We’ve all been to business conferences – and all these conferences fall into one of three broad categories (in terms of performance and usefulness as opposed to subject matter that is) which are: Great, OK, and somewhere less than satisfactory!

Now I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but in my personal experience, very few, if any, conferences fall into the first category whilst just over half fall into the last. This isn’t really good enough.

The question, then, is how to lift a conference from the good category to the great or from the mediocre to the just OK.

Of course a lot of this comes down to basic organisation, and adequate infrastructure and resources. But if we dare to presume that such basics are in place and are working as they should – then what?

The trick is in making the conference that little bit different in some way – whilst managing costs to a point which your audience can stand.

For example – a creative offbeat venue can really help sell a conference and make it a bit special – but are the basic arrangements in place?

Anyone can pick a wacky location, but not every such location is well-versed in the organisational details necessary to make a conference really work. But then again, some are. Or if they aren’t, but you hire the right conference organisers, they can be.

And therein lies one of the biggest of all tips in organising a conference; particularly a major one – and that is to rely on the experts. If you interfere in the running of an event, but aren’t truly well versed in the process of doing so, your tendency will be to worry over minor details, which are meat and drink to experienced conference organisers. All those little things you think no one else will have thought of – will have been if you choose the right company.

Instead, put all your effort into the brief. Try and put more effort into the brief and its comprehensive accuracy than you do into the conference itself. In this way, you’ll successfully farm out the whole job to the right people in the right way.

It’s the same principle as a complex car repair, or surgery, or conducting one’s own defence in an important court case. In other words, this is work best left to someone who knows what s/he is doing at a high level of expertise – beyond that which you could reasonably be expected to have yourself.

Why would you think you can succeed in the world of effective corporate entertainment if you aren’t experienced in doing so? The trick is to get the brief right, then to find the right company responding to that brief (which isn’t usually the cheapest). No one will remember if you saved a small amount if money as you put together a mediocre conference. But they will remember a great one, and they won’t count the pennies.

Darren LaCorix interviewed by Irina Kremin, KGS Global

One of the main points I took from him is “never take time off stage time” , its all about “stage time, stage time, stage time”. To become a good speaker you need to practice a lot. The same about video – if you want to appear good on video – you need to walk around with a portable camera and record yourself on every occasion you can.
Do not worry about being perfect on stage – I think this is one of the main points of a bad performance – we worry too much some times. “You need to be present, not perfect” – he says. Your mindset is the most important during the presentation. “Skills set without mindset will get your audience upset”
“Be confident enough to be humble” – is my favourite saying by Darren.
Crave feedback – not just receive feedback – crave it!
And finally – Pause. I know about pausing – its important in every speech but I do not always do it enough. Darren says that pause is like a muscle, you have to work on it, try to pause a second longer than you are comfortable (good exercise for me). Pause is made to make people think, long pauses are appropriate at moments when you want people to think – understanding it makes you use pause more effectively.

Later on that day, after the keynote, I asked Darren to give some tips to corporate speakers on how to improve their presentation skills. Here is what he had to say:

I have caught myself ‘overdosing’ a few times on conferences. “Overdosing” is when you attend event after event without even having the proper time to follow up with contacts you met, which makes the time you spend wasted…

Another discovery I have is that in some cases you waste more money (time=money) attending a free event than a paid event.

Lessons learned:
Before booking for a conference, meetup or seminar:
A. Calculate the ROI for each event and make future decisions based on your experience.
B. Try to commit to no more than 2 serious events per month (I do not count a small half of day or after work networking events)

What are the valuables to keep in mind when calculating the ROI:

A) How many new contacts you have made – potential customers, friends and colleagues of future customers, future partners, future employers / employee – and the value they can bring to you or your company (has to be greater than the invested time cost and fee for the event)
B) Did you get inspired? Inspiration is good for a day or two but it
goes away fast and if it is not resolved with an action, which lead to process improvements, cutting costs or additional revenue generation, then its not worth it
C) Content: have you learned something new, which you can implement in your work / company / strategies?
D) Understanding the different players in business, for example: for a vendor – understanding the pain of the customers, for a customer – feedback from others about different solutions and offers – you cant put a number or value on it but it can resolve in bigger sales and it can be a good excuse to attend the event with your targeted customers (you need to do research on that, as there are not many conference organisation releasing a list of delegates before the event).

