What conferences work and how to go there

The most annoying thing about conferences is that they look like video. And the one that does not rewind. If the speaker could be read, it would save everyone a few days of life. More precisely, even this way: there are those that look like advertisements without rewinding, and there are those where they say that it is impossible to read anywhere.

The most pleasant thing is that people, meeting in person, share know-how and numbers. I do not know how in other areas, but in our retail business everyone will recognize everything at once. Somewhere they made a discount on rent in a shopping center - in a month no one will undertake for a regular price. Someone from the services screwed up - a reputation for life. Someone comes and says, “But we made a successful project for this one” - you can directly take and call, and it turns out that the third turtle is lying. Naturally, this is not always the case, but there is a very clear trend.
')
At major conferences, the most interesting thing happens where there is no press. Sometimes there is an unspoken rule - these conversations cannot be taken out. There we are talking about numbers. You can come after the performance and ask to see the figure from the financial model.

Naturally, we love to go to conferences for this, and for ideas. But at the same time it’s a pity. This creates a number of features.

Common channel

We have adopted this: there is a letter to about a dozen addresses - those who need to be aware of within the company. When someone goes to the conference, he does not just sit there, but logs what is happening. Through his personal point of view of the type: "A boring presentation about delivery services, nothing new", or - "They made a good project, you can ask around this part, here's a phone and mail". But in general - these are theses of the speech and voiced ideas. A letter is written right during the conference, then sent.

Here are some excerpts:

At first I got on some dude who told me that 65% of people fall off on paying with a card. Like, horror, horror, there is no money only for 11%, for the rest - a block from fraud, crappy interface, oblique 3D-security, use our product. These are all orders with payment cards that have not been made. The most useful thing in the presentation is the fact that 7 years ago, you had to go to an ATM to confirm the transaction, and now the code comes to the phone.

Our mutual friend *** speaks, slightly accepted before the performance. Likbezy ...

Another dude talks about the operational response. Each order on the site generates an SMS message to a nokia bolted to the call center. Squealed by disgusting - updated orders. They analyze all the calls on Wednesdays (the same environments) according to the checklist in order to understand when the CC relaxed ...

Speaker ***, SEO. He says that on a heap of goods up to 50% of requests are unique. In the sense that people are looking for a rare garbage like "board game monopoly with a car figurine." Advises *** for semantics (paid), says, sees related requests that Yandex does not see. I wrote, asked for a trial. We talked a lot about clustering queries, but I did not understand the practical conclusions ...

Aaaa: "There were too many orders, and we had to close the store" ...

Dima, you will see Artem - say that when leaving the stand, you need to take personal business cards and a signboard, not just a banner. I stood there, sold his platform later, promised 80% discounts, distributed the remaining business cards.

Discussion

These letters also include photos of the most interesting slides. Then it is all right in the correspondence is discussed on the subject of what and where you can tighten, and what affects. Each conference is such a brainstorming on these letters. All disperse in the corners and count. Then dozens of meetings are scheduled - with potential counterparties, about whom they responded well, with the other retailers to exchange experience further on a specific topic, prejudice each other, and so on.

Riteylopisimo writes each. This is usually a huge cart, where everything is: who spoke about what, how different companies cope with difficulties, what know-how they have, what they want to introduce with us, and also about useful contacts, new trends, inspired thoughts ... After the first conference Dima (the founder) had as many as 87 points, which he considered necessary to introduce in Mosigra. Then they became less and less.

We recently revised them - and understood how the worldview changed in 6 years. At the first conferences of serious guys, we were genuinely surprised that the manager of each store knows the economy of its store (now we have it), that development is concentrated on the regions of its presence - that is, they only enter new regions when it’s urgently needed (now we also have it, but the path was thorny) that there is a policy, what type of store should be the first in the region - for example, not to start from an island in a shopping center (now we also have this). What you need to enter into long-term contract with the shopping center - it is beneficial to all. That payment is a fixed + percentage of turnover (then we did not know, but now it is a constant practice). There are a lot of parameters that would be nice to measure (revenue per employee, per meter, etc.) - they are all needed.

Today, of course, we return with other entries. To the best of your understanding, this is work on LTV, team management, increasing IT efficiency, and, again, new contacts for joint projects, joint growth points.

Conference selection

Initially, the selection criterion was simple - where our name is to speak, there we listen. Tickets for a normal conference cost 15-35 thousand rubles (for a day or two), so everything was perceived as non-core expenses. And the speaker is allowed for so, and still fed.

It turned out that there are two types of conferences - “just to collect” and “for the good of the cause”. Let me explain the difference - when Boris Chertok in “Rockets and People” told about the conference of Soviet rocket engineers, this was the second useful type:


Conferences of the first type are when someone from the grocery services decides to sell himself at a higher price and gathers people and speakers. It is very clearly possible to distinguish such conferences “come to listen to advertising” and “useful for the sphere” by the clarity of the selection of speakers. Look at the agenda and looking for friends. If there are a lot of those whom you want to listen to, and they talk about in the same outline - it means that they thought about the plan in advance, and all this is for meaning. If the speakers are disagreeable, and there are frankly weak ones, this is an ass.

We once discussed business plans for conferences a lot with Lyokha 23derevo from JUG a couple of years ago. Since his conferences are self-supporting, that is, they depend on ticket sales and interestingness, he devotes a lot of time not only to selecting speakers, but also to preparing them. Three months before the conference - listening to the report, tips. If necessary - training for performances. If necessary - redraw the presentation in a more suitable for the big screen. And so on. Work there is felt there for a year - one conference is over, immediately there is a plan for the next one, and an understanding of who will speak about what. Regional conferences familiar to me gather where and later in a hurry. What else surprises me is that there is always something not enough time at the tap-off conferences and terrible haste. On normal, there is everything - from the travel card to the program by the minute in the spirit of “13:07 - 13:22 - Ivan Ivanov from the project of such and such, here are the theses”. Naturally, for such a lot easier to navigate. Even at the end, presentations are often shared or even prints of everything are given, it is also terribly convenient.

Some examples of good open conferences are “Turnover” in Moscow, for example, “Electronic Commerce” in mid-October (damn right guys, most Moscow councils from there), there will soon be “Secrets of Service” in Novosibirsk, before last OBR in Yekaterinburg was just perfect. I especially recommend the “Turnover” - there are a lot of cosmic things that may not be repeated right away, but there is an opportunity to communicate correctly and ask all the right questions on the sidelines and listen to trends. The people there are very frank (so much so that, as a result of the speeches, they appointed a couple of field checks somehow), the selection of speakers is always successful, the reports are selected so that a good exclusive plus insider information about the speaker’s company is obtained. “Electronic commerce” is one of the few conferences where we are pulling out a huge number of points for implementation in new letters. Good does Redis Retail Club, cool Digitale in St. Petersburg, excellent "Business with meaning." Interesting things happen to Retail Forum Russia.

Well, one more thing: sometimes we come for half an hour. If there is nothing interesting in each stream, it is better to leave right away than to endure this hell. Because adequate people have already done so exactly.

Regarding when to come, by the way, there is another difference of good conferences - usually in the morning more and more vigorous, and no one is expected from those who are late. Therefore, the first reports are fire-fire. No, it is clear that in the evening one or two more strong speakers are put so that the people do not leave ahead of time, but they must come from the very beginning. Hence another criterion: if you see that you can skip the first three reports, most likely you can skip the other ten.

That's about it. So do not discard this strange format of "live video". He is helpful. But only if you do not do everything. The criterion of "not like everyone else" - 50 business cards are being spent for the conference. And all of the case.