Crowd Haters Anonymous: 5 Tips For Surviving Big Conferences

I am making my way home to Pennsylvania from a professional conference in Warsaw, Poland. The attendees were other coaches from around the world. People and topics that I find compelling. And… what an exhausting few days.

Given my choice, I prefer small groups or one-on-one conversations or enjoying my own company. Ballrooms filled with hundreds of people, stages, lights and microphones –not so much. Fifty folks in a windowless room working to distill thoughts onto flipcharts in “idea labs”: not my favorite. Evening venues that require screaming in order to be heard by the person sitting 6 inches from me? Well, you get it.

Even though I am philosophically aligned with the people in the room and the topics we are discussing, I can get pretty sarcastic and negative if I don’t watch out. And when you are meeting someone for the first time who isn’t speaking their native language, being ironic doesn’t always work out that well. To ensure I don’t crash and burn at these events, I have created coping strategies for managing my energy and my sometimes-sharp tongue:

• Plan to give and receive value.

  What are personal, professional and organizational objectives for the conference? How will I make sure I stay on track to meet them? Here is a resource called ROI Handbook. Completing some of the questions in the handbook helped me remember that I needed to reserve energy just for staying on my game. And it gave me lots of other tips.

• Set up meetings in advance.

  Feeling like all of the people are glad to see everyone else but me causes me want to go back to my room. But e-mailing a couple of people I wanted to get to know in advance to set up a time to meet during the conference ensured me that at least two people would be looking for me!

• Make yourself useful.

  For me, having a role makes all the difference. Many conferences have jobs for volunteers to welcome attendees, facilitate breakout sessions or shepherd the masses. Last year I volunteered to take a small group out to dinner in a city I had never been to. I found my way to the restaurant a few minutes in advance and was able to know just enough to play host. In Warsaw, to promote a conference in 2018, I carried 300 plastic Heinz Pickle pins to give to my colleagues as conversation pieces. Handing out pickles at the cocktail hour gave me an entry line for crashing into groups of unknown attendees, and an exit line for moving on.

• Create small tribes.

  Like many global associations, the international coach federation is made up of regions. One of my region’s members created a Viber account (similar to What’s App) so we could find each other, send pictures, meet for meals and feel like a community. Even though most of us were strangers before the meeting, installing the free app in advance made the Midwest Region into long-lost friends before we arrived.

• Get out!

  You already know this but remember to do whatever you do to feel centered. Get your sleep and exercise, call home, read your local paper online, watch a silly TV show. At lunchtime when my brain was about to explode I dashed up the elevator, put the “do not disturb” sign on my door and practiced 5 minutes of breathing meditation. I made it to the buffet table with a more Zen feeling.

How do you survive huge conventions? What works for you? Please share your tips.

P.S. – By the way, our keynote speakers were Kjell Nordstrom (a brilliant hoodie wearing futurist) and Amy Blankson (down-to-earth ivy leaguer and happiness researcher). Both worth checking out.