I travel constantly, keynoting conferences, participating in panels, or simply attending conferences all over the world. I greatly enjoy it as it gives me opportunity to formulate and express my thoughts about a vast range of technology topics, their business opportunities, and how they influence society. But also because it lets me discover new ideas, projects, and most importantly meet people who are passionate about them, and who are working hard to implement solutions embodied in products and services that will generate value and improve the lives of millions or even billions of people around the world.
Digital interactions are wonderful because they eliminate barriers and enable anyone to get in touch practically with anyone else and very quickly move from a brief direct message on any of the social platforms or an email to video call. However, these digital interactions are restricted to direct one-on-one communication or typically among a small group of people.
Most importantly, what is missing from these digital platforms is the serendipity factor.
Bumping into someone that you haven’t met in a year and catching up with them, or discovering an unexpectedly interesting project in the hallways of an exhibition area. Or being on a panel with other speakers and finding their remarks stimulating and then deciding to go deeper in the conversation and spending some time together, maybe at a dinner the same day. Or being invited to a satellite event, that is more selective and exclusive, maybe not even listed in the official agenda of the conference that you are attending. These and a lot of other very human components of attending a conference that to this day can only be realized, by traveling with a certain amount of investment of time and energy, in the physical world.
There are a lot of little tricks that can make attending a conference more effective and enjoyable:
- making sure that you invest time beforehand to understand the conference format and the agenda,
- using the specific conference app if available, or even little things like what I do,
- putting a QR code with my contact information as the cover screen of my phone enabling people to very quickly add me to their contacts, and
- taking a selfie together, which represents a convenient snapshot of the time and place where we met as a reminder to both.
I collected these tips and tricks in a convenient PDF that you can download: a conference participation guide. I hope you enjoy it.
If you’re in Dubai between October 21 and October 27, I’ll be attending several events happening during this particularly intense conference season in the area. Let me know: I’d love to catch up in person.