My tip for conference goers: before booking for an event, spend a little time on research to maximise the ROI from it. Be selective and go for best. Free is not always best!

As a conferenceholic (the second name of this blog www.conferenceholic.com ), I have attended many international conferences – competitions with the “Crème de la Crème” presentations and most inspirational speakers. The humorous contest has always been my favorite, especially because humor is the biggest challenge is my presentations, and after all these years one speaker in particular became a real role model for me in public speaking and I always wanted to write about him.

Finally, at this years Toastmasters District 59 contest I had the opportunity to conduct an interview with him. His name is John Zimmer.
John is very passionate about speaking and helping others improve their public speaking and presentation skills. His blog, Manner of Speaking is a great source of quotes, tips, speech analysis, book reviews, historical quotes, stories and resources about public speaking.

Some of my favourite and most entertaining posts:

Public Speaking Lessons from the Old Spice Guy
Anatomy of a Humorous Speech
and many others.

Curious to meet John? Here is a short video which will give you a few important insights into what it takes to reach excellence in public speaking.

Conor Neill is a professor in the Department of Managing People in Organizations at IESE Business School. An entrepreneur who has founded four companies, he is the former Area Director of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO). He maintains the blog, “The Rhetorical Journey” at www.conorneill.com

The Workshop topic was: The Magnet and The Hammer: The twin Pillars of Executive Leadership

He used several case studies of prominent leaders over the past 50 years to explore the keys of developing your leadership during turbulent times.

1. The first example he used is by Warren Buffett’s criteria for selecting the people to invest in (and therefore who will most likely achieve financial success in life):

Number 2 is Energy (yes, I got it!) – people with high energy have more power to do more things
Number 3 is Intelligence – (yes, I got it!) – and by that he means not just IQ, but the ability to respond to changes in life and making any corrections to the course (learning from your mistakes and implementing positive changes)
And Number 1, which is the most important and without which the other two do not make any sense, is … Integrity! I was surprise to hear that. By integrity he means having discipline and a system to follow up on the goals you are setting in life. How great! This is exactly the area I am working on at the moment.
Now look at the whole package – do you have all you need to achieve financial success? If not – you have some ideas that you can work on.

2. The next example I found to be very useful, it was an example of Jim Collins who apparently had 3 stopwatches in his pocket all the time to monitor the time he is spending on 3 of the most important projects he was working on, for example: teaching, writing, and white space thinking.
I once had a concept to track the time I was spending on different types of activities at the office, and there are some great iPhone apps out there to time project activities, but I stopped it which was a shame. I should try it again as it can really open your eyes on how you can plan your day and I should definitely dedicate more time to white time thinking which is currently not in my priorities.

3. The last piece of advice I got from Connor Neill is to spend 5 min EVERY DAY writing. He mentioned that he had a teacher when he was 14, who asked the class at the end of every lesson to spend 5 min writing. It doesn’t matter what, the task is just that a pen should touch the paper for 5 min. I do like to write some things down, but every day? I think it’s a great system and I will try to do that from now on. Starting today!

At the end of the presentation I asked Conor to give one piece of advice to speakers at a conference. What is the most important when you prepare your presentations?
This is what he said:

In any case, I do try to make calculations and I like when in addition to having a great time and getting inspired, I see the real value from attending an event. Here is my formula:

ROI =(Total return – Total investment) : Total investment
RETURN
Incremental Sales Revenue = Annual amount of sales revenue collected as a result from attending the event – (minus) cost of goods – (minus) labor in % from annual revenue – (minus) other expenses and fees related to this additional new clients
+
Incremental Savings = savings from increased marketing efficiency, including costs saved on trainings, research done during the conference, time saved on reaching decision makers , who are your potential customers.

