To First-Time Conference Attendees

If you've never attended a conference before, you're in for a lot of fun! You'll meet nice people and learn some really cool stuff. If you're feeling a bit nervous, here's a blog post from Stephen Abrams about maximizing your conference experience. NCLA is a bit different than the big conferences he's describing, but you'll get the gist. Some tips I would add are:

• Don't spend all the breaks hanging out in your hotel room! Sure, the bed's comfy, but some of the best parts of the conference happen in between the sessions and at the social functions and exhibits, when you're meeting new people.
  
• Talk to strangers. Yes, I know your mom told you not to, but you should at a conference. You might make a new friend!
• Bring lots of business cards. And ask people for theirs. You might want to write what you talked to the person about on the back of their card so that you'll remember what you wanted to follow up on. Hopefully you'll meet lots of people, so they might start to run together.
• Relax and have fun!