Getting the Most Out of Your Conference – Effective Follow-Through

October 8, 2004 by Debra Russell

So you’ve been to this amazing conference, you’ve had a terrific time, learned all sorts of useful nuggets you know will help you jump to a whole new level in your artistic career, and you’ve made some really promising contacts.

Now, how do you put it all to use – how do you turn all this valuable ore into gold, before the conference becomes just another nice memory?

Schedules and Systems

So, it’s the day after the conference. You’ve finally had a decent night’s sleep. You’ve got lots of material from the conference and lots of ideas and energy. How do you channel that into specific action and concrete results?

First, look at your schedule over the next 3 weeks and pick out at least 3 time slots each week (i.e. 3-5 hours/week) to work on your follow-up from the conference. If you can do this planning before the conference, even better.

So what will you do with this time? First you want to review the material you came home with. Pull out all the business cards and, if appropriate, separate them into categories based on how you want to work with them. For example, is it someone who can hire you? Is it someone you want to collaborate with? Or is it a resource for future learning or projects? Then take all the material, including your notes from the break- out sessions and comb through it, looking for the ideas, the inspirations and the actions that you thought about taking, plus more contacts to add to your above list.

Once you’ve got that organized, a plan will be starting to form. Actions will be leaping off the page from all that material. This is when you could start to get overwhelmed. But remember – all things stem from the first step. So just take one step. Make a phone call. Start the ball rolling.

As you get into action, there will be follow-up actions to take – sending out press kits, calling the person back because they were busy that day, and so on. Use your contact management system to track these actions, so you don’t let things fall through the cracks.