Over the past few months have had pleasure of participating in various conferences. For the most part I leave with thought provoking questions and energized by the ideas and people, yet I am also left frustrated by some of the speakers and panelist. Here is my quick list of do’s and don’t if you ever have to present at a conference:
- Don’t recycle your generic presentation – you can tell three slides in. This is particularly true for CTO and CMO types who jump from conference to conference with the same presentation.
- Do have a strong point of view and or insight — tell us what your insight is really quickly and then convince the audience of your insight. This makes for a far more engaging presentation.
- Don’t say “that”s an interesting question” before answering every question — not all questions are interesting.
- Do tell relevant stories/examples and provide data when making your point.
- Don’t use generic industry terms “Web 2.0″ / “Convergence” / etc. more then once every 15 minutes.
Finally, in my opinion — small one day conferences (less then 500 people) are generally more productive then the mega conferences as you get to dig into details and spend quality time discussing real issues with people from your industry.
Happy conferencing!