Conference participation is an excellent way to immerse yourself in an industry, gain exposure for your firm, and build relationships with clients and colleagues. Engaging in conferences is also a significant investment of time and resources; having a thoughtful plan to maximize your return on investment is key. Whether you are new to navigating conferences or been on the circuit for years, this episode has tips and refreshers for everyone.
In the premier episode of Season 3 of The Shortlist, Principals Wendy Simmons and Melissa Richey are joined by Associate Principal Allison Tivnon to provide advice on planning your conference participation strategy. From which types of conferences to attend, to getting approval, addressing return on investment, and bringing back your learnings, the Middle of Six leadership team offers advice to set you up for success.
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Podcast Transcript
Welcome to Season 3 of The Shortlist.
We are exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.
Today, we're talking with Melissa Ritchie and Alison Tivnon to discuss all things conferences and how to get the most out of your time.
Hey, Melissa, hey, Alison.
Hello.
Hey, you too.
Good to see you.
Thank you for being back on the podcast.
It's a new year, a new season.
Yay.
I think a lot of good things are going to weave in to Season 3.
So thanks, everyone, for being back and Melissa and Alison for being here to kick us off with talk about conferences.
It's definitely timely.
Yes, I know, right?
I think that this will be a well-listened to episode.
But before we get started in the whole conference theme, because it is the new year and because it's a new season of The Shortlist, we wanted to start with something new.
And that is just a quick question for the guests who are joining us.
I think our listeners have met Alison and Melissa in many, many past episodes.
So you're probably familiar with their roles, you know, big leadership roles at Middle of Six and doing training and leading our teams and just, you know, great people.
So I'm curious from your perspective, how are you finding balance in the new year, in this new season, you know, kicking off the new year?
I don't know.
Just share with me what is setting you off on the right foot.
Melissa, you want to go first?
Don't everyone go first?
Well, I think for me, one of the main things I do to maintain balance is making sure that I'm working out regularly.
That is a big physical and mental health.
And then there's community at the place where I work out.
So that's something I'm always doing and definitely try and focus on that in the new year as well.
Yeah, I'm not as good as working out as you are.
But I do try and make our home as welcoming and peaceful as possible this time of year.
So, you know, candles lit, tidied up, but like blankets thrown here and there, just to snuggle up, things like that.
I also get a calendar, like a wall calendar, like rule in old school, and start looking up all the different events and exciting things that are going to happen in 2024 and start writing them down and thinking about this stuff in advance, because it just gets me excited about the year to come.
And I'm a planner by nature, so it gives me something else to plan.
I think a wall calendar is awesome, and I hope that never goes away.
I always look for the $3 one at Target.
That's what my go-to wall calendar is.
But I am with you, Alison.
For me, finding balance, especially after busy holiday season, is just trying to, you know, I think my schedule becomes less booked with social events, but then there's an opportunity to fill that with more personal things.
Like, well, how do I want to use that time?
Is there a little time to like go out for a walk at lunch or get a little exercise or outdoor activity because it's just not go, go, go from the holiday season?
Although I'm going to eat my own words because January starts and sometimes it is just insanity.
So probably a great time to build in the balance, to find, you know, if you were doing a lot of social events or a lot of year-end planning, how would you use that time instead and carve out a little bit of time for yourself?
So anyways, that's what we're doing.
And we're going to start most of our episodes, maybe all of our episodes with a little question for our team.
So you can kind of hear what we all do individually, because I think it's interesting to learn from each other.
And if you have thoughts or ideas about what you're doing, we'd love to hear that too.
And we could always weave that into a future episode.
So let's get to the topic at hand here, which is conferences.
It is we're going into conference season, and there's a lot to think about.
So I'm curious, Melissa, would you be willing to kind of tee up why this topic is of interest?
Yeah, I think there's really quite a few reasons why conferences are important, why we thought this topic would be of interest to our listeners.
One of them is the fact that conferences are a big investment.
You've got the time away from the office, the time planning for it, the registration costs.
If it's not local, travel, flights, hotel, all of those things, the per diem, you know, the meals that aren't covered by the conference.
So it's a big investment.
So whether that means you've got to make the case for that cost to your leadership team to get approval or if you just need to budget for it, I think it makes sense to spend a little time thinking through this and how you're going to get the best bang for your buck for that investment.
I think another reason that conferences aren't so important is it's a relationship building aspect.
I have found that kind of that shared experience of being at the conference together, you know, a concentrated time for a few days, you're learning together, you're going and doing social aspects, maybe you're doing some independent social aspects with people you wanted to connect with.
