Finding conferences and events - the intelligent way

You're a busy person: you’re on this site and reading this article because you want to grow your business, your skills and/or your networks. One of the many ways you can do this is by attending a conference, public seminar, webinar, networking event or other event. These will help you gain up to date information from experts in the field and network with like minded people. However, you need to find the best event for you and we know you don’t want to waste your time on events that are not suited to you, or the time to miss ones that are - your time is precious and limited. Follow our three steps to finding that perfect conference, public seminar, webinar, networking event or other event and never miss out on an event again.

1. Be selective and know what you are looking for.

Sounds simple and straightforward, but in our experience many people are not being selective and they do not know what they are looking for. This is not their fault, they are either too busy and have not had chance to go through some basic questions to understand what suits them, or they have been swept away by the buzz and excitement of getting their research, talk or paper accepted at a conference, and they haven't had time to step back and think how this was of use to them or their careers. We find there are two kinds of people.

Firstly, there’s the person who does not know what they are looking for so they don't even search for events in the first place. We all know people like this and we encounter them in our work lives all the time: you casually mention the last conference you attended, and they whine about how they would have liked to have gone to that event, or that no one told them, or even worse - that you should have told them about it.

Secondly, there’s the person who makes a point of attending every event they hear about, regardless of how important it is to them. They need to be ‘seen’ at the event and work the room so that everyone knows they’ve been there. The main problem with this kind of person is that they spend too much time attending events and do not spend time on implementing what they have learnt or time to make deeper connections with the people who they have met.

As with any search process, you need to begin with broad search terms and then use others to help you narrow down and focus on what is going to give you the maximum amount of impact for the time and money you invest in it. To create a compelling and useful set of keywords to help you carry out a web search for your ideal event we suggest you begin by considering which field or discipline you are interested in. It’s easy if you teach nurses, you will be looking for ‘nurse’ or ‘nursing’ in the event title or description, but you may also be interested in new teaching techniques - for example online or blended learning - and may want to use these terms in combination with others to find the ideal event. You may also have specific location preferences, or want to take advantage of the many online events. Make a note of these and then consider using them alone or in combination to find events and conferences.

2. Use an event and conference listing site

You can carry out a simple Google search, but your results could include old and outdated events and with each site providing details of their event in different ways, you will spend time scanning the information to find out if the event is right for you.

Using an event and conference listing site such as www.eventcentral.me will enable you to use your search terms and find events that are going to be the best value for your time and your budget. The results are displayed in a way that provides you with the key information at a glance so you don’t spend time wading through information only to find it has already taken place, is too far to travel to or the title doesn’t quite match the description so is not of use to you.

Event Central only displays current and active or live events and if you find something that is of interest but forget to make a note of it, you can easily search for it - repeating a similar search on the web may result in you having to carry out many search attempts before you find that event again.

There are other event listing sites, but be aware of some of these that scrape the web for details and simply display these on their sites. The event listings are not created by event managers themselves, and as such the details may be incorrect and result in you wasting more of your time.

3. Register for alerts

This should really be at the top of our list, but we felt you needed to appreciate the key principles before we talked about this. Whilst it’s great to jump onto event central and carry out a search every so often, other things will take up your time and you may miss out on events. So, automate this task and take advantage of our free alerts.

You can set alerts up and then sit back and forget to have to set a reminder to search for them. Alerts work in a similar way to alerts on other sites you may be used to, job search sites for example - your unique alerts will do the searching for you and you’ll receive the results directly to your inbox. You can also create a range of alerts - using different keywords - and suspend them during times you know you will be busy, or on holiday or unable to attend.

Image courtesy of Eliza Diamond