You can make great connections attending a conference or special event.

I recently attended the WritersUA conference where I got to talk shop with people in my industry from across the US and from Australia. I knew it would be a great opportunity to meet a wide range of people from my industry.

In this series of blog posts, I’m going to share with you ideas for getting the most from a conference, industry event, or local meetup. You can use and modify this information to cover everything from single evening events to multiple day industry conferences.

In this post, I’ll share tips for preparing for the event. Next, I’ll talk about what to do at the event, and last, I’ll give you ideas for follow up activities.

Getting Ready For An Event

In the weeks before my conference, I invested a little time to start building connections with other attendees. Here are a few things I did to maximize my industry connections before the conference.

Social Media

• If your event has a website, check the website for information about how they are using social media. Are they on Twitter? Do they have a Facebook page? Did they create a LinkedIn group? Are they listed on Yelp or Upcoming?
• If you use the same social media sites as the conference, hook up with the event through each site. If you don’t use these sites, pick the one that you have most wanted to try out, and jump in. You’ll never have a better excuse to try it out.
• Use these social media tools  to find other people who will be attending the event. Follow them on Twitter. Post a note on the Facebook wall that introduces you and says you are excited to attend the event. Join in the conversation in the LinkedIn group.
• If possible, start to make connections with new people before you arrive. Do whatever you can to begin talking with people online. This is not the time to be a shrinking violet. The more people you meet online before the event, the easier it is to meet them in real life later.
• Update your profile on each social media site that you use to mention the upcoming conference. Mention it on your blog. Add it to your email signature temporarily. The idea is to make connections, so be sure you tell everyone that you are attending the conference.

Business Cards

• Make sure your company business card is up to date. If you just joined new social media sites, make sure that you include that information on your card.
• Have enough cards. Ideally, you should have one for every person you meet. Depending on how fast you work a room, that might be 10 cards a day to 50 cards a day (or more). It’s better to have too many cards than not enough cards.
• If you company doesn’t provide you with a business card, or if they are not going to update your cards before the event, order your own business cards. You can order inexpensive cards online and through your local office supply store. Give yourself plenty of time for delivery before the event.
• If you are thinking about going into business for yourself, or if you want to start freelancing, this is the perfect time to create your own business card. Start building your professional identity separate from your current employer with your new contacts.

Business Conversations

• Start making a list of the information that would make your working life easier. What perpetual challenges do you face in your work that could use a creative solution? What challenges face you today in your work? Be prepared to start conversations on these topics and collect information from the experience of others. Make notes about the technical details of your situation so you can ask specific questions. Create a question fact sheet so you are prepared to share this information.
• What business solutions have you, your team, or your company created that might inspire new solutions for other companies? Companies in your industry may be facing the same or similar challenges. Create a case study or write up a solution fact sheet that you can share with people at the conference, complete with the technical details. Write a blog post about each of them, and link the fact sheet to your blog post. Make it easy for people who want the detailed information to get it. Print copies of your fact sheet and carry them with you at the event.

Picking Sessions

• If your event has multiple sessions at the same time, spend some time studying the agenda and schedule.
• Some topics will be relevant to your job, and others will appeal to your personal curiosity. Use a different color to mark each type of topic based on why you like it. It will help you to make decisions later.
• As you pick your selections for each time slot, keep in mind that the schedule can change at the last minute. Pick a first and second choice for each time slot in case your first choice is moved, the room is over capacity, or another reason keeps you from attending it.

Electronics

• Identify which electronic devices you need for the conference. A laptop can be handy, but also requires you to carry it around the event. Decide what you must take with you, and what you can leave in the hotel room for evenings and between sessions. A smart phone can give you access to your email, Twitter, and other communication tools during sessions.
• Check with your hotel to see if they provide in-room safes, and the dimensions so you know if your electronic devices will fit before you arrive. This is especially important if you want to leave your laptop in the room during the event.
• Many venues do not have electric outlets available, so you may have to rely on battery power to use your laptop or other device during the event. Create a recharging strategy and have extra batteries available if possible.
• Identify if the event provides free wifi internet access. With access, you can live blog the sessions, or tweet the key points live. Many cell phone carriers offer broadband access for portable devices, but these services may require an equipment purchase and a long term contract.

Your Turn

What do you think? Is there something I’ve forgotten to include? Share you suggestions and activities with the community through a comment.

Up next time: How to maximize your time at the event.

I’m very pleased to share with you this guest post by Debra Snider, a great writer with a strong voice for personal development. To learn more about Debra, check out the About The Author section at the end of this post.

With a little personal detective work, you can figure out what really makes you happy.