INVESTMENT
Total investment = registration fee + travel expenses including the hotel, flight, other conference related expenses + cost of time out of the office

This is it, a simple formula, when ROI = 1, you have just paid back your expenses, ROI >1 – you profit from attending, ROI <1 – you have a financial loss from attending the event.

Its not so easy sometimes to get the exact numbers, and as I have mentioned before, in some cases you may not find any new business for the coming year, but after attending the next event and many other events your presence becomes more noticeable and others start looking at you like at expert (“ I see you at all the marketing conferences, so you must have some serious knowledge and many good contacts in this area”).
My conclusion – numbers are not the only ROI you can get from attending an event, however you have to agree, it’s a business world and we are here to make profits, not losses.

- Your level of exposure
- Launch of a new product
- The quality of your presentation if a speaking slot is a part of the sponsorship
- Skills of the sales staff on the floor
- The quality of your marketing materials
- The number and intensity of your competitor’s efforts at the show etc. etc

And if you have to choose to sponsor the event you have been sponsoring for years or a new event, there is more risk in the new event, however, this is how your competitors think as well, but when you are taking a bigger risk, the reward can be big as well, therefore be choosy, consider all the factors involved and only pick events that will help you reach your top organizational goals.
There are many reasons to consider, good reasons to sponsor will be when you are:

- Looking for strategic partnerships
- Introducing a new product or service
- Marketing new research findings
- Looking to strengthen your company’s brand
- Searching for new hires

All of these goals are important; all you need to do is to prioritize them so that you know where to focus.

1. What are exhibitions or conferences often missing? Good espresso! Here is a great opportunity for your company to stand out. SyncForce, our sponsor at the B2B Marketing Forum in Amsterdam, brought a small car supplying fresh espresso all day – and it was the most popular place at the event.

2. Another great example I have seen was at the Nationale Marketing Dag – offering a free ice-cream on a hot summer day. Look at the big line of people at the stand – it generated big traffic at the show.

3. Shoeshine stand. Who wouldn’t want to stop to give your shoes an extra shine? Consider the audience for this though, if you expect a lot of people wearing casual sport shoes, etc – this is not a good catch.

4. Hire a magician or dancers at the stand as this will generate big traffic, especially with the loud music around the show – the only risk here is that you will be the general crowd but not necessary the audience who are genuinely interested in your product. They will watch the show and disappear immediately as music stops. My favorite example here is renting a small photostudio where you can take a photo as a memory, check out this fun photo I just made at the Nationale MarketingDag.

5. Freebies (promotional items) – we all know that you can’t miss here and you don’t have to spend much on it. I think that the key to success here is to have a creative way to connect it with the message you are trying to get across. A good example of this is a small and bright Hand Sanitizer Disinfectant Spray with the sign “Protect from your viruses” given away by Microsoft at the Infosecurity show.

6. And now one of my very favorite tips shared by Jonathan Clark : when you go to a big conference what do you miss the most (many times)? Good Wi-Fi connection and not enough power supply. Creative sponsors are using this to their advantage. Sponsoring free Wi-Fi is an option, but 1) there are less and less conferences who are missing it and 2) it’s a little risky enterprise: if Wi-Fi will not work well, you get more complaints than recognition. Extra supply of the Power Cords is a great idea though. If you are a sponsor at the conference, simply bring a bunch of power squids and distribute them around the room. Its not a big investment and you can use it for other events. I would invest not in the simple power cords, but State of Art: modern, trendy, like for example the Power Squid Surge3000 Calamari Edition for the US but or Belkin Surgemaster 6V + tel. + A/V for European market or Philips have one for the UK Philips PowerSquid

I hope this post will give you a few more new ideas and if you have others to share, I would love to hear from you. Just post a comment on this blog.

Thinking inside out – this is what he promotes.

People don’t buy WHAT you do buy WHY you do it.

There is a scientific explanation of that: When we communicate from outside of the brain – in, people can understand complicated information, like features and benefits, but don’t get it deep enough with your hart. When we communicate inside out we get directly into the brain, that controls behavior and this is where the guts decision coming from.

The Golden Circle gives you the recipe for success. Does it? I think it does. Enjoy!