2010 Making Media Connections Conference

I’m a total geek and when it comes to conferences there are a few things I usually do before heading out to participate. MMC2010 is unique and gives you the opportunity to connect with many people within the communications sector here in Chicago – journalists, communications staff, development folks, executive directors, technologists, PR professionals, educators, bloggers, techies and so much more! Here’s my top 5 things to do to prepare for the 2010 Making Media Connections Conference:

1. Prepare and rehearse your elevator speech. You will meet many potential journalists, freelancers and bloggers who may be interested in your story. Rehearse you elevator speech and be ready – but most importantly, be comfortable about what you have to say. If you need more tips, visit our website to get started.

2. Prepare a wifi or wireless communications device to participate in online conversations. Whether its your mobile phone, laptop or even iPad download a twitter client app to participate or monitor conversations taking place at the conference. Our hashtags this year are #mmc2010 and #mmc10 – why are there two? Not sure, but that’s what people seem to be using. Twitter client apps like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck can save searches in their own columns and can update automatically depending on your settings. You can even share some of the tweets or activities using your facebook app or via the Facebook website. You might have some friends or colleagues that can’t participate the day of but might be interested in hearing what’s happening. You can follow the workshop for updates @npcommunicator. Last year Lumity provided a mobile internet lab for our conference but will not be here this year, but MobileCitizen will and Columbia College Chicago will be providing free wifi… woohoo!

3. Bring plenty of contact cards and any materials that can reference your work. Most likely you will not have the chance to sit and talk to the person you’ve been wanting to pitch for hours on end, but the next best thing you can do is give them material that can help them find more information about you and your work.

4. Bring all of your conference information, including a print out of your registration information, maps to help you plan where you will park and the times and locations of your workshops and panels. You can find all of this information on our conference site. Rooms, locations and schedules for Wednesday and Thursday can be found here as well.

5. Check in with your staff who will not make it to the conference. Get some feedback from some of your staff that can’t make it. This will help you decide which panel sessions to drop into or what sort of materials you can gather from other organizations, news outlets and vendors.

These are just a few suggestions I know I usually follow. Do you have any you can share with others? Let us know! See you MMC2010!

– Demetrio