Last week at SXSW, Derek Sivers led a discussion he titled “The Tao of the Conference.”
In it Derek shared advice on how musicians can best network and receive big gains from conferences like SXSW. In his presentation he played some crowd-sourced videos in which he asked musicians and other professionals what “real-world” tips they had for conference attendees. The videos included clips from Tim Ferriss, Larry Weintraub, myself and a bunch of other musicians, marketers, PR people and music business pros.
I wanted to thank Derek for sharing my clip. It made me feel like I was in Austin in spirit.
Below is a clip from Derek, my clip and Tim’s clip. (RSS Readers may have to clip through to see all the videos)
Derek Sivers SXSW Clip – The Tao of the Conference
Tim Ferriss on Conferences
My clip used in the presentation
Check out all the videos and people that submitted clips on Derek’s site.
To put in my 2 cents and to summarize the overwhelming theme of Derek’s talk, let’s break down how to have a successful conference:
- Do your homework – know who you are looking to approach and have something to say to them
- Give before you ask
- Don’t just hand someone a CD, it’s going in the trash
- Follow up – no deals are made at the actual conference. The deals are made by the relationships you create and the followup on those relationships
- Be nice, no egos and no bad attitudes
- How can you provide value to what that person does?
These are just some things off the top of my head as well as from my video and watching the clip from Derek. Let’s end today’s post with: what has been the most successful thing that has come out of an event or a conference for you? Why do you think that was? Let’s chalk it up in the comments.
-Greg