So that's a really important aspect of the conference time is building those relationships with your peers and clients and colleagues.
And then one of the other important things about conferences is it's a place where you can demonstrate thought leadership.
So you can get a role speaking at a conference, you can help get a role for someone in your firm to speak.
So it's a place where you can kind of show the industry, clients, teaming partners, what you know and how you can bring value to them and their teams.
So you could come at it from many different angles.
You know, it's fulfilling or enriching to yourself personally, professionally with the relationships and the learning aspect of it, but then also making connections for your company and potentially presenting or sharing information or positioning your firm or their leadership as thought leaders in that area.
So there's lots of reasons to go to conferences.
Something that we were going to try in Season 3, everyone's going to be the guinea pig and tell us how you like it or not.
But we're going to do a little bit of a question, and I feel like this is a good time or a trivia question, a good time to interject it before we get into the meat of our topic.
And the question I came up with, which was a little bit on the lame side once I started researching it, but I'll put it out there anyways, because I think it'll be an interesting discussion at the end.
How many Americans go to a conference, attend a conference every year?
And we will actually answer this at the end of the episode, but I don't know, what do you think?
What do you think?
How many people are going to conferences?
Oh, good Lord.
There's like 165 million people in America.
I might be really wrong on that.
So, say 25% of that.
I'm going to say around 30 million.
I have no idea if that was 25% of that.
It's like 12.5% or something, but...
I'm just throwing numbers out.
I like your thought process through there, for sure.
I'm just going to say, there is no wrong answer.
There's no right answer.
This question cannot be answered, but we will get into that more, and then talk about why that kind of factors into this conversation.
So, all right, put a pin in that, go back to the topics, thinking about you want to go to a conference yourself.
You want to attend a conference.
What does that entail?
How do you lay the groundwork to get approval, get permission, select the conference?
I don't know, all of those elements.
And I think that we're all just speaking from our own personal experience of Googling different conferences, or hearing recommendations from friends or people in the industry, and getting this idea that, yeah, I would like to attend that.
So with that as a starting point, Allison, Melissa, do you want to share anything about selecting which conference to go to and how to do it?
I have some thoughts on this.
And first of all, it's over 330 million.
Oh, I just Googled it.
Maybe it was 165 million the year it was born, but I was really way off.
I think when it comes to selecting the conferences you're going to attend, especially since it's mainly going to be marketers, business developers that are listening to this podcast, is are you selecting conferences to attend for yourself or for your technical staff?
So doing that round up of the organizations and affiliations that your firm is connected with, both from a technical standpoint and also from a peer business development standpoint, like say, SMPS, is understanding, one, should your firm go to it, two, who from your firm should go to it, and three, how can you get the most out of the investment you're going to make?
Because like you said earlier, it is not cheap.
So I'd say for the marketing staff, we have a small select number of organizations within our industry.
Obviously, for me, SMPS is at the top of that list that we can go and we can attend conferences to learn about the state of the practice in terms of marketing and business development in the AEC industry.
So that kind of helps us window down the list of the conferences you want to go to.
But when it comes to the technical side, it really depends on what your firm does.
Are you an architecture firm or an engineering firm or a construction firm?
What are the right spaces to be in to get the cutting edge, best practices information from the sessions and hopefully get the best cross-section of potential teaming partners and even clients that might be milling around the room?
Maybe your future employees are going to be in that room with you.
So I think there's a lot of those little idiosyncrasies that happen at conferences that need to be taken into account.
In addition to this idea of exposure, which I think when we're selling it to our firms, it's getting your firm into the room.
So yeah, those are just some thoughts.
What I heard from you was that probably understanding what is your goal is a great place to start.
That's how we want to start with everything, right?
Are you trying to further your own education?
Maybe there's multiple levels of goals.
Are you really focused on what your firm is doing in the industry and how to learn more specifically about civil engineering side of something?
Is it an architecture design conference?
Whatever it might be.
Is it more firm related or is it personal professional where you are making connections with teaming partners and you're learning best practices on how to XYZ for proposal development or whatever it might be?
And for the purposes of this conversation, maybe it'll make things simplified if we sit in the seat of the marketer who might be listening to this.
I know we have other types of listeners, but the marketing person who's looking at their budget, looking at their resources and thinking, what do I need and what would be the most benefit for the company?
So we could go from there.
Set a goal, figure out why you want to do it, and then where do we go from there?
Make yourself a big year long calendar and start mapping them all out.
I'm already doing that.
That's an Allison tip, right?
Roll up a calendar that goes across the whole room and flag all the conferences and the birthdays and the whatevers.
All right.
And then what do you see?
Which ones are in conflict?
