So your plans are made to attend the 2003 World Congress next week. But you don´t want to just attend the conference. You want to be a “conference commando” – someone who treats a few days at an industry or professional gathering as a surgical strike that generates value for their company, that helps their career, and that shapes their perspective on the future. Following are a few ideas from Fast Company magazine that you can use to plan your conference visit and become a conference commando.

John Patrick (nella foto sotto, a sinistra), vice president of Internet technology for IBM, goes to more conferences a year than most people attend in a lifetime. “You get an edge by actually being with people,” he says. “Conferences are a way to get a fresh perspective, to develop long-term relationships, and to play with ideas.”

Stage I: Planning the Mission

Worry less about the return on your investment than about the return on your time. “Forget the registration cost,” urges Samir Arora, cofounder and CEO of NetObjects, Inc. “The real investment at a conference is in your time. Do your due diligence, and determine if it makes sense for you to go."

Who should go? Susan D. Goodman, of interactive-services firm Think New Ideas, Inc., says, “If you send a few people, you can cover more than one track.” She also believes that for mid- and entry-level employees, conferences can serve as a condensed training program.

Stage II: Hitting the Ground

True conference commandos aren’t bound by the agenda that they receive at registration. Who says you can’t arrange your own dinner discussion? Conference commandos don’t attend formal sessions just to learn new things from people – they also use such events to market their own presence at the conference. When sessions open up for Q&A, commandos tend to be among the first people to have their hands in the air. And when they ask questions, they never fail to state their name, their company and what they do.

Stage III: Working the Floor

Plenty of people who attend extravaganzas like Comdex skip the trade-show floor, or they quickly pass through on the first day. But there is value to be mined beneath the glossy brochures and the glitzy booths – if you know how to find it.

David Bohnett, founder and chairman of GeoCities, avoids large booths almost entirely. He focuses on the outside edges of the hall. “That’s where the GeoCities or the Yahoo! of the future is,” he says. “The guys that can only afford a 10-by-10 booth are infinitely more interesting than the companies that buy the megabooths. And smaller companies tend to staff their booths with the CEO or their founders.

Conference commandos cut to the chase when dealing with booth personnel. “Say what you’re looking for, what problem you’re trying to solve,” says Allen Konopacki, president of the Incomm Center for Trade Show Research and Sales Training. Commandos also know how to gather competitive intelligence from booths on the show floor.

Stage IV: Take a Break

“There is a fiction in the mind of the conference attendee that a conference is great because of great presenters,” insists Richard Saul Wurman, the creator and organizer of the much-acclaimed TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference series. “Conferences are great because of the people you sit next to, because of the people you meet in the hall.”

Conference commandos embrace that principle. Their real work comes during the breaks. “You have to know how – or learn how – to be a schmoozer,” says Jack Powers, conference chairman at Mecklemedia.

If you’re at a conference with people from your company, don’t let yourself associate only with them. “Fan out at breaks. It’s okay to check in a few times a day, but don’t let your coworkers insulate you from the chance to meet new people,” says Susan Goodman.

Commandos tend to participate in the outside activities offered by conference organizers. But they also organize social events on their own. “The last thing you want to do at a conference is watch TV in your room and order room service,” says Lee Silverman, manager of business development at GTE Internetworking.

Stage V: Back to Base

Cindy Johnson, who works in the knowledge management for Fujitsu Network Communications Inc., writes up summaries each night of what she learned that day. After she returns home, she circulates one version of her trip report to people inside her company, and she distributes another, slightly less classified version, to an email distribution list. John Patrick sends quick-fire emails to his colleagues at IBM to share the intelligence he has learned.

If a conference has been a team event, then a wrap-up meeting is essential. Don’t take this follow-up work lightly. Commandos go to conferences to make connections between people and between concepts, so they do whatever they can to extend relationships and to continue discussions beyond the event.’
“You know you’ve been to a really valuable conference if you come back not only with a stack of business cards and lots of reasons to contact people, but also with a sense of being stimulated to ask questions of yourself,” says Susan Goodman. “A good conference has a thousand offshoots. It´s an opportunity to network, to learn, to participate in the development of your industry, to step outside of your company – and outside of yourself.”

Tratto da: www.jci.cc