Top Conference Tips

Tip #1: Profile slide photo

If you're a speaker and you have a profile slide, make sure you use a photo from about 20 years ago. It'll confuse the audience a bit, but you'll probably look much better.

Tip #2: What to do when you're alone at a networking event

If you're alone at a networking event, just take out your phone and open your email, slack, or something that looks like work (NOT Tiktok or IG). Everyone will assume you're very busy, and might be important, so they won't bother you. You won't meet anybody if you use this tactic, but at least you won't feel so awkward.

Tip #3: What to do when you see the logo slide

When you're watching a presentation and you see a slide full of logos or maybe a cool looking graph, ALWAYS take a photo.

You'll certainly never use this photo for anything useful, or even look at it ever again, but:

1. It'll make you feel like you're being productive.
2. It'll make you feel like others around you are thinking you know what you're doing, or even have some super-strategy

Tip #4: Learn the industry jargon

Here’s the trick, though.

Don’t learn the jargon from your OWN industry. If you do that, you’ll have to learn how and when to use it, which is complex and risky.

It’s much easier to borrow from another industry. So, for example, if you’re going to a Travel conference, don’t bother with OTA, DMO, DMC, MICE, and all that nonsense.

Instead, you can use some terms from, say, Software, and when you’re in a group you want to impress, say something like: “Yeah, it’s crazy, our MRR in August jumped 20%, with flat CAC, [chuckle briefly for effect], but our CX iterations caused an uptick in LTV, resulting in an NRR of 124. [chuckle again, and shake your head a bit] Yeah, unbelievable”

Most people will just think you’re an idiot. But 1-2 might think you’re the smartest person in the whole conference.

Tip #5: Entering a presentation the right way

If you enter a presentation late (or leave early), you need to crouch down a tiny bit and duck your head about 15 degrees as you take your seat. This clearly won't unblock anybody's view, but it's important because.... it'll look weird if you don't, and everybody is watching you at this point (yes, everybody)

Tip #6: Learn Your Small Talk

People will always lead with something polite and creative like "How are you?"

I have great news. You only need to learn 3 words to respond:

Yeah - Good - Busy

And even better - you can use 1, 2 or 3 of these words in any order you choose. You can adjust intonation, speed, or even volume to make your response super interesting. Practice this in the mirror before you leave your hotel room, and you'll be fitting right in, in no time.

Tip #7: Learn Your Small Talk

In Tip 6 we learned about intros to small talk.

Later on, you’ll be at a networking event which is far too loud to hear anything. After about 2 minutes into a story, it's too awkward to say that you didn’t understand a word so far. This is not a problem. Just pretend everything is going smoothly. You can easily go on for about 12 minutes like this (longer after 11pm). The worst case scenario is when the other person looks they they expect a response, and you really have no idea if they just said? “My dog died” or “My sales were up 150% last month”. Its tricky, but look for facial cues: nod or shake your head, and say neutral things like “right” “wow” and "cor blimey"

I ran out at 7 - I really need 3 more to make a proper listicle.