With so many years in the business, and with countless hours on the road and in sales meetings, Marissa has been in a wide variety of situations, and has plenty of stories.  Many are humorous and almost all of them have a lesson within.  Marissa has decided to share these short stories in audio format for people to listen to and learn from.  We hope to host her short audio clips regularly.  Feel free to list questions you may have for Marissa in the comments section for this article, or look through her website and contact her directly.

For the attendee, there are three distinct aspects of the Symposium that ought to be taken advantage of.  The first is Networking, the second Vendor Qualification, and the third Education.   This first short installment is designed to give you some recommendations on how to capitalize on the great opportunity you have to meet people.

Pre-Event
Taking advantage of the Symposium involves a pro-active, pre-event initiative.   There are many tools available to help you get in touch with people who will be attending the conference.  If you do not already have a profile on LinkedIn, it is important that you do so.  LinkedIn is a very powerful resource and continues to gain prominence.  My colleague Blake Imeson has written a great piece titled 21 LinkedIn Hacks, Tricks and Ways to Make Your Profile Better.  Be sure to reference this as you go about developing your online LinkedIn network.

On LinkedIn you ought to RSVP for the Tradeshow in the events section.  If it has not already been created, then take it upon yourself to create the event.  You will gain prominence by doing so.  Click here to RSVP for the IMS 2009 LinkedIn event. Once you RSVP you will be able to see others who have done so, and you will be able to connect/message with them.  Make sure that you’ve followed the steps in Blake’s article about connecting with power users.   I have put a list of a few power users in the PCB industry who will help you gain access to even more people.

Also, take advantage of Facebook if you are a user.  There is a Facebook group for IMS 2009 as well.

Email some of your business contacts a quick email asking if they, or anyone that they know, is attending the show.  More than likely you will be put in touch with a friend of a friend who is just as overwhelmed by the prospect of networking as you are.

As you begin contacting all of these people, keep a clear calendar of the show in front of you.  It is important that you have read the materials concerning the show so that you know what nights have mixers, city excursions, etc.  Make sure that you schedule times to meet with the various people that you are networking with, but also make sure that you block of times where you do not plan anything ahead of time.  You want to be available so that when you meet people at the show, you can meet with them too.  Also try to avoid too many exclusive meet-ups, but make sure that you have a healthy balance of group activities.  This way, if there are a few people you want to spend time with and it comes down to only one available time for everyone, there is no awkward canceling of plans, simply bringing more people along.

At the Event

You are going to be busy at the show, and hopefully having the opportunity to meet and greet those people you have been in touch with the few weeks before the show.  However, make sure that you have plenty of business cards with you so that you can create more contacts.

Be careful not to gravitate toward one group of people the entire time.  Stretch yourself and branch out.  Split up from your co-worker for a meal and go sit at a table of people you don’t know.  It might be slightly uncomfortable at first, but the event is designed to foster networking and cliques need not apply.

Remember to be yourself and have fun.  Trade shows may be a lot of work and continued education, but the interaction with people who are there can make it one of the best weeks of the year.

In the comments section below feel free to share your tips and suggestions for how to take full advantage of the Networking possibilities.   I look forward to hearing them.

Every attendee ought to be doing everything he/she can to maximize the return on the money spent in travel, fees and opportunity cost.  One of the best ways to do this is to start early and begin making contact with potential customers or vendors you are interested in before the show even starts.  If you are able to develop the foundation of a relationship before you attend the conference, your time spent mingling with your contacts at the show (going out to dinner, grabbing coffee, discussing the workshops, etc) will be far more fruitful and downright enjoyable.  Instead of running around the show thinking “meet, meet, meet” you will have the luxury of operating under a “greet, greet, greet” mentality towards your peers.

I challenge you to take advantage of the list linked to above and to do some pre-event networking.  I will be doing so, and hope to even do so with any readers of hotpcb who will be attending the Symposium.   Over the next few weeks I will be posting various articles on how to use various online tools to maximize your pre-event networking.  Feel free to use the comments section below to share your ideas or to reach out to other readers and see when they will be at the show.

Cheers,

Liam

Read Part One Here.

It was instantly clear that although competitive, most vendors shared a sense of camaraderie, and were open to talking with me and answering my questions.  Most of the attendees have been in the industry for over 20 years.  In fact, the industry as a whole seems to be comprised of mostly 40+ industry professionals.  It was apparent that I was the youngest exhibitor.  In fact, I was the only exhibitor asked for ID at the complementary bar during the evening reception.

