I went to a conference in Austin this past weekend for leaders of an education organization. I lucked out that the first speaker made an important point for all of us to remember.
A teacher goes to a conference and picks up great ideas to take back to her classroom. She gets home and puts all her notes into the filing cabinet. When do you think those notes see the light of day? When she retires…
It doesn’t take much to pick up lots of new ideas and learn many new things in an effective conference. But c’mon? Who can remember all of this? Practice it? Put it to use? The president and I discuss the various ideas we picked up and realize we’re thinking too big and it feels like we face a giant to-do list.
Taking action after a conference
I can hear all the David Allen fans shouting. Instead, we agree that we need to pick three or four doable things and start with those. The notes won’t go away as we’ll use them to help us with those three or four things while reminding us of others. If we get those first items done, then back to the notes for more ideas and get the next round done.
In one of the sessions, the speaker kept walking past the front rows and I couldn’t lip-read through her head. It wasn’t her fault as I never had a chance to give her a heads-up. So I watched the presentation, which had just the right amount of notes for me, and started working on an article.
I’ve submitted the article to the president. So that’s one idea done. The next idea is to submit an article in the local newspaper’s neighborhood Web site. Already, I’ve sent an email to the person I want to feature and it won’t take much to pull it together once I hear back.
I work as a historian for one of the boards I’m on. Ideally, it’d be lovely to pull together a page for the scrapbook covering the conference today. We haven’t decided on what approach or supplies we’re going to use yet as the committee is still forming.
At least, I’ve got a picture from the event. Just need to grab an accordion folder, print the picture, write a short caption on a sticky note, and put it in the accordion folder sorted by month. When we decide, all we need to do is pull out the photos and captions for the event and that’s one page.
Shares presentations and notes
The conference included evaluation forms for every session. I repeatedly wrote, “Please post materials on the organization’s Website.” We can’t all be in every session that interests us. I also requested a wiki or some forum where we could post our notes. Interestingly, the conference was at Austin Convention Center — the home of SXSW.
You can count on the attendees of SXSW Interactive to share their notes. They probably do the best job of it, making it challenging for all of us to figure out what to read and do. I captured all of my session notes on my laptop (easier to type notes than write notes since I don’t have to look down to type) and I want to share them.
Well, I’ve been home for about five hours and already I have an article, a blog entry, an email, and a short to-do list. A busy week awaits me, but I hope I will sneak in another thing or two to take what I learned further. What do you do after returning from a great conference full of fun and energy?
Meryl, your energy is inspiring and it does sound like a busy (but great) week! When I attend a conference where there are many ideas, I try to focus on just a few and implement the learning immediately. As I practice what is preached, it really does stick. I can still recall things I learned (and still use) at conferences attended 10 years ago! Even if you take only one idea or suggestion and use it, the experience is worthwhile.
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I have piles and piles in my office from conferences and meetings. I always have good intentions but horrible follow-through. This week though, I’m working on following up with one conference that I went to. I think many times, the stuff shared and learned at conferences often gets lost afterwards.
Thank you Karen and Karen. Karen S, that’s amazing you remember stuff from years ago. Sounds like you do a great job in picking things and making the most of them.
Karen P, I think you did great with Blogcon as you followed up with many people in twitter and in the blogs.
I’ve been frustrated with repeatedly filing notes after a conference/meeting over the years, and never finding time to review the notes.
This year, I started using Evernoteto record my notes.
What a treat! I’ve discovered I reference the notes frequently now, after the event and weeks later. Evernote’s synchronization feature means I can capture screenshots and write notes offline, on my laptop, and even on my cell phone.