You start prioritizing.
What's a reasonable amount of conferences to attend in a year or in a two-year period?
It's all about scale.
So, if your firm is a regional firm that has one or two offices, you know where your audience is.
If you're, you know, you've got a few different parts of the United States that you operate in, again, those where your centers of gravity are.
If you're a national firm, it starts to get trickier because now you've got to make some pretty key decisions on where you're going to be and when do you go every year?
Do you go every other year?
What's the pace and the cadence of the attendance and how does that align with your overall budget?
Because that's another thing that's really important is we're starting to attend the buffet of conferences that are available to us, not letting our eyes be bigger than our stomachs.
Well, Alison, when you said if you're a national firm, this is something I remember hearing about when we were in a down period years back, but there was less work to be had.
So companies with multiple offices start kind of going to the same conferences.
So making sure you're coordinated to is a great reason to plan ahead.
So you don't have multiple people trying to get speaking engagements on the same topic from different offices at a single conference.
So there's another case for if you're a bigger firm to make sure everyone's on the same page with what the plan is.
Divide and conquer.
Yeah, really good point.
And I have seen that where there's been like an East Coast contingent of a firm and their Midwest district showing up and they don't even know each other.
They get in the room like, Oh, it's nice to meet you.
And it's the same company.
So you're right.
The bigger you are, the less cohesive the internal communication and planning can be.
What about convincing leadership?
How much convincing have you had to do?
And do you have any tips for the best way to make a case and get it approved?
Well, I think that this can be the most intimidating thing for a marketer, especially for themselves, if they want to attend a conference, is trying to show what that quote unquote return on investment is gonna be.
I feel sorry for folks that have to sit there and feel like they have to defend their own continued education, but I've been there.
And being in that room to say, okay, the conference itself is gonna cost X hundred dollars, and it's gonna require me to travel, and I'm gonna have to get a hotel room.
And it would be great if I didn't have to work on proposals or other deadlines while I'm attending.
It can feel like you're asking for the impossible.
And I think that's the mark of a really good company, is if they, yeah, maybe it's not like every single conference you want to attend, they're gonna say yes to, but it's not gonna be such a hard sell if you demonstrate that you're gonna be committed and focused and using time in advance to plan who you're gonna reach out to, what sessions you're gonna go to, how you're gonna bring that information back.
I think those are the key drivers for marketing staff.
For technical staff, I think it's how many people are we gonna send to this conference?
And what role is each of them gonna play?
Do we have any thought leaders that have something to say that are hankering to get a session?
How can we help them get it?
How can we help them nail it?
And who else needs to go?
Because I do think that there's probably a lot of people raising their hands or that want to on the technical side that would love to attend conferences, but maybe they feel like it's not their turn or they're not going to add enough value to it.
And sometimes that's a really good opportunity for your emerging professionals to go and start building their networks and things like that.
So even that needs to get factored in.
It's not about just getting people out there to speak and to really, really market your firm, but also for your emerging professionals on how to learn to be comfortable within this ecosystem of people just milling around, learning about each other, and not just chasing the next proposal and the actual project work itself.
In my experience, I think that conference, who goes to a conference has been a little bit of like the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
And that sounds sort of unfortunate that that's the way it works, but in reality, everyone is so busy doing their own job that often you have to advocate for yourself or advocate for other team members so that something can happen, because if it's not part of daily operations, it may not be on the radar of your supervisor or people who are empowered with making that decision to say, yeah, we can dedicate those resources.
So one way you could preempt that is asking if there's a conference budget in or a line item in the budget for the annual budget and you start thinking about that earlier in the year and potentially bring it up in check-ins, one-on-one check-ins or if you have quarterly check-ins or anytime when you're just talking about performance and goals so that people around you realize it's something that you are planning for.
It's not ad hoc.
It's not just because it's the conferences in Hawaii this year that that's why you want to go, anything like that.
But I would say unless it's written somewhere in your firm that we don't participate, there's a certain factor that allows someone to go and participate in a conference, then I would say start talking about it early and then planning for it and doing the research and continuing to plant those seeds as you get closer to it.
I've also heard of people who were looking for new jobs and putting, attending the SNPS National Conference or the regional conferences right into their compensation package when they're negotiating for a new position.
So that's another way you might come out it if you're looking to change jobs in the new year.
So smart.
Yeah.
And just even asking in that interview process, like what does education, continuing education look like?
What can I be involved in?
What can I do?
Sometimes it's a conference and not everyone wants to go to a conference.
We have to remember, many people will be raising their hands, but some people, I don't want to travel, I don't want to be away from home.
It's stressful, whatever.
