As previously mentioned, last week I presented at the Center for Nonprofit Management's Bridge to Excellence Conference.
Below I share a few thoughts. Some of these thoughts I have shared before about other conferences, but I think they bear repeating.
- Value of Practitioner Conferences. As an academic, it is easy for me to stay mostly in the academic world. I do think, however, going to practitioner conferences can be quite useful. Maybe most important, these conferences can help you meet people who are in practice, especially in your local area. People I have met at practitioner conferences have served as guest speakers in my classes, provided individual advice to students, helped students find jobs, and provided ideas for blog posts and scholarship. Practitioner conferences can also be useful as they tend to address very practical problems and remind me that I want my scholarship to speak to not only academics, but also the bar, bench, and business people. Attending one practitioner conference can lead to more opportunities—other speaking engagements, board member openings, and consulting opportunities, and the like.
- Check Technology Before Speaking. I learned this early in my academic career, and I found the IT person well before my talk and made sure the technology worked well. We had no issues. In other sessions, however, there were a number of technology delays and hiccups. Especially, if you plan to use a video file, make sure that the file loads and that the sounds works beforehand. One of the speakers made the mistake of mocking PowerPoint before launching her Storify presentation, which would not load at all because of Internet issues. Thankfully, you did not let that slow her down and provided an engaging presentation. Checking technology beforehand is not always possible, and IT support is not always available, but it is a rare conference that doesn't have a technology issue at some point, so I think more planning is usually appropriate.
- Think-Pair-Share and Q&A. Think-Pair-Share is a well-known teaching technique that I often use in my classes. You pose a question. Allow some time for thought. Break the room into small groups to discuss. Then ask for volunteers to share thoughts. I tried this technique at the conference yesterday and thought it worked well. We did not have an incredible amount of time, so I did not allow much time for individual thought beforehand, but the audience seemed to enjoy the discussion and the thoughts shared were mostly quite useful. One benefit of this technique is that it gets the audience involved. Another benefit is that it allows the audience members to meet and talk with people they may not have had a chance to otherwise. I was able to leave a few minutes at the end of my presentation for Q&A, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. Personally, I often find the Q&A among the most valuable time, depending on the audience and the questions. I generally wish more speakers left more time for Q&A.
- Time Between Sessions. CNM provided significant time between sessions – always at least 20 minutes, I think. But, as always seems to happen at conferences, sessions run long, and that time gets squeezed. The networking time between sessions can be incredibly useful, and so I think it is important to get speakers to honor the time limitations and leave a good bit of time between sessions, knowing that there will be delays. Part of the responsibility of staying on track falls on the speaker. The conference organizers can help by starting on time and providing notice when time is short. CNM did quite a good job keeping things on track, but even so, I wished for a bit more time between sessions.
- Vendor "Passports" and Drawings. CNM included a vendor "passport" in our materials. You got an orange sticker for each vendor you spoke to and if you filled out the passport (which had blank boxes next to vendor names) you could be entered into a drawing for excellent prizes at the end of the day. This seemed to be a good way to get attendees to engage with the vendors (who are also usually conference sponsors), and it seemed to be a good way to keep the attendees at the conference until the end of the day.
- Speed Consulting. CNM had a speed consulting session where you could speak briefly with experts in finance, law, management, grant-writing, etc. I could see a session like this being used at academic conferences, where more senior faculty members would offer bits of advice to prospective professors or more junior professors. I imagine, however, that more in-depth questions would have to be scheduled for another time. It did seem to be a good time to get some very preliminary thoughts and meet experts.
- Mementos. Thoughts may vary on this, but I like conferences that provide attendees and/or speakers with unique takeaway items. Some may think too much money is wasted on these trinkets, and that can be the case if the item is quite generic, but I think mementos can be a nice touch. I keep a few such items from conferences on my office shelves and they are nice reminders of the conferences. At CNM's conference, they provided little elephants, because the theme was "elephants in the room." I especially liked this gift because both of my young children are crazy about elephants and it was nice to bring them something home from work. One of my table-mates gave me her elephant so I had one for each child.