The Right Way to Attend a Conference: Bill Good

It’s Serendipity.

From experience, I can tell you that Serendipity arrives. She (he?) does not come when called. However, there are a set of factors that welcome it, and you will find these, interestingly, at a conference:

1. Fire hose of data. The muse has an insatiable appetite for information. Apparently, all of these data points bang around in that marvelous supercomputer we all carry with us. An old friend once defined an “idea” as “connecting two or more things you know in a new way.” The more data swirling around, the more connections. The process seems to accelerate exponentially the more new data you absorb.

2. Connections (or collisions in the words of Tony Hsieh). Tony was the keynote speaker. Unassuming style. Ladled huge doses of wisdom. You may recall he sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion and remains its CEO. He made the point: Great ideas do not come from the seclusion of the countryside. They come from the collisions of a city—or a conference where thousands of ideas float around.

Tony’s thoughts on “collisions” forced me to modify my formula for attending a conference, and for inviting a visit from Serendipity.

New Formula

I attend as many presentations as possible. I sit up front. I take copious notes. (Those of you who sit in the back so you can text and surf: You are annoying the muse. What a waste!)

I take copious notes. I need to absorb as many data points as possible. Sometimes Serendipity will visit when I review notes. But I have to be able to read the notes. As my team knows, handwriting is an issue for me. I need the notes to be complete.

In taking notes, I am certainly not trying to do stenographic recording. Rather, I am at least trying to get an outline of all the topics covered. Sometimes I might have only a word or two for each topic.

My notes usually mean something for about 24 hours. Then they descend into gibberish. As quickly as possible, I need to get off in a corner and dictate a summary of each of the speakers. My dictation tool of choice, of course, is Copytalk. As I dictate, I don’t edit; I just dictate whatever comes to mind by looking at my notes. After the conference, I review the transcripts, add additional recollections and put these in a “Conference” folder on my laptop.

Here are some of my edited notes from Tony Hsieh’s presentation:

He has put up $350 million to reinvent the area around Zappos new headquarters, the old Las Vegas City Hall. His operating basis is that chance encounters (which he calls “collisions”) spark innovation. To build a city in which these collisions occur, Mr. Hsieh (pronounced shay) is providing seed capital to small businesses who will locate in the several blocks around Zappos. He is pulling a population of young entrepreneurs in a city of his own creation where these collisions can occur. He is actually conceiving the city as a startup! In the process, he has rethought the old tired failing concept of “urban renewal.”

Somewhere in Tony’s talk, Serendipity whispered to me. “It’s the collisions. The more the better.”

I added a piece to my conference routine.

For years, I have made it a practice to visit as many vendors at a conference as possible. I didn’t understand why these encounters were important, I knew they were. But Serendipity told me, “Bring me more collisions. Then I can give you better ideas.” While Tony quickly made his exit, I made it a point to introduce myself to all the remaining speakers as well as many vendors and conference attendees.

Collide more.

Conference Cheat Sheet

Try it. Cut out the six steps below. Put them in your conference notebook. See if Serendipity doesn’t visit you.

1. Attend all the meetings. Sit in front. Take copious notes. Turn off your phone.

2. Improve on the notes by dictating them as soon as possible.

3. Make it a point to sit with people you don’t know.

4. Introduce yourself to all the vendors.

5. Introduce yourself to, and if possible chat with, all the speakers.

6. Be alert. Serendipity visits conferences. She will visit you if you play her game.

Did the muse visit me at the Barron’s conference? You bet.