But those are great conversations to have even in that hiring process.
And I wouldn't think as someone who does a lot of interviews that that would be a negative.
I would think, wow, okay, this is what you're interested in, and let's talk about it.
Let's see what's a good plan and what works for the whole group.
I think it's worth mentioning that some conferences, the SNPS conferences, have scholarships and others you can look into.
So that can be one way of if you're weaving it into the budget or just, I mean, obviously, you could not plan on that, but you could try for it.
And that would be a really good faith effort to go for it and go through that process of what are you going to take away from it?
Why do you want to go?
You know, write it up for that scholarship application, but then also it really works well for your leadership.
So keep that in mind if that's going to be an inroad for you.
So say you get approved.
They're like, great.
You know, we would love for you to attend this conference.
Maybe you have enough notice that this is a year out, right?
Because you're planning in advance.
Any tips for kind of thinking about what you want to attend, what you want to take away, who you want to meet with, how do you kind of navigate the conference materials themselves so that you can get the most out of it?
This is a really timely conversation, not just because the conferences are right around the corner in late winter, early spring, but also because people are drafting up their strategic plans or dusting off their two to three to five year strategic plan and making sure that is still jiving with what we're seeing coming in 2024, is to tie your conference goals as closely to your strategic goals as you possibly can for the firm.
That's a really good way to ground yourself in what exactly am I trying to do here.
And you can always use the lens of yourself to in your own improvement and personal professional goals, but having it aligned with your firm and what your firm needs to accomplish in the year ahead will help you decide what firms you want to engage with or what people that you want to make sure that you meet or connect with on LinkedIn after the conference or the sessions that you want to attend to get information you can bring back, things like that.
To me, that always feels like a great place to start.
If it's a professional association that you're active in, I like to start asking people when I see them at the regular chapter meetings, hey, are you coming to the conference?
I'm just trying to get it before you can actually look up the official registration list, start asking people in your network if they're going.
So then you get a sense of who might I want to make sure that I connect with.
And then if they have a conference app, as soon as they announce that, I download that and start looking at what the schedule is, are there places to interact, and you check out the speakers.
Just planning ahead, I think is the important part.
Yeah.
Weaving it into the whole, I don't know, however much time you have to plan for it, probably at least four months, conferences, book out, they're sold out, whatever it might be, so you probably have it on your radar, and then you can start following, like you said, watching the speakers, follow them on LinkedIn.
Now all the speakers, when they're like, yeah, I'm just super excited to announce I'm going to be presenting at this conference, that's a great time to follow them and see what else they're saying, and it will warm things up for like, I definitely want to listen to that keynote.
I mean, you're probably going to want to see everything, but what are you going to be in the front row for?
What are, some sessions are standing room only, and fine, that's fine on occasion, but I want a good seat, I want a table where I can do the activity.
So anyways, but you can do a little scouting and it doesn't all have to happen the week before you go to the conference.
It can be throughout the year leading up, as you see that things are coming together.
On that point about conferences selling out, I think that there have been a lot of organizations that have had record breaking years in the last few years in terms of the speed at which people are signing up for the conferences, conferences selling out.
And I think you could probably draw a direct line to it and the pandemic and the increase in activity on LinkedIn, people learning that there's a lot of ways to stay connected and now growing their connections outside of their immediate geography to other geographies.
You probably feel more connected to the region in which that conference is happening, which if you harness LinkedIn, you can precede who you want to talk to based on the people that you have gotten to know there that might also be going to that particular conference.
So that's another great way to prepare is to just put it on blast on social media that you're going, who else is going.
You love to get time together when you're there.
What are you most excited to learn about and just kind of build some of the buzz yourself and in relation to the upcoming conference?
We're seeing people put that out there, a graphic to say, hey, I'm attending this conference or they're just making it more visual.
And we don't have any data on that yet.
How's that working?
But I'm guessing that it performs really well.
People are drawn to to those kind of graphics.
And we'll have to see.
I think 2024 is a good testing year.
Does that fade away?
Is it a trend for a moment or is it really helpful to flag and say, I'm going to be here and you can make some appointments?
I don't know, to be determined.
Alison, on your point about people attending conferences and them selling out, I'm just going to do a little spoiler alert as part of my trivia answer.
Because one of the things I came up through in the research was from Sevent.
They said that attendance at conferences was 23% higher in the spring of 2023 than it was pre-pandemic.
And I was really curious about that.
Right?
I mean, they're not like a major research firm.
They are tech firm facilitating check-ins at conferences.
But they know, right?
They probably have their finger on the pulse of that.
So I thought that was really interesting.