Small, but efficient and well balanced, the show was in my opinion a great success and well worth the effort to attend.  Attendees flew in from all parts of the country.  There were also individuals from Canada, Sweden, Israel, Singapore, Italy and Africa.

The workshops provided were very helpful, and have inspired me to set a future speaking role as a personal goal.  I obviously would not be able to give a technical seminar, but hopefully through my work on this blog, I will be able to position myself as a leader in bringing social media marketing to this industry.

I highly recommend that you set your calendar for the next PCB East conference.  The whole program is put on by UP Media, and there are a few additional shows occurring around the country in the next few months.  Click here to see a list of those shows. The UP Media team did a fabulous job and it was a pleasure to meet all of them.  I look forward to crossing paths with them in the future.

A little over a  month ago I applied for membership with IEEE and joined a variety of societies pertaining to my line of business.  However, I have yet to really feel the benefit of membership aside from the barrage of emails asking me to sign up for conferences.  In an effort to effectively use my membership, I open the floor to you – my reader and potential IEEE confederate.  How have you taken advantage of the various services IEEE offers?  Has it been an effective networking/educational tool for you?  Share your story of how it has been a blessing – or a bust.

All the best,

Liam

Connect with me on LinkedIn

THE GROUPS:

Electrical/Electronics and Computer Development Engineers Group (2,789 Members Currently)
This is the largest technical group I am a part of.  Approaching 300 Members, this group remains dynamic, and posts are made every few hours.  However, the more popular a group is, the more you have to filter through to find what you are looking for.  I find that groups tend to hit an optimal size, at which point they take on a whole new feel and system of mores influencing how the members interact.  Just as a small class in school allows for personal attention, so too does a smaller group.  However, the access you gain to various professionals and your opportunity to put your name in front of a lot of people is valuable.  Just make sure that you don’t come across like the spam/self-oriented members that many have learned to subconsciously filter out.

EMS Insider (Electronics Manufacturing Services) (2,663 Members Currently)
EMS Insider boasts a similar number of members as EECDE above does.  There is a fair bit of membership overlap between the two groups.  Fortunately/Unfortunately – I have a job, and so I am  not interested in the headhunting posts that are so often present in most of these groups.  It seems that these groups have shifted into more of a job seekers forum than anything else.  If you are looking for employment and have the technical experience necessary, then be sure to check out the job sections of these two groups.  Even recently over 100 positions have been advertised.  Just be wary.  There are a lot of job placement professionals who are rather cutthroat inundating these groups with posts.

Flex Circuit (42 Members Currently)
This is a much smaller group, and has the potential to be everything I could hope for.  I enjoy learning about the frustrations of our customers so that I can develop better ways to serve them.  Flex Circuits are the way of the future, and they are the type of business I am looking for.  However, as applicable as this group is to me, there is little-to-no activity or discussion between members.  I hope that as time goes on and 150 or so more members join, it will become a valuable resource for designers, project managers, and those seeking to meet their needs.

Printed Circuit Board Technologies and Solutions (330 Members Currently)
Slow and Steady, this group receives a new discussion every week or so.  If you can work through the broken English of some of the posts, you might find a hidden gem here – depending on what you’re looking for.

VLSI (2,337 Members Currently)
This group can be valuble as well although I have been put off by the large number of personally irrelevant discussions posted  by Michael Hughes.

A Few others (small member counts) that I have requested to join yet have not heard back are:

PCB/BGA Rework & Repair
The Circuit Board Group
Unexplainable PCB quality issues
RF/Analog/Mixed signal circuit design & product/test engineering

Feel free to share your groups and opinions by commenting on this post, or by writing to me at lmorris@cirexx.com.

PCB East Website

LinkedIn Group

Do you, or any of your co-workers, plan on attending the PCB East 2009 Conference in Waltham-Boston, MA? If you do, you should join the LinkedIn group “PCB East Pre-Event Networking”. There you can begin to network with potential suppliers, customers, and colleagues. Why wait until that week to begin your research and to develop your relationships? Start now and ensure that your time there is spent efficiently. Feel free to discuss dinner options, happy hours, local events, and any other networking opportunities you might like to see occur that week.