Last week I chaired my first ever conference. I was a bit nervous because my experiences of conferences as an attendee have generally been pretty disappointing, and I’m not really the kind of person who relishes standing up and speaking in front of a room full of people.
But despite the reservations I think the day went pretty well (although I haven’t had my delegate feedback back yet) and I came away from it having learned about a few things that I thought I’d put up here.
(I also came away with the feeling that we really need to look at the basic format and structure of business conferences, but that’s something for a different post.)
Those lessons are:
1. Don’t be the conference whore.
2. Be there all day.
3. Pretend to be a chair.
More details on what exactly they mean after the jump.
Lesson one: Don’t be the conference whore.
At the conference I was at seven or eight people presented and two of those people decided that it would be ok to just stand up and deliver a sales pitch for their business. For half an hour or more they talked about how great their company was, how well it was doing, why people loved them so much…and, oh, look at all the great ways you can give us money!
Here’s a simple rule: If a bunch of people have paid a decent amount of cash to get good, practical advice from a group of ‘experts’ then the last thing you should do is stand up and try and bleed some more money out of them.
And don’t think people won’t notice even if you forgo the badly-disguised begging and just launch into your generic ‘Aren’t We Brilliant’ routine. People can spot a shill a mile off, and when the next person stands up and is funny, clever, and genuinely informative then your salesman routine will look even worse.
One of the guys at the conference last week was from a relatively large and successful online company which I had quite a bit of time for…right up until the marched up and did the whole snake oil routine for thirty minutes.
Lesson two: Be there all day.
If you’re speaking at a conference then the temptation is to turn up just before you’re due on and then make a quick exit straight afterwards. Maybe you’ll stick around for lunch if there’s something good on the menu.
I’ve done it before and sometimes it’s unavoidable, but the risk is obvious: you miss what everyone else has said and you’re in danger of repeating them.
This happened a good half-a-dozen times last week, and every time you could see the delegates wincing as the speaker launched into a five minute explanation of a point which had been covered (sometimes in a far more entertaining and/or interesting way) just an hour or so earlier.
And the real killer here is not the fact that someone’s going over old ground, it’s that the speaker has no idea they’re doing it. Everyone else in the room is just sat there thinking “yep, we know this, move on” and getting increasingly embarrassed for the speaker who keeps going, completely oblivious. Eventually that embarrassment turns to impatience and they stop listening to what the person’s actually saying.
Lesson three: Pretend to be a chair.
if you’re chairing a conference then one of your duties will more than likely be to get the post-talk question and answer session going. In England this is generally akin to pulling teeth so it’s best to be prepared. Just to make sure I wasn’t caught out with nothing to ask I made a point of jotting down any potential questions that popped into my head as the person was speaking.
What I found as i did this was that, once you get one or two things down, your brain starts trying to answer those questions for you, and then you start thinking about the whole thing in a much more interrogative (interrogatory?) fashion.
I came away thinking this was a way more productive approach to taking conference notes than the usual ‘jotting down the key points’ thing I normally do, which is pointless anyway when you have a copy of the slides in a handout or on a USB stick.
And when you have questions ready and waiting it also means you’ll find yourself less embarrassed to stick your hand up when it comes to Q+A time, or approach one of the speakers for a chat during the coffee break.
So go on, pretend to be a chair. It works, honest.
Now all I have to do is show this post to a few people who gave brilliant and interesting presentations at the conference so they can tell me what mistakes I made!
Rob , well spotted sir. The “Say it dont sell it” approach to presenting at any conference always wins points in mine ( and others ) books. Ive been to a few local conferences in the last year and in those occasions Ive seen internet marketing companies get up and just pitch the work they did for their clients and maybe follow it up with talking about the techniques they used. Result , I tuned out.
Then Andy White from Wired World Media got up and talked about podcasting. He didnt pitch he didnt sell he just gave pointers, ideas, directions and technique. Ive seen the same from Jeremy Spiller ( White Hat Media ). Getting up , not pitching but talking about the ideas and techniques which really worked.
A great post for me to forward to a few colleagues and see if they’ll comment here.
Rob – you’ve hit a nail that needs hitting, and pre-empted a post I had on my long long list of blog posts I never get round to writing.
Your first point is the most important: it is completely unacceptable to deliver a product pitch to an audience that have come to learn, UNLESS your pitch teaches the audience about an entirely new category of knowledge they never even knew about, is fun and/or interesting.
Unfortunately event organisers get dazzled by the glitz of having one of the online social networks speak, so there’s less filtration and steering of their content.
The other things I care about at an event are free good wifi everywhere, and good chairing – which requires a gardening mentality, judging when to prune and when to let it grow – but i better get back to my biz dev tasks for now!
PS. I think you did OK as a chair, and well for your first time! You were relaxed and informal, and set a non-pompous tone for proceedings, which many chairs fail to do. The only thing I’d recommend for next time is be clearer about timings and be willing to signal and even step in when people are running over. It’s a bit admin-y, but it’s a key part of the job
I fully agree Rob on all three points. I think that sales pitches are terrible and without excuse – especially when the organiser has gone through pains to ensure everyone adds something.
You were great as a chair and really helped set the tone as Will said. I love your point about approaching each conference as a chair as well as being there all day.
I approach each conference very stressed and anxious because I know that the attendees are the most important people and I need to make sure I’m adding value. It’s hard to do so when everyone has covered your points prior to you! *laughs* But at least I know.
I hope conference speakers and chairs all take the time to read and adjust their strategies based on this. Perhaps if a sharing of presentation slides can happen beforehand as well, duplication can become a thing of the past!
YAY!
…and bitching about the quality of the coffee is always a good way to break the ice.
I hate public speaking…
to be truly surprised and pleased:) Do not be believed, that even this happens:)