In The Know

News and Analysis from the Aristotle Team

Previous: Website Best Practices – Part I
Next: Nominations Open: The Aristotle U.S. Campaign Dream Teams

Post-Conference Blues

In the past, when I would get home from the annual PAC Conference or Innovate to Motivate, I would go through a series of withdrawal emotions – first, exhaustion.

Sessions all day and “networking” all night, I always needed to catch up on sleep. Once I was back at work, I would feel overwhelmed. There on my desk would be the large binder with notes, session information, legal questions and contacts I didn’t want to forget. Anxiety would set in, then reality – I had a job to do and I needed to catch up on emails, so I would push that large pile over to the corner until I had time.

We never have time. Our jobs, especially in light of the last year, have increasingly become more hectic and multidimensional. After almost 10 years of attending the winter conferences, I have some advice to pass along that I was given while I was managing the U.S. Chamber’s PAC.

  1. Make the effort to stay in touch with new contacts. Even something as simple as friending new contacts on Facebook helps. You never know if you will need something, or more importantly, can help someone else. Or who will become your friends outside of the industry. In 2002, I was six months on the job, just out of college and arrived to my first conference early. I had lunch with Sheree Anne Kelly with the Public Affairs Council to learn more about the conference. Eight years later, I am still grateful for that lunch and the natural friendship that followed. PS. Congrats to SA for her recent promotion!!
  2. Read your notes again. This may seem weird but I would take the notes from sessions and open up a document and type. What this did was allow me to see what I thought was important to remember and to look at that piece of information, after the conference, to see if it really was still relevant to what my PAC could do and what it was already doing. There are so many great ideas but you can’t incorporate them all. Take the top few and think about how to make them work for your PAC.
  3. Audit. There are more audits than just financial. Have an outsider look at what you do – communicating with PAC members, how you raise money, which events work, who you write checks to and the effect it has for your organization. I would ask someone from the outside to look in – either a recent contact or, if you really want to jumpstart your PACs potential, an organization with experience, such as Aristotle. Our PAC staff has actively managed some of the most successful PACs in the country and the knowledge pooled together has had amazing results for our clients.

Lastly, I still have my notes from the last nine years of conferences and all the binders and session handouts that seemed relevant to my career. Yes, I’m a proud nerd. My last suggestion is to keep what matters and what you can see yourself using over the years. Although I was sad to miss my first conference season in my career, I am thoroughly enjoying my newest challenge, motherhood. And I can’t wait to bring the little man along next year to meet all of the amazing friends I have made over the years.

Theresa Brown

Bookmark Us
[BlogBookmark] [Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [diigo] [Facebook] [Google] [Kaboodle] [LinkedIn] [MySpace] [Newsvine] [Reddit] [Slashdot] [Squidoo] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Yahoo!] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 9:07 am and is filed under Events, Fundraising, Grassroots, PAC, Staff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply