Meeting logistics at the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

I going to attend the Enterprise 2.0 conference.  I plan to:

• Give.  I’ll be on two panels sharing thoughts with the attendees.  I hope you  join and find them beneficial.
• Get. I’ll attend many sessions in order to learn what my peers and others are going to share with us.
• Connect.  I plan to meet many people I know or would like to know in a socially-professional way.

Today on Twitter, @gialyons shared the thought that she has a mental bingo card with the people she wants to meet — and that got me thinking.  It’s going to be a challenge for all of us to play connect-bingo with each other.  There is only so much time, and we all have give/get/connect objectives that take time — in some cases fixed time.

On a related note, a couple of AR (analyst relations) people have reached out to me asking to set up times to meet with the CEOs of the companies they represent.  And I look forward to this too.  As an analyst, it’s important for me to be very informed and connected to the market players.  But my schedule is getting busy and I’m afraid that too many such meetings will compromise my other give/get/connect objectives. So I started to think really hard about how to maximize our time:

• Vendors want to meet prospective client.  Clients scope the exhibition hall and connect with vendors they want to follow up with after the show.  Vendors are there to generate and collect those leads and qualify them as best they can.
• Conferences provide a great place for job/work networking to take place.  Everyone I know is either looking for a new job, new clients, or new projects.  I’m in the same boat too.  So attendees will have to balance the social and learning opportunities with the very practical business of networking.
• Attendees crave the group-learning experiences. One reason we go in person, or try to watch live broadcasts, is because we love the energy of being in the group learning experience.  Sure we can all read the websites of the speakers and guess what they’ll say.  But we want to be there at the live theater.
• Meeting in person at a conference is more effective but less efficient. Face to face meetings are more effective than skype/screensharing meetings.  But timing is the killer. It’s unrealistic that we’ll all meet with everyone we want to.

What this means:  I love meeting people and connecting with others in my industry.  So if you would like to meet — just introduce yourself and say hi.  I’m used to communicating in 140 characters on Twitter, in 1000 words on blogs, or in 45 minutes on informational briefings — so we can have a tweet, a discussion, or a symposium.  My assumption is that if I’m on your bingo card, then you are probably on mine — or you should be.

If you think there is a business opportunity that we could discuss — let’s.  We all have to pay the bills, and if there are ways that our collaboration leads to mutual benefit (e.g. I provide services that you have the budget to pay for – or you want to offer me a job), then you will have my attention.

Vendors have AR folks who know how to find me — so even if we don’t meet in person, you can still get to me afterwards.  But enterprise clients usually don’t have AR teams.  So if you are looking for professional advisory services to help your company find success in this Enterpise 2.0 world, find me at the conference and let’s talk.

Tagged as: conference, Enterprise 2.0, virtual familiarity