Turboboosting Conference Q&A

Search conferences are a no brainer to attend if you have an unlimited expense account.  For the rest of the world we need to make sure our limited budgets and schedules will be well spent at a search conference.  This is not for anyone that views conferences as a mental health break. For those people may I suggest going on a real vacation or join your friend’s bachelor party.  If you want to run a serious business then you need to make sure your investment in a conference will help you.

Let’s face it every conference is expensive. Conference passes range from $500-$2000. Airfare is another few hundred dollars not to mention meals and bar tabs. Plus you are not working for 3-5 days. It is a serious investment.

This investment can be well worth your time and money if you can get the answers to your tough questions. I have come up with an idea to improve the question & answer part of conference sessions. Currently most sessions have introductions of the speakers followed up by powerpoint presentations and then it is opened up for questions at the end of the session. This Q&A period normally turns into someone running around with the microphone throughout the audience followed by a poor attempt from audience members to articulate their question followed by a vague 30 second answer from the panel of speakers.

Why don’t search conferences allow attendees to submit questions before the conference?

If conferences allow early registrants to submit questions:

1. It would encourage people to register early which helps conference organizers plan conference logistics much better.
2. It would provide the conference speakers a valuable insight into what attendees are seeking from the session. Based on that insight the speakers can better customize their presentations to the audience leading to more useful and original powerpoints.
3. It allows for a more informed and prepared response with screen captures that can be popped up onto the screen to better demonstrate the answer. Ever hear a picture is worth a 1000 words? Instead of a conference speaker trying to describe with no visual aids they could be prepared with a pretty diagram and the infamous bullet points.
4. It ensures that commonly asked questions are addressed. This keeps the audience interested and avoids the possibility of the q&a time being monopolized by people with very unique questions that dont apply to anyone else in the room.
5. It gives the speakers something to do while the microphone is being run around the room to still accept last second questions and requests for clarifications.

To my friends who manage Pubcon, Search Engine Strategies and Search Marketing Expo why not turboboost your Q&A sessions and allow attendees to submite pre-conference questions to the individual sessions?

ps i luv all the conferences and have made money while attending each of them, to be fair i listed them in alphabetical order.