Business
I’m in Omaha, Nebraska this week to attend the very first Clifton Strengths Summit. The Summit is being hosted by Gallup, the company that brings you StrengthsFinder. So for the next two days, I’m going to be hanging with fellow Strengths enthusiasts and geeking out about our Strengths. As I was flying here today, I started thinking about my objectives for the conference. And yes, you should have objectives or goals of some type when you attend a conference. You may recall Madalyn Sklar gave us some great reasons why you need objectives when attending conferences. If you don’t remember, head on back into the archives and check it out. For the next three days, I have identified three objectives I want to meet while I’m here and I thought I would share them with you on today’s show. OH, in case you are wondering, I’m recording this from my hotel room using my iPhone which is why the audio is not quite up to my normal standards. And while it would have been easy for me to just skip this show this week, considering I’m at the conference and my main computer died on me, I thought doing it this way would serve as a great reminder that you really don't need any fancy equipment to produce content. You CAN make due with what you have. Which is exactly what I’m doing with today’s show. So here you go, my 3 reasons why you should attend conferences. With the DICE framework, attending conferences falls into the E or the Engage step. But you probably already guessed that didn’t you. Before I started this journey, I never went to a conference that wasn’t directly related to my day job. In fact, I had never paid to go to a conference myself. Now I go to at least two a year. Conferences are just a great way to force yourself to get out there and push the boundaries of your comfort zone. If it’s true that growth takes place just outside of our comfort zone, then I think we all need to be uncomfortable at times in to stimulate our grow both personally and professionally. Conferences can do both in spades.