Today has been a great day for me because I got to present a session called “How to Remember Faster and Read More” at Confex 2009 at Earls Court in London as part of the Business Skills and Personal development stream of the seminar programme.
It is a topic that is of interest to so many people but when I saw my slot in the programme – 10.30am on the morning of day 1 of a three day exhibition – I wasn’t sure if we would get too many in.
Even right up to 5 minutes before I got started, there were just a handful of people in the theatre but then all of a sudden there was a rush (I would like to say stampede but that would be a mild exaggeration to say the least) and in the end we had nearly 50 people, about three-quarters full.
The presentation went well and although they could hear me because I was mic’d up, it was difficult to hear the audiences responses in this interactive session because of the general background noise from the rest of the exhibition room.
Still the feedback I got was very good indeed and I was swamped with questions that I had to cut short because of the next speaker waiting to get on.
And then once I had prized myself away from the free biscuits and drinks in the VIP area (oh yes…I was a VIP you know!) I then had a very fruitful day wandering around the stands meeting some very interesting people.
Now with it being the international exhibition for people involved in the events, conferences and meetings industry, you would think that there would be plenty of opportunities to make useful contacts for me as a speaker.
Well there were but it is always a fine balance between finding out about the people you meet to see whether you can help them and just blurting out “I’m a speaker…use me……..please!”
I think the thing that bothers most event planners is the pleading and grabbing on to their legs shouting “Don’t ignore me….Pleeeeeeeeease don’t ignore me”.
They can handle the crying, it’s just the desperation that puts them off I think.
Still a useful lesson in networking…must remember to freshen the breath next time.
PS – If you were there at the event, drop me a comment to let me know how much value you got from the session