I was curious, has there been a big jump?
And I guess you could say yes.
There's been a jump.
People want to be in person.
They want to have some of that in-person learning instead of everything on the screen or in their ears, that type of thing.
So anyway, that was a little detail.
23% higher than 2019 levels.
Wow.
That is staggeringly more.
We're going to need some bigger hotels.
More room.
So let's see.
We've gotten approval for the conference.
We've made somewhat of a plan.
Of course, you want to leave a little flexibility to just about the energy or the vibe of what you hear, what's going to be really good.
You can map out your conference schedule that way.
You've put it out there to people.
You're going to be there attending.
So maybe you've made a couple of coffee meetings, happy hour or whatever.
Conference schedules can be really full, so you have to be pretty selective.
Like who's going to fill your dance card?
But that can be really nice and nice to know that you're going to get something specific accomplished and checked off the list.
What else?
What about the big social events?
If there's a gala, ballgowns, I don't know, award ceremonies, fun events, go ride the roller coaster, take a tour of that.
I don't know, what have you done?
And do you think it's good, or do you think it's better used for sleep?
I don't know.
I think you should pick what goes with your personality and style.
If you're more of an outgoing person that wants to do the dinner and dancing type of stuff, then go do that.
You're going to meet people that are similar to you.
I've seen three-on-three basketball tournaments.
I've seen fun runs.
I've seen golf tournaments.
If that's more your thing, then sign up for those things.
I think being authentic goes a long way.
Costume contest.
I participated in one of those.
That was really scary to not know anybody and walk in in a costume.
We're like, please let everyone else be in a costume.
Yeah.
And I do not drink anymore.
And I remember those events were way easier back when you could have a cocktail in your hand to help you loosen up because there is a little bit of a, oh gosh, aspect to being in a room, especially at night when the lights are dimmed, there's music playing, people might be wearing costumes.
I think I went to one where it was like, Grease was the theme of it.
He had lots of Danny Zukos and Sandys walk around the room, and there's a little bit of the ridiculous in it.
But I think that's also kind of a part of it, is to let people be wacky and let off some of the steam of having to be in professional mode for so much of the day.
Hey there Zuko!
My tools were out stealing hulk caps on lettered and track.
How do you like that?
I can't believe it.
Danny Zuko turned jock?
That's right, I did.
But like Melissa said, if that just is not the room that you're going to be the most comfortable in, maybe you make an appearance at it, or maybe you just save the funds because they usually do cost a little extra and you put it towards something else.
I also think it depends on where you're at in your career.
If you're brand new and you're the only one going from your firm, you can feel extremely isolated at an event like that because a lot of times people who've been in the industry a long time, they're giving each other these big hugs.
They recognize people, they get into these little clicks, they start talking, they're talking about their families and trips and getting louder and louder as the night goes on.
And you can find yourself being the odd one out.
And that's also, it's like, is this really the best use of my time?
Or can I be putting a facial mask on and going over my notes from the day and relaxing before it starts all over again the next day?
I think that you just kind of got to go with what feels best to you so that, again, the next morning, you are totally present and excited and ready to get the most out of the conference.
I know conferences often don't like you and do like a competing event, but if you find a group of people that, you know, no, I didn't get the extra ticket to the gala, let's all go to dinner.
So I think you can find alternative ways to still be connecting with people in a smaller group if you don't decide to do the bigger social events.
And I do know a guy who met his wife at one of those.
So there's that too.
The love of your life might be at the next conference evening event.
Since we're on the topic of conferences, did you know that Middle of Six can create all sorts of marketing collateral and even design trade show booths and displays and leave behinds and announcements that you're going to a trade show, any of that stuff.
Whether you need an attention grabbing theme for a target audience or more evergreen content that looks great year after year, like if you're going to recruiting fairs and want to have a lot of consistency there.
I mean, we love collaborating with companies to make sure that they can make the most of annual conference efforts and elegantly reflect their brand.
What about going to the sessions?
Thoughts on best way to capture the notes, the slides?
You want to be present.
It's so hard to have a computer up, but yet sometimes that's your fastest way to take notes.
So anyways, thoughts on best way to capture the content while you're experiencing it?
Well, the goody bags or swag bags at most conferences, somebody puts a notebook in there.
Whether it's the organization or someone who's sponsoring it, he gets to put a piece of swag.
There's usually a notebook in there.
I would not rely on that, so always bring one just in case.
I actually have been considering buying just a really nice notebook that I would use for the foreseeable future for all conferences, so I can have them all kind of aligned together.
Because it's not just session one on Wednesday at three and what did I get out of this?