Success isn’t success if it doesn’t make you happy.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Even so, it’s not hard to mistake the trappings of success for what will actually make you happy. Particularly if you find yourself out of the traditional mainstream, it can be very difficult to tune out all the noise about what you should want and focus instead on going after what you do want.

A career is never really about any particular destination (as in job or net worth). It’s about the journey – how you feel and build skills and contribute along the way. Career satisfaction is not a means to an end. It is the end and it is what you should be prioritizing.

Defining Your Own Success

So what will make you happy? What matters to you? When do you feel most alive, most exhilarated, most inspired?

These are simple questions, but they can be frustratingly difficult to answer. The problem in our working lives is that we often fail to answer them consciously or consistently. Even when we do, we have a tendency to substitute someone else’s definition of what’s important for our own.

Beware of making assumptions about what you “must” care about or what “everyone” wants. You get to define satisfaction for yourself; other people’s definitions and traditional societal definitions might be useful, but they don’t own you.

Do you thrill to the chase like natural salespeople do? Is it crucial for you to feel you’re having an impact, that your voice is being heard, like I do? Are you happiest when you feel like a well-oiled part of a well-oiled machine? When you don’t have to wake up in the night in a cold sweat, thinking about work? When you do have to wake up in that cold sweat?

These are all clues to what satisfaction looks like for you. Once you tease out and articulate your personal clues, you’ll have the framework you need for structuring your work life, choosing sensibly and constructively between forks in the road, and focusing your time and energy – scarce resources both – on what matters most to you.

Happiness Detective Work

Getting at the elements of satisfaction for yourself is rather like inadvertently catching a glimpse of yourself in a store window as you walk down the street. The shock of unexpectedly seeing someone not quite you, then recognizing yourself, disliking certain aspects, being pleasantly surprised by others – I always find this a jolting experience because it makes me aware of how much of what I usually see in the mirror is a function of what I expect to see, what I’ve prepared myself to see, what I’d like to see, as opposed to what I’m actually looking at.

To find your true answers to “What pleases me?” and “What matters to me?” you have to cut through all your conditioning, all your “shoulds” and other prejudices, and all your comfortable fictions about yourself and the world around you. It’s imperative to get under the tangible specifics – the things you think you want – to uncover the elements of satisfaction – why you want them, what it is about them that will satisfy you.

Here are some tricks for doing this that work for me. I call them tricks advisedly; they really are my way of catching the unexpected glimpse of my true self.

Flip A Coin

When you have a decision to make and you’re agonizing over it, flip a coin. Not because you’ll let the coin decide for you, but because as that coin is falling, you’ll know which side you’ll want it to land on. I promise. Having thus tricked yourself into revealing what you want, you can analyze why and extrapolate the analysis to other decisions.

Shift Your Perspective

Find things that help you shift your perspective and use them to shake up your thinking. Longer-term time horizons and reminders of bigger issues and problems than our own make for wonderful perspective-shifters. These can be personal, like what you would want to have written as your epitaph, or they can be external, like significant world events, both positive and negative.

Take Inventory

Make a list of everything you’ve loved about your jobs, from “Feeling like a star” to “The free Coke machine” to “Really interesting work that made the time fly” to “Being able to leave at 5:00” to “Not having to wear pantyhose (or whatever the male equivalent is: wearing a tie, perhaps?).” Include everything; nothing’s too mundane for this list. Don’t edit or try to impress anyone. This list is for you. You can throw it out when you’re done if you don’t want it lying around. Then, do the same for everything you’ve hated about your jobs. This isn’t a test; just write down everything you can think of in both categories. When your lists are done, read them over and look for themes, patterns, conclusions you can draw about what really matters to you.

Question “Shoulds”

Before you make any assumption or decision about what you should do, ask yourself “Whose rules are these?” Don’t muddle what you want with what you believe will impress others or what you think you should want or what you think everybody wants. Make sure the rules you’re following are your own, and you’ll achieve the only kind of success that matters – the kind that satisfies you.

About The Author

Debra Snider is an author of fiction and nonfiction, a speaker on a variety of business and career topics, a no-longer-practicing lawyer, and a former financial services senior executive. Readers have called her novel A Merger of Equals “terrific,” “inspiring,” and “one of the most enlightening and true works of fiction about corporate life and love.” Her two business books offer innovative and proven organizational design strategies, complete with tools, tips and case studies.

Debra attributes her ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance throughout her highly successful 20-year legal and business career to “clear priorities and A+ organizational skills.” For more information on her books and her background, visit her website – www.debrasnider.com – where you’ll also find a wide variety of free productivity, leadership and other career resources.