You’re off to a big conference and you know it’s gonna kick butt! Great speakers, diverse workshops, lots of people geeking out over things you yourself love to geek out about.
Indeed, good times are on the way. Best of all, it’s perfectly fine to break your diet. After all, conferences and dessert go hand-in-hand like, well… dessert and conferences. You can skip the molten fudge chocolate lava drama cake back home when it’s just a regular ol’ out-to-dinner night but when you’re advancing your pedagogical skills at a ferocious clip, it’s practically your academic duty to plunge in your fork, both wide and deep.
After all, you’re not doing it for yourself; you’re doing it for the kids!
To help maximize the benefits of attending this year’s brain exchange, here are five tips that can assist you to get the most out of this year’s shin-dig—steps to take AFTER you arrive home (and renew your vows to go to the gym).
Experience has taught me that managing the conference is fairly straightforward; managing all the information/follow-ups/things to do and people to contact afterwards, however, is a valuable skill worth knowing.
Note: All of these tips are unified by the critical belief that you must carve yourself out a few uninterrupted minutes—not hours, but minutes—after you leave the conference to maximize your attendance benefits.
Tip #1: Plan for a Sift Through (10–15 uninterrupted minutes)
Conferences are like an all-you-can-eat buffet where a ton of the food is good, good, good. And while you are there it is often wise to gobble, gobble, gobble as much as you can. But once you touch down on the home front, not every last bit of material you took home with you is going to meet your post-conference needs.
That’s why you plan for a sift-through.
After all, lots of presenters hand out materials, lots of Exhibit Hall folks give out informational brochures, and lots of people say things at lunch, while riding elevators, or while waiting in the bathroom lines. (That would be the ladies room, mind you—there is never a line for the guys, a chronic issue of conference gender bias decreed by no less than Mother Nature herself.)
Give yourself ten to 15 uninterrupted minutes (I really can’t stress the UNINTERRUPTED part) to thoughtfully filter through your take-home material and notes.
Don’t be afraid to categorize either:
- Pile 1: AWESOME stuff! For sure has value.
- Pile 2: Good stuff, worth keeping
- Pile 3: The jury is still out on this stuff
- Pile 4: Bzzzp! Why did I bother to schlep this home?
Tip #2: Schedule your “follow-ups” (5–10 uninterrupted minutes)
There are people you’ll want to send emails to in order to say “thank you.” There are people you’ll want to send emails to in order to say in order to say “great to meet you.” There are people you’ll want to send emails to in order to say “screw you.”
Kidding! (Don’t send those.)
Thing is, it’s far too easy to get back home, slide into the piles of work that grew from molehills to mountains (or from mountains to Mt. Everest!) while you were away and neglect to do the follow-ups which you really wanted/needed to do.
Plus, doing these follow-ups in a timely manner is often important. After all, did you ever get an email from someone that said, “Hey there, remember me? We chatted about X while grabbing a quick salad on that Saturday afternoon at that really awesome, big conference… like seventeen weeks ago?
Um, no.
But since we’re all pretty much polite we respond by saying, “Oh yeah… remind me again…” And what happens is that which could have been a very real, very meaningful connection that brought real oomph to something in your world ended up fizzling out simply due to its poorly timed follow up.
Within a week after you have “landed back home” make sure you have done your “connects.” Trust me, it pays off.
Tip #3: Do a Big Picture reflection (5–10 uninterrupted minutes)
The immensely popular system of Cornell Note Taking stresses the “Summary” section with a great deal of emphasis. Why? Because after you digest a lot of new material, taking a moment to reflect, paraphrase, and summarize anchors the learning and opens pathways to deeper understanding, fresher insights and yes (to go all brain-based research on you) more dynamic connections between newly created neurological pathways.
Here are four questions you might want to try and answer:
- What was your best experience of the conference? Why?
- What was the one thing you learned that stuck with you? Why?
- What skill do you now realize you need to add to your bag of tricks? (You can’t learn everything, but you can add something.) Why?
- Who can you connect with upon returning home in regards to the conference? (i.e. maybe it’s someone you met, maybe it’s a colleague at home worth having some new discussions with, and so on.)
Tip #4: Download that New App and noodle with it (10 uninterrupted minutes)
Inevitably, someone introduced you to a cool new app that sparked your imagination… but the conference just wasn’t the right time and place to get a good grip on it.
Here’s a means by which you can ramp up your digital skill set in the world of apps (and/or new software, as well):
- Download the app that caught your eye.
- Set a timer for 7–9 minutes. Start the timer and DO NOT allow yourself to judge the app or your own ability to use it until the timer goes off.
- Play with the app. Experiment, make mistakes, try things. Most importantly, refuse to judge or give up until the timer goes off.
- Reflect. Do you want to:
- Seek out help with the app by asking someone?
- Seek out help by jumping online and searching for tips? (Often there are videos out there which really can move mountains.)
- Click your heels cause you are WAY excited and now own a new tool that is gonna help a ton.
- Trash the app and just say, “Hey, I tried… not for me.”
Tip #5: Share! (time factor up to you)
Look, there are people who wanted to go the conference who did not get to attend for one reason or another. Go find them and hook them up with a tidbit, a piece of data, a new idea or even a tool. Conferences are all about generosity.
Did you hear about a great new book for reluctant readers? Tell someone. Did you grab a PowerPoint that you know a colleague will love? Turn them on to it. Sharing feels great and often when we come to our professions with the aim of giving we end up getting a whole lot more.
After all, these tips were free, weren’t they?
Alan Lawrence Sitomer was California's Teacher of the Year in 2007. He is also the author of multiple works for young readers, including Nerd Girls, the Hoopster trilogy, “The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez,” “Cinder-Smella,” and “The Alan Sitomer Book Jam.” He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. In addition to being an inner-city high school English teacher and former professor in the Graduate School of Education at Loyola Marymount University, Alan is a nationally renowned speaker specializing in engaging reluctant readers who received the 2004 award for Classroom Excellence from the Southern California Teachers of English, the 2003 Teacher of the Year honor from California Literacy, the 2007 Educator of the Year award by Loyola Marymount University and the 2008 Innovative Educator of the Year from The Insight Education Group. Visit him online at www.alanlawrencesitomer.com.