It's the conversations that you had and a place to take your notes on potential follow up that you could do with people.
But having a notebook with you and getting really consistent in how you're taking notes.
Because once you get home, it can be kind of a jumbled mess if you're just in the moment when you're thinking about it, like scribbling down notes.
So just getting very methodical.
And what is the information I'm trying to capture here?
How can I use this when I do my report back at my firm?
And how can I do this in a way that's going to make it easy for me to capture notes throughout the conferences is what I would suggest.
These days, I'm a big electronic note taker.
But at a conference, I do like to have a notebook and I do what you just mentioned.
Allison, I try and have like one nice Moleskin that I use.
And this is my conference notebooks.
I have them all together.
And then usually the session slide decks get posted, but not always or it might not always be timely.
So as I'm sure anyone who's been to a conference as of late, see people take out their phone and take a photo.
But in my handwritten notes, I put that I did that.
So then when I'm going back, I can be like, okay, that's that session.
And then if I transcribing the typed or the handed written notes into typewritten notes, and I can just insert those screen grabs I took.
So smart.
You're an excellent note taker, Melissa.
You've got good codes, and you get to the point right away.
So yeah, having something where you can follow like plus minus checkbox when it's in a follow up or whatever it might be, makes it easy to skim and those notes will be really valuable to you when you go back to work and get busy catching up.
They're really handy.
If you are going to buy a notebook, maybe eight and a half by 11, because I feel like I always get a few fantastic handouts along the way, something that's on the table.
It maybe had an exercise that we did, and I want all of those questions, so that can be nice.
I mean, of course, it could be folded smaller, but just for the sake of if you're going to have a conference notebook, that's pretty nice.
And then save that in there because at least for me, I will think back.
I was like, what about the Build Business 2019?
You can go back and say, yeah, that's where we did that session on whatever exercise, and that will be preserved.
So definitely take notes, maybe avoid the computer because with computers comes the temptation to look at your email.
And you could do it on your phone too, but I think you are a little less likely to get sucked in.
If you can start attaching files and mapping things out and then, yeah, well, now you're lost.
So definitely try, if you've made all that effort to convince people that you can go to this conference and you've scheduled the time, and then it would be such a waste to not actually be able to absorb all that great information.
Well, and one other thing, I forgot to mention this, but it goes along with what you were talking about, Wendy, that 8 1⁄2 by 11, having something that's ergonomic, that's easy to stow, that you can nicely file away materials instead of them being crammed and crumpled at the bottom of your tote bag, is also, I always make a page, usually at the very back of the book, so I can flip to it really quickly.
And I'm not an artist.
My husband's the artist in the family, not me, but I draw a little light bulb.
It looks mostly like a light bulb at the top left corner, and it's the aha moments.
And again, that's tied to the strategic plan.
And also if you've gone through strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities, exercise, or you know that there's things that aren't quite working well with something, whether it's internal processes or some area that's really soft for staff, where they need training or whatever the thing might be, if you get those aha moments, make sure that you're capturing them.
Because one of the best uses of the plane ride home is to take a moment and reflect on everything that you just immersed yourself in, which is very personal experience, and start to try and translate it into how you can carry it back to your firm.
And that list of ahas can kind of guide the whole thing.
And it's probably what your firm leadership are going to really want to see, is ideas.
I came back with this thing that's going to fix this thing.
And then you're making your case for the next conference to go to, because you did a great job of learning and bringing it back and making it actionable.
And speaking of aha moments, I like to have a notepad at the keynotes.
Those are full of wonderful quotes.
I try to get them verbatim, literally, because they're just, they have so many punchy lines.
And so, I mean, it's always nice to sit and just, you know, be bathed in inspiration too.
So you can take that route.
But I love going away with quotes.
And maybe then that's something that you can share on social media or repeat back to that person when you go and meet them later on, because those keynotes are really inspiring and exciting.
Another place for the notebook, and I would think that your team is gonna be, get some of that energy too, like to Melissa's point, you're making that case for future because you're coming back with that much energy, jumping off the page because you have those quotes.
We didn't really dig into if you are going to speak at the conference or if you're teeing up your team to go speak, you know.
We could dig into that a little bit.
But going and speaking at a conference is so incredibly valuable.
You can do so much marketing in so many other ways, but this is one of the best ways to really position your firm as the experts or that are super approachable, all of that stuff.
So how do you convince people that they should speak at a conference?
Well, we're going to cover public speaking in an upcoming episode because this is a really tricky area, because you have people that are naturally extroverted or have had practice at speaking in front of people at some point that are just more naturally kind of raring to go for it.
