- Respect the audience. Treat them like adults. This means, among other things, assuming they know how to take appropriate notes and that they don’t need a “guiding voice” in order to figure out your message.
- Make your message comprehensible. This means having a central thesis and giving presenters useful guidance.
- Do not try to induce socialization with gimmicks.
- Run on time.
- Nobody really cares about the swag. Put more effort into talks and less into stuff.
- Sponsors can be important sometimes, but don’t let their interests override those of the audience, who are giving the most precious resource of all: their time.
- Avoid videos.
- If someone offers you candid feedback and you call them, assume that you are going to get….candid feedback. Imagine that.
- This post is only here because I attended a godawful conference last week, and thought it might pay to state the obvious for others to read.