How to make the most of a conference

1. Maximise the reach of your own presentation:

• Make your slides available to your audience and more widely, eg put them on your LinkedIn profile or use a repository like Zenodo.
• Use social media to invite your network to attend your presentation.
• Tell people in your out-of-office email message that your're speaking at this conference.
• Use social media (with the conference hashtag) to communicate the key messages from your presentation.

2. Extend and strengthen your professional network:

• Include your contact details including social media in your slides.
• Arrange beforehand to meet up with people you know who are likely to be at the conference.
• Contact people on the programme you want to meet to ask if they will meet up with you during the conference.
• Attend the social events and talk to people you don't know.
• Exchange business cards and connect on social media with new contacts.
• Follow up conference contacts within a month after the conference.
• Do whatever you promised to do eg send a copy of your paper to someone.
• Make notes about the contacts, eg on the business cards or in Outlook contacts, to remind you where you met and what you have in common.
• Use social media (with conference hashtag) to share relevant information with your network.

3. Learn as much as possible:

• Attend the whole conference, choosing sessions which are most relevant for your work.
• Take notes, either digitally or on paper.
• Take photos of particularly significant slides to remember those.
• Present a seminar for your colleagues when you get back, or blog about the conference highlights on TÅ«hono - or both!
• Process the feedback you received on your presentation, both content and delivery.

Do you have any other suggestions to share?