That doesn't mean that there aren't others that are wonderfully articulate in one-on-one conversations that are extremely smart, to have really good ideas, that with a little bit of coaching and prep and support, and just guardrails around, here's how we're going to build out your presentation or helping them think through the storytelling or the outline of what they want to talk about, can be excellent representatives of your firm and imparting really valuable information to their peers in the industry.
There is this person that I always go back to and think of.
His name was Daniel Paralek.
I think that's how you pronounce his last name, but he was a principal at Opticost Design.
And for those that aren't familiar with that, it's a design firm in the AEC industry.
They do excellent work.
But he had an idea and he decided he was going to go out and talk about it, which is what a lot of these sessions start as.
It's just an idea that you got around something that you're very interested in that you think is worth talking about.
And he coined this phrase called Missing Middle, which is now widely adopted into not just the AEC industry, but also the political environment as a way of talking about affordable housing, crafting policy, and identifying different types of housing that are missing that could really help us to crack through these housing affordability and shortage issues that a lot of our cities are facing.
And it all started with a guy who just knew he was onto something and had a way of talking about it that really resonated with people.
And it wasn't from one session.
It started with one session, and then he decided, I'm going to go to every conference.
I'm going to write articles about this.
And it was truly a transformative thing for the whole conversation.
But I kind of use that as inspiration for myself in that it really does start with a kernel of an idea that you just happen to be really excited about.
So if you can talk to your staff like that, and keep your ears open for the things that they light up about when they're talking about their work, ask them questions that gets them talking.
Sometimes you land on something like this is worth other people learning about.
And I think you would be great at doing it.
And then start tackling the fears of public speaking or getting all of your ducks in a row and all of that, that comes later.
And we'll talk about it later.
Yeah.
And that's another good reason to be tracking conferences over time because then you've got these are all the sessions that were presented in the last four years of this conference.
So you can look for gaps or look for here's this conversation started and we can build on the next idea related to that topic.
So that's another good reason why you want to be tracking and keeping records of the conferences.
And also suggesting maybe you want to co-present this topic with the client or we want to have a panel discussion.
That preparation time that goes into it, there's more relationship building time.
We want to do this well, so we're going to impress the client and we're going to practice and we're going to bring this group together.
So I think that's another reason why speaking is great.
I mean, it's a fair amount of effort, but it pays dividends, I believe.
We've had that experience.
We do a lot of speaking at different conferences or just something could start small.
We're speaking to a client and they're a smaller group.
You know, maybe it's 20 or 30 people, but then that can lead to something else.
So it's a good muscle to exercise for sure.
Well, we do have a listener question for this topic, so I'll go ahead and read it, and we'll do our very best to answer it.
Okay, so, my company is big on reporting.
How do I track the return on investment ROI from conference attendance?
Yeah.
I am sure that this is very common, right?
It just is gonna give your company peace of mind knowing what their investment is.
And we talked a little bit about this, but let's go a little deeper.
Well, I think that we can go overboard.
And by we, I mean me.
I remember going to a conference one year, and there was a five-hour flight back, and I wrote like a seven-page report on this conference that nobody wanted to read except me.
I thought it was fascinating.
And that wasn't what they were looking for.
And luckily, I had a very kind supervisor at the time who said, this is a great first draft, like waving it around.
He's like, but we can boil this down so that, you know, the leadership at the firm can get the information that they need quickly.
And this is something we talk about a lot here.
It's the skimmers, the swimmers, the deep divers.
I was writing for the deep diver.
So I think it's knowing it doesn't have to be exhaustive to do this kind of reporting.
It's just capturing good information that, again, ties back to your firm's strategic plan, and that shows how the time was used, and those aha moments.
And also, how many connections were you able to make on LinkedIn, which I'm a huge fan of using conferences to expand your network.
There's little metrics that you can get in there as well.
Yeah, the people you met, the follow-up meetings that were set.
I mean, you're probably not gonna walk away with a new project from a conference, but I mean, I've heard of it happening, but you might have some leads or some new intel about a project.
If you were speaking and trying to drive engagement through new followers on your social media channels, you can take a time period from the conference through however long you decide a couple weeks after and see if there was an increase in people following your company.
Part of your strategy might be to go and invite all those new connections that you made on LinkedIn and invite them to follow your company page.
You might have seen traffic to your website.
Say you are asking people to go take a survey or go download your session or find more information about this topic on your website, then you can see if there was an increase in traffic to website.
So whether your firm is requesting the data on the ROI or not, I mean, these all sound like great things to do just to make sure that you are really absorbing the most from the conference that you can.
