27 Things To Do Before a Conference

For those of you who travel to a lot of conferences, or have trouble getting ready for or get stressed about going to a conference, Chris Brogan has a good post called 27 Things To Do Before a Conference

You don’t need to do all 27:) He just has it as a useful categorized checklist of possibilities that you can pick and chose from, divided under 3 categories. Research, content preparation, promotion and other prep. Here’s a few and there are more in his comments section:

Backup your laptop before you travel. You might not think about it, but there are many chances to destroy your data once you’re on the road. Make sure that’s not going to happen.

Check out the exhibitors and sponsors for the event. Click through the site links and visit their web pages. What do you know about them? Are they a prospective vendor for you? A client? Do you see some business value in meeting any of them?

Visit Flickr and look for recent pictures of attendees or other people you hope to meet at the event. I keep a little document of all the faces I might want to meet, sometimes with a few facts about the person, in a document. (I don’t do this for every event, but when I do, it helps).

You might even have different checklists for different types of events, and put them in different places including taped to the inside of your suitcase.

Also remember to schedule a reminder to start packing at least 2 days before the event to reduce the all too typical ADHD last packing panic.