Career

Convention Idea – Involve your attendees

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The continuing series on ways to add career elements to convention is here.

Putting career oriented elements in a convention is challenging.  There's time, equipment, and of course – guests.  Finding someone to speak on voice acting, graphic arts, publishing, and more means taking time away from other activities guests can do – and possibly sinking your plans for career panels.  You can't get everyone you want to do all the career events you want.

Turn to your attendees.  I've seen this done with great success.

Of your attendees, no small amount of them are probably involved in professions and careers that the rest of the attendees would be interested in.  You've probably got a huge amount of potential "guests" right there, or at least panelists who can get a discount on their membership.

Many conventions do this, but I'd advise going one step further and actively engaging people.  Find out who's attending with particular skills and backgrounds.  Ask them at the dead dog party.  Put posts in your forums.  See what you've got.

I've found attendee-run panels like this can be great successes because the pool of potential people can be huge – you can find all sorts of interesting experiences, specialized skills, and more.  Most people will jump at the chance to help out at a convention anyway.

Over time, I'd recommend building a list of potential "attendee contributors."  Court them, keep up with them, engage them.  They can provide you great panels and events, and help out in other ways.

– Steven Savage

Throw a Networking Event

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The convention ideas roundup is here.

When conventions focus on career events, its usually panels, workshops and demos.  This is and should be the norm, since these are the things people want and need.  I'd suggest conventions consider one addition to all of this.

A professional networking event.

Take an hour for people interested in going pro and give them a place to talk, exchange cards, and find out more about careers from each other.  INvite people from the professional panels you do run.  Have handouts and documents from recruiters, local businesses, etc.  For that matter, see if a local – or national – job board or service would want to sponsor it (oh, I'd love to see LinkedIN.com sponsor a geek networking event).

I confess it would be challenging – you'd probably need some icebreakers, and it may take a year or two to really reach a good self-perpetuating pace – but I think it's a worthy experiment.  People network at conventions anyway, adding professional networking to the mix would be a good goal to have.

The benefits I see:

  • It's another social event.  In general, I'm all for those.
  • It would let fans connect on a different level than the usually do – one that benefits them professionally.
  • Gathering your "pro panel" speakers would let them network with each other and further talk to and inform attendees.
  • It's a way to involve recruiters and colleges if you invite them as I mentioned previously.
  • Done right, it could be an event that grows and helps promote the convention.
  • It acts as a foundation for future professional events.

Again, this is more a theory of mine – but if anyone wants to try it out I'd be happy to lend some suggestions . . .

– Steven Savage

What Is Professional?

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"But I'm not a professional," many people say to me when I discuss their careers.

I hear this a lot.  Aspiring artists, writers, publishers, coders, etc.  They all figure they're not professional now, but at some point in the future they'll be pros.  Until that point they're not professionals – and thus they figure no one will talk to them, they can't join professional groups, etc.  Professional comes with some special future achievement like the right job or the right degree.

I think that's B.S.  Professional is an attitude.

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