It takes a little bit of effort, but hopefully if you've gotten excused from all the proposal work, you actually have some space to think about that.
I met these people, I'm going to connect with them.
I want to see them in the future.
Now that I have a face to go with that name when we team, all of that stuff is really valuable.
And if you can be present in the conference, you will come away with probably many different things that you can share with your team and your leadership about why this was valuable.
And if it was a dud or it was a little bit off topic for you, it didn't work, then try something else, or even try something that's out of your industry.
It's totally acceptable to, like on the marketing side, go outside of AEC to look for different creative conferences, or just to see what people who are not in our proposal world all the time are doing.
So it could go both ways, right?
Maybe you're not going to tell your leadership this one was a dud, but you could say, this is what I got from it.
I think this is going to be really good.
And in the future, maybe we look at this to balance it out.
And, Winnie, there's also one other kind of dud and you kind of touched on it.
It's, what happens when best intentions go out the window and a proposal gets goad that you now have to work on at night?
Because, or even during the breaks between sessions, or even during the sessions, I've seen people, they look close to tears, totally stressed out with their laptops out, or we just got the interview, or the thing, like late breaking news.
I think that is a dud.
I think that that's, it is up to the firm to make sure that whoever they designate is going to a conference can take that time to truly just be at the conference and have resources back at the firm that can handle those things.
And, you know, Shameless Plug, Middle of Six, we do help with proposal work and interview coaching.
So there's also that too, is there's a lot of external consultants that you should, even if you rarely use that kind of a service, to know that there's people that can be on your team as auxiliary support so that you can truly unplug and focus while you're there.
Because that is it.
I've been there.
I think a lot of us have.
And it's exhausting.
You just feel fried by the time that the conference is done.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's you need to think of it as if you're out of the office, like if you were on leave or sick or vacation, not that it's any of those things, but it still is that category of being out of the office.
And if you can set your out of office to say that you're at a conference and focused on that, your response to email will be slightly delayed.
It gives you a little wiggle room.
But it's amazing trying to fit three hours to read a proposal or do a little bit of writing on a section.
It doesn't really squish in to a conference schedule very well at all.
Lessons learned from myself trying to do that and being disappointed on both ends.
So try to avoid that if you can.
Well, I feel like we have covered this pretty well.
To try to not start off Season 3 with a two hour podcast.
We could cut it here, but I think I should go back to that trivia question.
Well, I told you that this was going to be a really unsatisfying statistic and I promise that we will do better in the future, in future episodes.
But I really wanted to report this number and no matter what digging I did, I could not find a good one.
Because I think the problem is, is that to answer the question, how many Americans attend a conference each year, the problem is, is that, well, they're like lumping in conventions, conferences, trade shows, industry association meetings, which I heard is like 16,000 of those on their own.
Oh my goodness.
So this is my sad reporting here.
I saw numbers as much as like 250 million Americans every year attend a conference.
That doesn't seem possible.
Maybe people are going to multiples.
I don't know.
Also, I saw 87 million, 40 million, according to Zippia.
I don't know.
It was just all over the map.
So I just did my own math, and this is not scientific at all, but I did the average of what I could find out there.
So I'm gonna go with, there's probably about 63 million people attending a conference, trade show, or convention every year.
And so anyways, take that for what it's worth.
It's not my best.
I'm gonna do better from here on out, but that's what I found.
There's a lot of people going to conferences.
This is like a normal thing to do, and pick one that you wanna go to and figure out how it can weave in with your company's strategy.
It's worthwhile.
This is a tool out there.
People are doing it.
Anyways, that's what I have to say.
There's my stats.
Any last words?
Melissa and Allison?
Wear comfortable shoes.
Wear comfortable shoes and layers.
Some of these places are so cold.
You'll just sit there like shivering, and you can only drink so many glasses of coffee to keep yourself warm.
And others are not very cool and can get hot.
So layers and comfortable shoes.
Do not pack those heels.
Bring protein snacks.
I feel like always the snacks are like something super sugary or carb heavy.
So that's my hot tiff.
Brilliant.
Well, thank you, Melissa and Allison, for this great first episode of The Shortlist.
Appreciate you being here.
Yeah.
Looking forward to talking more.
I know.
I'm so happy that we're into Season 3 now.
I can't believe we're into Season 3, but love talking to you guys about these really interesting AEC topics.
Season 3, Episode 1, in the books.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, Principal Marketing Strategist.
Our producer is Kyle Davis, with digital marketing and graphic design by the team at Middle of Six.
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If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss, send an email or voice memo to theshortlistatmiddleofsix.com.
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Until next time, keep on hustling.
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Bye, everybody.
The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.