Community Forum – Conference Attendance

How do you choose which conferences to attend?

We receive many invitations to conferences and meetings that offer value, but attending all of them would be impossible.  Do you have any mechanisms for assessing speaking opportunities and other event attendance and vetting for value?  How do you allocate resources for these events?   – Clara Asmail, Senior Technical Advisor, Manufacturing Extension Partnership, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Community Response

Carlos Leipner, Director of Strategy, Research and Technology Unit, Westinghouse Electric
We are currently implementing a new process for deciding where and to what level (number of speakers, attendees, sponsorship, exhibit space) our company will participate in events. There are a few designated events that are coordinated from the center, although each product line coordinate their own event portfolio management specific for their business.

As a commercial organization in a highly- regulated, technical industry we utilize both traditional metrics (sales and marketing) as well as engineering and scientific ones (professional development, knowledge leadership) to determine where and how we participate.  We answer a short list of questions that attempts to represent the strategic and tactical issues related to an event.  At a high level, we assess the value of an event by asking whether the event is in line with one or more corporate strategic objectives.  Furthermore, we also evaluate our participation based on expected targeted customer attendance and interest at the event. At a lower level, we assess how many departments and geographic regions would benefit from participation.  As an event’s cost is also important we also factor event location and the frequency of the event as well as the number of people that will represent our company presenting papers, posters, etc.  The higher the “score,” the more likely we are to participate.

Additionally, a program is underway to align our speaking opportunities (technical papers) with our internal training and development programs.  Eventually we will plot the presentations given by subject matter and event venue in order to achieve balance and coverage – and identify potential gaps.  A related pilot program is also underway to provide newer engineers with opportunities to present papers in which they collaborated, in order to increase the number of opportunities to gain experience.

Resources are allocated through an annual budgeting review of events, and reviewed quarterly.

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