  3. Hydrate: two parts hyrdogen, one part oxygen.
  4. Charge Your Devices at Night: there’s nothing worse than running out of juice when you need your phone / machine / pager to work for you
  5. Business Cards: lots of ‘em. You think you have enough? Throw in 50 more. Seriously.

Fun Fact: Xena was played by Lucy Lawless in the Xena TV series. I want my last name to be Lawless.

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Posted in cloud computing, Conferences, Social Web, Uncategorized

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Pitching Your Company Without Pitching Your Company

Posted on October 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

Whatever you call it – a Call for Participation, a Call for Speakers, a Call for Abstracts or a Call for Papers – it’s important for a company looking to gain mind-share to do it right.

One of the biggest questions I hear from tech companies trying to propose a speaker candidate is ‘What topic should we submit on?’

My answer is always the same. What are you up to? Why is it exciting? What can you contribute to the bigger conversation? A good way to approach this is to pretend that you are the industry talking to the industry. Instead of gloating that my company achieved ABC by doing XYZ, remove the company ‘we’pronoun and propose an idea from 1,000 foot view.

Man or woman behind podium armed with PowerPoint is zzzz.  Attendees are more interested in different formats. Fireside chats, interviews and customer / case studies are all more engaging than the podium man. If you empower the audience with a back channel of some sort, all the better. Conferences these days are a two way conversation and the folks in the audience are just as entitled to voicing their opinions as the featured speaker.

When in a session, one always checks to see who is speaking and which company they come from. Just having a representative of your company speak at an event provides instant thought leadership credentials.

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