Boosting Your Professional Development Through Conference Attendance
Posted by Communications on Jan. 17, 2022 / Blog / Subscribe 0
Attending conferences is invaluable to you as a professional and to your firm. As a marketing and business development professional, you’ve likely helped your team plan and execute conferences and, in some cases, even attended yourself to help manage the booth or a client event. With the 2022 schedule of regional SMPS conferences and the national SMPS Amplify A|E|C conference announced, it’s the perfect time to understand the value of attending a conference that supports YOUR professional goal and helps you pitch to your firm the benefits they will gain from your attendance.
Learning
Conferences are organized around emerging trends that will support your work and help your firm today and in the future. For example, this year’s SMPS Northeast Regional Conference (NERC) is organized around three modules:
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Fire Starting: Trends, technologies, and topics that will shape the industry of tomorrow and beyond.
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Gear Packing: Tools and resources for efficiency.
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Navigating: Personal and professional growth and development.
Many conferences offer dozens of sessions in multiple tracks so you can mix and match to create a schedule that keeps you learning and engaged. Some conferences are even offering on-demand or virtual sessions to maximize the benefits of attending.
Networking
Conferences are one of the single best ways to network because most attendees go with a goal to meet peers, share ideas, and network within the industry. Networking can help you:
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Build on connections: Conferences are a great place to build and strengthen existing professional relationships.
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Connect with your internal colleagues: Often internal marketing positions are focused on a certain geographical region or service area and marketers within a firm don’t get the chance to collaborate and connect on a regular basis outside of their core team. An SMPS conference, whether regional or national, provides a great opportunity to meet or reconnect with peers in your firm and collaborate on new ideas that can you bring back.
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Find new business: Conferences often lead to new customer and client relationships.
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Connect with mentors and peers: You could meet a fellow attendee willing to mentor you and assist in your career development or a peer to bond with over shared experiences and lessons learned.
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Have new experiences with industry peers: At conferences, the conversations that fuel your business often occur at unique experiences you can’t have elsewhere.
Did you know? The following chapters are included in the Northeast Region: Boston, Central Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Northern New England, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Upstate New York, and Washington, DC. The Amplify A|E|C conference is SMPS’s national conference and will include attendees from coast from coast and most SMPS chapters.
Spark New Ideas
Every conference features at least one keynote speaker who shares their unique perspective or professional experience. They are selected to inspire attendees based on topics relevant to the conference, industry, and attendees. For example, at this year’s SMPS NERC, Frank Stasiowski, founder and CEO of PSMJ Resources, an A/E/C consulting firm, will be talking about the future of design and how to achieve A/E/C success. While the keynote speakers for Amplify A|E|C have not been announced yet, last year’s conference featured Bonin Bough. Bonin Bough shared during his keynote presentation how he took brands like Oreo, Cadbury’s, Pepsi, and Gatorade and helped them to drive strategic initiatives and develop leading-edge marketing campaigns.
In addition to inspiring keynote speakers, SMPS conferences include marketing, communications, and business development professionals from all over the country who will be in attendance presenting great sessions. Their presentations and panels are meant to capture the hot topics of the moment, increase technical skills, and present new ideas that you can use in your everyday work.
Value
A professional conference is an incredible gathering of resources. It gives you the opportunity to completely immerse yourself in your profession with a community of like-minded peers. From new business to information you pick up that could lead to a breakthrough, to the connections you make, the return on investment has the potential to be exponentially higher than the cost of attending.
Don’t forget to showcase the value of a conference when making the pitch to your company on attending. The cost for two to three days of professional technical sessions, keynote speakers, and networking time often is significantly less than attending individual sessions throughout the year. For those with their CPSM certification, attending conferences is an additional, and cost-effective way to earn CEUs.
Click the links below to learn more about NERC and Amplify A|E|C:
SMPS Northeast Regional Conference
Thank you to the Northeast Regional Conference Planning Committee for providing information for this month’s blog.
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