The following is an excerpt from my e-mail newsletter on Best Practices for Conferences, Vendors, and Speaker. Subscribe to the newsletter HERE.
Since we talked about great vendor booths in the last e-mail, I think it is time to talk about the dark side of them. Among all the free goodies, celebrity guests, and multimedia pizzazz, there is always someone like this guy-
I discreetly snapped this photo at a comic book convention where I delivered a keynote lecture on one of my most popular topics- Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. Believe it or not, this guy was a vendor trying to sell things. In other words, if you want to give him money bad enough, you have to wake him up. So, here is my advice for everyone:
Vendors- Don’t be this guy. Don’t hire this guy. Hire energetic people to staff your booths. Conference vending is grueling work, so hire people that can handle it.
Conference Planners- Set up your vendor agreements so that you can be selective. Go for quality instead of just filling space. The show floor is a lot of what drives expo attendance, and a bad experience on the floor will get talked about a lot.
Speakers- If you have a booth or you are selling books or goods at the back of the room, you better carry the enthusiasm from the stage back to that table.
Thanks, Dr. Dave
PS- Feel free to send me pics of bad booths. Just be discreet. No need to start a fight shooting pics.
PSS- The con where I took this photo is no longer in existence. Is it because this vendor slept through it? Possibly. I’ll let you decide.
This message was written by a team of geeks, nerds, gamers, and Dr. David Powers. You can always find us at www.callsignredbeard.com. Thanks for reading!
In the words of Starship Troopers, “Would you like to know more?”