Brilliant business opportunity, juicy junket or three days of costly hard slog- what do conferences mean to you? Read EN's survival guide.

Attending a major industry conference could cost you anywhere from the low hundreds to thousands of pounds per delegate – and that’s before travel, hotel bills and subsistence. Then, of course, there’s the opportunity cost of not being at your desk – though admittedly communications technology has reduced this in recent years.

So if you, or your staff, fancy going on a beano to a conference or exhibition you really should ask some searching questions beforehand. Steve Purdham, the entrepreneur whose quoted internet filtering business, Surfcontrol, was last year bought by Websense for £204 million, now runs music download company We7 with prog rock legend Peter Gabriel. He tends to be one of the speakers at conferences these days – but he’s also been a delegate at a fair few in his time.

His advice is succinct: “Ask yourself why the hell you are going there. A lot of people just go to conferences because they exist, but that doesn’t mean you should be there. You need to know what you expect to get out of it – it could be as simple as meeting one person.” Is that not a bit of a pricey way of arranging a meeting? “You can use a conference as a catalyst to meet people whose diaries you might not otherwise get into by contacting them beforehand to see if they are going and suggesting you meet up there,” Purdham counters.

Darryl Cooke, head of corporate at the Manchester office of law firm Hill Dickinson also  emphasises the importance of planning ahead. He says, “I think there is an art in going to these things. You have to prepare as much as you can. “Find out beforehand who is going to be thereand plan who you need to talk to. Most people just walk around and network with no real plan – that’s not all that effective.”

Many conferences don’t just include a programme of speakers and seminars – they also double up as trade shows, and make money for the organisers from the fees charged to exhibitors. According to the entrepreneurs to whom EN spoke, exhibitions can also provide good networking opportunities – but only if you work the floor in the most effective way.

Again, preparation should be the watchword. Nick Porter of events business Fresh sees events of this kind from both the exhibitor and delegate sides, and says you should begin by visiting the exhibition website and deciding in advance which stands you definitely want to visit.

Whilst agreeing that you should go into any exhibition with a fixed to-do list of stands to visit, Purdham also puts a counter-argument: “Once I’ve achieved everything I’d planned to do, I like purposely to scan the exhibition again without a plan and go around to look at what’s new, and what I wasn’t expecting.”

What happens, though, when you get to the stand of the prospect you’ve been looking forward to contacting for months only to find it’s staffed exclusively by junior sales execs or semi-clad agency “demo dollies” looking to exchange your business card for the chance to win an iPod Shuffle?

Tony Caldeira, of £10 million-turnover international soft furnishings business Caldeira, attends his share of trade fairs, as well as political conferences in his capacity as an unofficial spokesman for the Conservative Party in the North West. He says that, as the proprietor of his business, he never usually has trouble getting to speak to the people he wants to at exhibitions, but admits that sometimes his staff can encounter problems.

In these cases, Fresh’s Nick Porter says, delegates need to be firm: “People are sometimes too nice at exhibitions. You need to tell their sales people what you want and who you want to speak to.”

Working the exhibition floor is only part of the story though. Anything badged as a “conference” will also include a programme of presentations and, possibly, seminars and workshops. These can be deadly dull – especially at longer, multi-day events with “breakout sessions” galore – but are also what you’re paying for if you buy a full delegate ticket rather than an exhibition pass, so it makes sense to get what you can out of them.

The obvious advice is, as with exhibition stands, to read the programme and plan in advance what you would definitely like to see, and what you think you could happily go to your grave without knowing about.

Once you are in any given session, says Tony Caldeira (who speaks at events as well as attending as a delegate), question-and-answer sessions can often be as useful as the speeches themselves.

He explains: “You find people who have been dying to ask a question at the end of the presentation, but then just don’t. If the speakers don’t cover something you want to know about, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask.”

Packed seminar schedules interspersed with sessions tramping the exhibition floor can take their toll, and Caldeira advises those attending longer events to pace themselves – and, again, it all comes down to forward planning. “You’ve got to manage your time really well. Make sure you plan in advance what you really want to see, and maybe give your brain a rest if it’s only of marginal interest.”

He also suggests taking a notepad to longer conferences so you can jot down salient points in presentations and details of the different companies you come across in the exhibition hall.

He says, “If you are there for four days, you will never in a million years remember everything. Some people see taking notes as a weakness, but it’s just good sense.”

Nick Porter has some solutions for maintaining stamina and concentration to which few self-respecting adults would happily submit themselves – but which just might work.

He says, “We run events that start by giving out croissants and carrying out an energiser – which could be corporate drumming, standing on chairs, or doing a maths quiz with a prize – to get their mindset right.”

For those with a little more, erm, self-respect, would just having a go at the Times crossword in the taxi on the way over from your hotel do the job just as well?

“Anything that gets your mind going is good,” Porter says. “Then turn your phone off and get ready to accept information.”

Porter also recommends carrying a “power pack” of water and glucose bars, and making sure you eat breakfast and lunch. This is especially important for delegates who enjoy evening networking opportunities a little too fully.

“I was at a do recently where everyone was at the bar until 5am,” he recalls. “There were two or three people throwing up in the toilets at the conference hall at 10 o’clock the next morning – what a waste of money.”

While few entrepreneurs might squander their time like this, staff sent to conferences on your behalf can often blur the lines between “networking” and downing three quarters of a bottle of Bells before destroying theirmarriage with the delightful young marketing exec they’ve spent the last three hours dribbling over. And such cases can incur costs more obvious than missed opportunities thanks to a stonking hangover.

“Some people’s bar bills are ridiculous,” Porter says. “You should try to get them a hotel deal with breakfast and dinner thrown in – then if they want to go out drinking they can pay for it themselves.”

It’s a question of balance, though – as some of the most valuable networking opportunities happen at informal evening fringe events, often operated by exhibitors or, in some cases, companies that put on a bash in lieu of taking a stand.

The first step is to get yourself invited. Porter says that you need to “get yourself in the faces” of the people who can get you on the guest list long before any event. While this is good advice, others take more of a “never say die” attitude.

Purdham reckons you should just ask around the people you meet in the exhibition hall to find out what’s going on. “People will know about anything with momentum,” he says.

But finding out what is going on is only half the story – as any good hack knows, the next step is to get yourself through the door.

“If you’re relatively successful they’ll want you on their list anyway,” says Caldeira. “But if you aren’t on there it can be worth just turning up and being a bit hard-faced with the people handling the guest list – sometimes you can blag your way in. You’ve got nothing to lose so don’t be afraid.”

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