In the digital age, many questions the relevance of business conferences. We can now all benefit from a rich variety of resources to perfect our professional skills without ever leaving the comfort of our office or our home. With the advent of social media, webinars, blogs, and lectures presented on a deferred basis, are business conferences a thing of the past? Absolutely not!

However, it is necessary to attend conferences where the incurred expenses and invested time can easily be justified. For several reasons, a business conference well suited to one’s needs can be a real springboard for its career.

Broaden the Horizons of Your Professional Network

In the course of history, some of the best inventions, remedies, and discoveries were made by great minds — united in the quest for knowledge — who gathered together to better collaborate. Therefore, the X and Y generations also have everything to gain by pursuing this old tradition.

Participating in a conference related to one’s field of interest is an ideal opportunity to get to know other professionals sharing similar needs and challenges, in order to increase their opportunities for collaboration. Get out of your comfort zone and enjoy! More often than not, people are reluctant to visit conference halls for fear of being forced to talk to sellers for too long. Yet, some of these sellers are the best people to meet in order to know more about an industry’s current business climate, new products, and services to use, and to offer in order to remain competitive, or the advances of its direct and indirect competitors. Aim to meet some of them and try to make them your allies!

Talk to other participants, be interested in their needs, knowledge, challenges, and questions. Don’t just talk about yourself. By listening more, you will be able to know how you could work closely together or make them your future clients. When a potential business relationship is clearly established, take advantage of it to assert your skills and what you could do for them. But remember, this is done gradually! There is no point in starting a sales pitch without knowing that the other party is inclined to listen to it and take advantage of it. Also, listen to people’s opinions on your offer and consider their suggestions and recommendations in order to improve it accordingly.

International business conferences bring together people from different geographic regions working in the same field. Thus, they are a great way to develop new business relationships with people you would not otherwise have met. Ask them questions, learn more about how people in your profession work elsewhere in the world. Perhaps you could improve your processes, or help them improve their own, and thus broaden your network of influence?

Attending a business conference also presents other benefits and opportunities, such as finding a new job or recruiting qualified people to occupy an important position without having to deal with expensive company recruitment.

Keep Renewing to Stay Competitive

In the digital age, technologies and knowledge evolve at a fast pace and it is becoming increasingly difficult and laborious to stay up to date with new developments. Fortunately, orchestrating informative and inspiring business conferences is the job of good event planners. To do so, event coordinators do extensive research before selecting the speakers of any event. A well-thought event can thus be a golden opportunity to educate about the novelties in your favoured field. This is a condensed overview of what should hold your attention to allow you to evolve accordingly. By attending, you will be able to learn more about the advances in your field by some renowned personalities. In addition, you could benefit from a refreshing vision and solutions presented by newer players in your industry.

Unlike everything that is done online, attending a conference allows you to exchange in person on the work and research of your peers, and to quickly benefit from their advice to improve your own practice.

The workshops’ event requires your active participation? Once again, get out of your comfort zone and be a part of it! Many pieces of research have shown that information retention was greatly enhanced by a direct practice of new knowledge, versus simple passive listening.

Make Clean Slate

Too often, amid the heat of the action, we said to ourselves that we will eventually revisit and improve our ways for achieving or exceeding our goals. Unfortunately, over time, we remain stuck in our routine and we gradually lose our motivation.

Attending a conference is the opportunity to learn and challenge our status quo. These few days spent outside our usual working environment can be the long-awaited pause, even the necessary breadth to meditate on his business habits with a new outlook. Frequently, participants emerge from a good lecture with renewed motivation. They feel better equipped to meet challenges and pitfalls. Think of the feeling of renewal brought by every January 1st. We reflect on past events and set goals to become better versions of ourselves for the coming year. Then we put them into operation. Take advantage of business conferences to immerse yourself in this same mindset. You’ll get stronger!

Although we have highlighted the importance of business conferences, you must not forget that the latter requires a minimum of preparation. Do your research upstream and make sure that the event you want to attend matches your actual needs. Consult the program carefully prepared by the event planner in question and choose the conferences and workshops that will be profitable to you. Also, take a look at the list of exhibitors. Finally, set goals to achieve during the event. The latter will help you to benefit from a better return on your investment!