I can’t believe a little over a week has passed since I was at the digitalNow conference in Orlando. Part of me feels like I just left, part of me feels like it was forever ago. I guess all good things have to come to an end. The true mark of a great conference experience can be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

At the end of each conference that I attend I ask myself the following questions: How were the individual sessions? How were the keynote speakers? How was the space and time managed? What was the quality of the interactions? Did I leave the conference knowing just a bit more about topics that I am extremely passionate about as well as topics I had never contemplated?

Similarly I also find myself evaluating the qualitative aspects of the conference as well. How many of the sessions were thought provoking or really worth attending? How many of the key note speakers would I want to see again? How many new people did I meet? Of those people that I met how many do I plan on staying in contact with? How many old friends was I able to catch up with? How many new ideas did I leave with? Of those how many are immediately actionable? How many can I act on in the future? If I had a choice of paying any amount of money for the privilege of attending the conference how much would I be willing to pay?

From both a qualitative and quantitative perspective I have to say that the conference was a great success. Very rarely do I attend a conference that I am conflicted between session times and across the whole agenda regarding which sessions to attend. This is one of the few exceptions in recent memory. I actually had to plan out my time really effectively and on a few occasions had to chose between two concurrent sessions that I wanted to attend. Needless to say the conference was programmed very well. I have to say the same for each of the keynote speakers. Of the four speakers, three of them (Chris Anderson, Jeremy Gutsche, and Dan Heath) left an immediate impacts on me, and only one left me questioning the relevance of her presentation (I later realized a lot of value from the presentation but will share that in a future post). Even so it was a good hit rate for the keynotes.

As far as the time and space goes, I have no complaints about either. There was a generous amount of time in between sessions to check voice mail, get a beverage or snack and network. The space was well used with a phenomenal ratio of space per attendee. The fact that the conference center was attached to the hotel made running back and forth between my room and the conference quite easily too. Add to all of those facts that we were within an earshot of Disney World and easily accessible transportation made the location pretty magical (pardon the pun) even for those who aren’t huge Disney fans.

The quality of the interactions perhaps one of the most important litmus tests of any conference was excellent. There was a great mix of attendees from senior executives to more junior staff members but all had interesting perspectives and plenty to share. The presenters, panelists and facilitators also represented a broad array of skills and experiences. When mixed together there was the right amount of people with the right kinds of experience so there was never a shortage of people to talk to, things to consider and ideas to glean. I walked out of the conference with a number of great ideas largely related to online communities and because that is my primary focus now, it was just in time. Some of the ideas were simply a result of synthesizing the knowledge that I absorbed by attending the sessions. However, many others were simply reactions (some positive, some not so positive) to something I saw or heard from other participants. There is no one source for ideas so I am happy to take them from where I can find them.

And as far as meeting up with new acquaintances as well as catching up with old friends the event was pretty good for that as well. Granted it wasn’t as well attended as some of the ASAE events where many of the folks that I am closest to (whats up Jamie, Jeff D., Maddie, Zach, Lindy, David, Andy and Jeff C. and a whole bunch more) but there was no shortage of great people here (whats up Greg, Ben, Rob, Andrew and Becky). Suffice it to say, a lively conversation was never far away. I was challenged as much by the conversations that I had after hours as the one’s that I had at the conference but the sum total of all of them contributed to the same end result. I learned a lot about a number of topics, learned some things about a number of great people and learned even more about myself. Without getting into the specifics (perhaps I will save this for another post) it was well worth the price of admission and then some. In fact I’d go so far as to say that any interaction that can return similar thoughts and idea generation guarantees an immediate ROI.

It goes to show that in the right environment with the right people and a common theme pretty incredible things can happen. So how do define a good conference experience? What qualitative and quantitative metrics do you use to measure personal and professional return on your conference investment? Drop your comments below. I am listening!

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