{"id":3284,"date":"2019-10-20T13:57:47","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T16:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/?p=3284"},"modified":"2019-10-22T11:14:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T14:14:55","slug":"attending-a-conference-these-are-my-top-5-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/attending-a-conference-these-are-my-top-5-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Attending a Conference? These Are My Top 5 Tips!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.elearningguild.com\/devlearn\/content\/5800\/devlearn-2019-conference--expo--home\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DevLearn<\/a> is upon us and I&#8217;m sad that I&#8217;ll be missing this one. I&#8217;m not cleared to fly post-op until the beginning of November, so I will desperately be consuming the conference backchannel all week long! In any event, several of my colleagues have been sharing their conference-related tips, so I thought if I can&#8217;t beat &#8217;em, join &#8217;em.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Tip #1: Be Comfortable<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So you&#8217;re attending a conference, you&#8217;re going to spend your days (and sometimes evenings) learning. You will do a lot of sitting and\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>a lot<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u00a0<\/span> of walking. If you have an activity tracker, THIS is the time to capitalize on all of the steps you will be getting in!<\/p>\n<p>Because you will be doing so much walking, you will want to make sure you pack a sensible shoe, one that you won&#8217;t want to set on fire immediately after the conference because of all the blisters they gave you. When I travel, I usually bring options, but will ultimately choose my old reliable Birkenstocks because 1) they go with everything, and 2) they&#8217;re the most comfortable shoes I own.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/367585971\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><center><\/center>In addition to comfortable shoes, make sure you bring your most comfortable outfits &#8211; things that you won&#8217;t mind spending 8-10 hours in. I like to pack comfortable dress pants, flowy dresses, and jeans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Tip #2: Fuel Yourself and Pack Snacks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I like to think that I&#8217;m good at taking breaks, making time for myself, and being smart about eating lunch and drinking water&#8230;but I&#8217;m not. I&#8217;ve learned that in order to set myself up for success, I need to pack myself a range of snacks. Because there&#8217;s so much going on at conferences from the sessions to the expo to the networking nights to the other random conference events, I can&#8217;t guarantee that I&#8217;ll force myself to eat regular meals.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I do: I wake up a little earlier and make time for a decent breakfast. I&#8217;ll either fuel myself with something healthy and hearty like oatmeal or eggs. Then, I&#8217;ll hit up Starbucks and get the largest vat of coffee they offer. While there, I&#8217;ll load up on my pocket snacks of nuts\/fruit\/something sweet, and will also grab a green juice and fill up my water.<\/p>\n<p>Packing snacks ensures that whatever time it is and wherever I am in my conference-day journey, I can reach into my bag and shovel something into my mouth. This is a very important tip.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Tip #3: Be Organized<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This concept can be applied to several areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Session Selection:<\/strong> Be sure to use the conference app to select your sessions and plan out your day. Before the conference is in full swing, do a quick lap around the event area to identify\/locate the rooms for the sessions you want to attend. With big conferences (e.g., ATD ICE), you usually don&#8217;t have a ton of time to get from room to room, and not being organized in terms of conference geography may contribute to you missing a session you really wanted to attend.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Note-Taking:<\/strong> You are most likely at a conference for professional development reasons, so you&#8217;re most likely going to do a ton of learning and a ton of note-taking. I recommend setting up a notebook page (physical or digital) for each session you plan on attending, ahead of time, so that you can simply flip to that page and start taking your notes. Don&#8217;t forget your pen\/notebook\/laptop. Depending on how organized you are, you might be able to come back to your organization post-conference and share what you&#8217;ve learned with your colleagues.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Devices:<\/strong> Make sure you pack your devices, such as phone, tablet, laptop, and ensure you pack all of the related charging peripherals. You will deplete your batteries faster than you think.\n<ul>\n<li>If you are participating in a conference event, such as DemoFest, this is doubly important for you! Make sure everything is pre-charged and bring fully charged battery packs in case you deplete yours.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Tip #4: Network, Network, Network!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As a Learning and Development (L&amp;D) professional, your participation in these conferences is also to network your butt off and make as many connections as you can. L&amp;D is not only a great world to work in, it&#8217;s a great community to be a part of and I have met some of my best friends at these events, so don&#8217;t skimp on this tip!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Tip #5: Treat Yo&#8217; Self<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Now this is a tip that I learned just last year. If you have spare time at the conference&#8230;say you got in early or you fly out late, make some time for yourself. You&#8217;ve had a long week. This could be something as simple as taking yourself out for lunch to a nice restaurant, hanging out by the hotel pool, or my personal favourite: spring for a spa day (you will thank me later).<\/p>\n<p>Last year at DevLearn, I delivered a pre-conference certificate workshop, facilitated a morning buzz, judged a HyperDrive competition, delivered a Bring Your Own Device session, participated in (and won!) DemoFest, and then filled up on all of the conference sessions and networking I could. My Friday I. Was. Beat! My flight didn&#8217;t leave until 11pm, so I finished up with the conference and admitted myself to the spa at the Mirage for the rest of the day. It was hands down the best decision I made. I got on my red-eye flight back home so relaxed and zen that I couldn&#8217;t care less about being trapped in a metal can in the sky for 7 hours. It was luxurious! 10 out of 10 would recommend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DevLearn is upon us and I&#8217;m sad that I&#8217;ll be missing this one. I&#8217;m not cleared to fly post-op until the beginning of November, so I will desperately be consuming the conference backchannel all week long! In any event, several of my colleagues have been sharing their conference-related tips, so I thought if I can&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[3],"tags":[25],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4s3cq-QY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3284"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3288,"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284\/revisions\/3288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleychiasson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}