I’m currently sat at Agip Hall, Muson Centre waiting for the M-Pay conference to start. It was supposed to start at 10am with registration between 9 and 10, and at teh moment it’s 10:35 with no sign of it starting any time soon.

I’ve been to a fair few conferences in my time and being sat here observing the activity going on around me made me think about what the do’s and don’ts of conferences.

1) Setup the venue the night before
Make sure that everything is ready the night before, at 10:20 (20 minutes after the programe was due to start they were still putting up the conference banner at the back of the stage. The process of putting this up actually took over half an hour after an initial failed attempt when it was put up over the projector screen. They are also still stuffing welcome packs in the foyer, with nothing up to show that you are in the correct place down there.

2)Put refreshments out on time
So with registration and presumably “networking” due between 9 and 10 you’d think there would have been coffee or some kind of refreshments laid out, but no these didn’t actually appear until after 10 o’clock (when everyone should have been in the hall listening to the opening remarks). 

3) Use decent sized coffee cups
This is a personal pet peeve of mine. Conference venues and hotels always have the smallest cups / mugs in the world, you get like 2 sips of coffee from them and then have to go and get another one. Also what’s with no biscuits, call me British (and not just because I am), but I like a biscuit with my coffee or tea. 

4) Have pre-printed name badges
If you’re going to require that people pre-register for the conference then make sure that you use that information for more than catering numbers. If everyone is wearing a badge that says their name and organisation on it then it makes it easier to do small talk and network. Hi, I see you’re from .... I recognise the comapny name but what exactly do you do? Is always a good opener, but if you don’t have that information there’s no opener.

5) Base your conference around a community
The way to get people to turn up and to interact is to base your conference around an existing community. The most recent conference I’ve been to here in Nigeria was the Lagos BUsiness School Entrepreneurial Development Programme’s Alumni conference, a 2 day event which included a talk from the global CEO of Goldmann Sachs. This was a slick well organised event, that had been organised by alumni, not professional event managers or conference organisers. it was fantastically attended, a pretty much full house, and that was because it was an existing community that had an interest in coming together. 

Equally another very well attended conference I attended was the Annual convention for the National Court Reporters Association in America. This is a huge community that have a purpose to come together, the issue with this conference is that there is no mobile payment community. Just a group of disparate interests, most of which are competitors with each other and so have little interest in community.

This conference is about to start and counting the attendees there are less than 50 people in the room (when we arrived at 9:50 there were less than 10 including 2 of us!). A better solution would have been to push an m-payment agenda at a conference that related to another community, bankers, or technology providers say.

6) Don’t plug your own stuff during the opening remarks
The opening remarks are being delivered now and it’s just a plug fest for the organiser’s magazine. Apparently Financial Technology Magazine is available in 15 African speaking countries, regardless of how good that is, don’t ask for a round of applause for it. Yes he really did ask the the audience at his conference to applaud him, now unless you’re God, or Steve Jobs as he’s otherwise known, you just can’t do this.

7) Don’t say how great your conference organiser is as you introduce her when the organisation to date has been awful
Yes that’s right, as the conference organiser was introduced the guy giving the opening remarks said how fantastic at conference organising she was and mentioned another conference she has organised (Which I will never attend now as a result)

8) If you’re going to introduce your speakers and invite them to the stage then make sure they’re all in the room
Yes that’s right there are actually only 2 of 8 speakers who are actually here, they are all apparently stuck in traffic. Now this also goes to conference speakers, if you’re goign to speak at a conference make sure you are there on time, get there early, check the lay of the land, talk to the delegates so you can tailor your presentation to them. Also make sure your powerpoint is setup and ready to go, don’t be fiddling around with screen settings etc just before you are talking. Also don’t use FAILED examples. If something is a FAIL then don’t use it, just because you were involved in it and thought it was good. I.e. don’t say that an exception to the denial of banks needing mobile payments was FlashMeCash when it doesn’t even exist now!