Standing Out in a Crowd BY TRISH ALEGRE-SMITH
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n-person conferences are springing up and I have been slowly coming back in. It’s time to start practicing how to stand out in a crowd of attendees again.
How others can find you in the crowd I was one of 6,500+ people in attendance and this was my first conference of the year. It was hard enough to remember where my room was in the at the Gaylord National Harbor, MD–and I’ve worked this venue before as an event photographer– let alone figure out how I was going to connect with other attendees and stand out somehow. Compare this to the annual National Military Spouse Network Milspouse Summit which caps attendance at around 100 attendees to keep things intimate and 24 | NMSN Magazine
approachable and this task seemed daunting if not impossible. So, what was my plan?
Step 1: Connect on social media ahead of time. With so many attending and less than a week from the convention, I needed to re-think my approach to “meeting” people. First action was to follow and start using the convention hashtags (#imagingusa) on social media—posting what I was doing to prepare for the trip and engaging with others who were using the same hashtags. Second action was to follow convention speakers and vendors on social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) who I wanted to see while I was there. Some conventions even create their own apps or
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MAY 2022