Conference etiquette

There are a few things that every attendee should remember when they attend conferences or workshops:

1. When you arrive at the event put your mobile device to vibrate only or silent. Not everyone at the event needs to hear your device when you receive emails, texts or phone calls. It should be common courtesy because it does actually show a lack of respect to the presenters.
2. When moving away from vendor booths watch where you are walking. So many times I have been walked into by someone leaving a vendor booth because they weren't watching where they were going. In some cases the person only was at the booth to grab the free give away and not really talk to the vendor.
3. Don't carry on conversations with others during presentations. If you want or need to talk to someone during a presentation you should take the conversation outside the area of where the presentation is happening.
4. Be considerate of others when you take or place phone calls. It is very important to remember that no everyone needs or wants to hear your conversation when you are on your mobile device. The call may be important to you but it isn't important to everyone else at the event.
5. Have your business cards available. Your business cards should be something that you have quickly available when you are at the event. For us, we have two different business cards depending on who we are talking to. We have our regular business cards with our email address and phone number on them and then we have what we refer to as vendor business cards. The vendor business cards have a different email address on it so that we can keep vendor related information separate from the daily work emails. Also the vendor business cards don't have a phone number on them. This means that if a vendor really wants to communicate with us they have two choices 1) email us or 2) visit our website and then you will find our contact information. The reason we decided to have no phone number on our vendor cards is to reduce the number of interrupting phone calls we receive from vendors. We want to ensure that we are spending the time serving our clients.
6. Attendance at breakout sessions. Know when each of the sessions are to start and be on time. If you come into a session after it has started make sure you come I quietly. If you need to leave a session early also leaving quietly is important. Other people attending the session don't need to know you are leaving the session.

Being considerate of everyone that is attending a conference is important. At most conferences and workshops your name and in a lot of cases your company name are visible. If you do bother a lot of people with your behaviour you could be impact how your business is viewed or at the least how you are viewed.

Being professional at all conferences and workshops is something that you need to consider. The better impression you leave at the different events you attend the better chance you have of being viewed by people in a positive light. Conference etiquette needs to be remembered.