How to get most out of the conference (tip #1)

Image via Wikipedia

Going to conferences is exciting activity, where you get to spend a few days in a completely different environment, around peers listening to exciting people who you most often look up to. But most of trade-show conferences today are not organized like academic conferences where you get to take home a full binder of proceedings that allows you to study the presented material to certain depth and reference it.

There is a very simple trick to keep up with the ideas of smart person on the stage – look up his or hers page and add their blog to your Google Reader. Today’s conference superstars will often blog in great detail about things they present at conferences, post slide-shows and videos of their presentations at other events and link to other people in their field with like minded ideas. If you feel really attached to them, you can also start stalking following them on Twitter or FriendFeed.

The best part of this is – it’s free and it’s easy to incorporate it into your everyday rutine, since you most likely already drink the morning coffee while reading last nights feeds.