This week, we’re hosting our Corporate Communicators Conference in Chicago. It’s our most important event of the year. We do everything we can to make it the best professional advancement experience.

People come to Chicago, to the conference, to attend the events and listen to the experts described in the brochure. To see Chicago. To renew friendships. To learn new methods.

Whether or not you’re coming, it raises an interesting question: How can you get the most out of a conference?

Well, I’ve been to a number of them and, for me, they’re best when I:

1. Come in a little early, a day, to get settled and scope out the setting: the hotel, the city. I don’t like to show up tired and crabby and confused.
2. Review the materials, the schedule, and get my own agenda ready.
3. Hook up with colleagues from previous conferences. Everyone always says that the social aspect of event was a highlight. We’re a profession, a community of colleagues. So e-mail them and make your plans.
4. Meet the speakers, before or after they speak: Trust me: They want an ongoing relationship
5. If you’re there to learn, Write during the sessions. Four Latin aphorisms have stayed with me since my seminary days. The first is: “Qui scribit bis legit”: The person who writes, reads twice. Heighten your active learning by taking notes.
6. The second: Laugh: “Castigat ridendo mores”: “Laughter succeeds where lecturing won’t.” In favorable reviews of presentations, one of the most common notes is: “I liked his sense of humor.” Well, how about yours? Attendees should try to make others laugh.
7. The third is Teach: Share your own knowledge: “Docendo discimus”: “We learn by teaching.” Do you come to a conference to learn? Then teach others what you know, what’s going on in your organization. You’ll learn more if you do.
8. Finally, Experiment: Try new things, or try familiar things again. Don’t say, “We tried that before and it didn’t work.” Don’t say: “That’s not our way.” Take the risk: “Quae nocent docent”: Things that hurt teach. No risk, no innovation. Failure is what every successful person does right before success. Edison and the light bulb.

In the Consulting Group, Jim and Katrina and I say that communication is everyone’s responsibility. That goes for a meeting, a conference, a webinar, a workshop – those are all forms of communication. Their success, in part, is the teacher’s or presenter’s responsibility. But also, perhaps in greater part, the student’s or attendee’s responsibility.

I’m not sure attendees or students get that. I think, too often, they just show up. There’s a certain knack to teaching a workshop, leading a meeting or conducting a conference session. The greater gift, I think, is knowing how to take responsibility for attending one.