Conferences cost time and money so you’d best use both wisely.

By Geoffrey James

Industry conferences can be pricey. Attendance fees can be thousands of dollars and that’s in addition to travel costs. There’s also lost opportunity cost, because you’re not getting your normal work done while you attend.

Back in the day, I attended as many as 10 industry conferences every year. Since the average conference runs about three days and travel another two (I live in the boonies), I was spending roughly a fifth of work year at industry conferences.

Since I hate wasting time, I made certain that my conference time was well-spent by following these nine simple rules:

1. Know exactly why you’re attending.

As with anything else in business, you get what you focus on. Going to a conference to “shake off the cobwebs” of your current thinking demands a different approach than, say, going to…