So you’ve secured your ticket to an industry event—lucky you! It’s time to gear up and make the most of this experience. Whether you’re attending in person or via a remote-friendly livestream option, preparation is key to getting the most value. Follow these essential steps to maximize your experience and ensure you’re fully equipped for any conference, including our very own MozCon.
Define your goals and objectives
Knowing what you want to achieve will help you make the most of your time and focus on the sessions and activities that align with your interests. Think about what you want to have achieved once MozCon wraps. What do you want to feel? Aside from more than a little bit spent. Do you want to feel more connected? Do you want to have an answer to a burning question? Do you want to meet someone IRL? Do you want to have a stash of valuable notes to take away and share with your team? Sing Karaoke for the first time?
MozCon gives you the ability to achieve all these things. At MozCon, in addition to learning from incredible speakers, you will have the chance to mingle with like-minded people at our Birds of a Feather tables. Drop by vendor booths to explore a new solution to a problem. Connect with SEO experts at the Moz Pro booth, and much more! So pack your comfy shoes, as well as your party shoes and your best Karaoke jam at the after party.
Clear your calendar
That meeting can wait! While I don’t want to leave you in a jam, if your virtual sync can wait, and we know it can, then block it out of your calendar in advance. Too often I see folks hunched up in conference corridor corners taking calls during events. While there are lots of conferences going on throughout the year, your company, or if you’re freelance, YOU, have funded your ticket, meals, and travel to this event. Be present, be engaged, and be ready to learn.
“If you want to meet someone specific, talk to a speaker, or organize dinner with friends, plan in advance. Conferences move quickly, and nothing is more disappointing than trying to connect with someone on the last day only to realize they had to catch an early flight. Most speakers are happy to meet new people and talk about our topics and interests.” — Dr Pete Meyers
Familiarize yourself with the agenda
For multi-track conferences in particularly it’s important to know what sessions you want to attend. Take a peak at the speaker lineup and bookmark your favs. For the hyper-organised, or disorganised depending on how you look at it, you can add events to your calendar so you don’t forget (I pretty much do what my calender tells me to do anyway.) For those who attended Brighton SEO recently you’ll know that the smaller rooms tends to fill up quickly. I like to turn up early to the session and snag a chair so I don’t miss out.
MozCon is a single track event, so I definitely advise planning to attending every talk. There is plenty of time in the breaks to pick up swag, get a picture with your team and all that other good fun stuff. Take a closer look at the MozCon minute-by-minute agenda to identify the topics that align with your learning goals. Even if a particular topic seems unrelated to your work, it can still provide valuable insights.
“Because I work in local SEO, I attend MozCon’s livestream with my ears tuned to pick up any great tips that can be applied to local business marketing. Even if the main topic of a talk isn’t local search, I can come away with half a dozen tips that are relevant to my own area of marketing because organic and local SEO have so much overlap.” — Miriam Ellis
Book affiliated and non-affiliated side events
There are usually a lot of great events going on locally around conferences which give you more changes to meet with folks in your industry giving you another friendly face to connect with during the event. In Brighton I particularly enjoyed the SEO Mindset podcast recording and the inaugoral Green SEO meet up.
This year at MozCon the unofficial Sunday night bash is worth snagging a ticket to, hosted by the fabulous Noah Learner and Nick LeRoy.