A Tale of Two Conference Seminars

One of my pet conference peeves involves presenters not following through with their billing. Far too many presenters these days tease the audience to attract business. I understand you don't want to give away the store, but writers pay a lot of money to hear what you can do to help them.

The best way, in my humble opinion, is to give the writers something to sink their teeth into. Give them something useful, majorly useful, to take home and play with.

I attended a recent writer's conference and two seminars or presentations stood out. I had time to attend a morning presentation and one of my writing buddies went to the seminar I was interested in. I asked him to take good notes and I would check out this other, on the surface - boring - presentation on literary legal advice.

For the next hour I sat dumbfounded and blitzed by information I could use and understand. The presenter, John Castellano, informed the sparse audience of many of the legal challenges inherent to writing and he fed us the information in language we could embrace. After his intense, hour-long presentation (which he cut by ten minutes to field questions), he made himself accessible. Not accessible only there after the presentation, but the entire weekend.

I am still impressed. One of those crazy stories then played out for me. I went up to my room before dinner and checked my email. I had a "cease and desist" order snarling at me from my inbox about trade name infringement. I could not believe what my laptop screen told me. Mr. Castellano had covered this exact topic in his seminar. That night at dinner, I spoke with Mr. Castellano about the situation and he told me to give him a call once he got back to his office in Atlanta. In the meantime I was to gather all the information I could.

The next week I called him up. The number he gave was is personal cell phone. Yes, his personal cell phone. Wow. After discussing the information I'd gathered, he determined this person who emailed me had confused domain name registration as federal "trademark name" registration and there was nothing to worry about.

My point is that Mr. Castellano took a subject that is on the surface unappealing and handed the attendees loads of valuable information they could take with them. Who do you think I'm going to call when I need literary legal advice. He could have teased me with scant information and then charged me for his time, but he didn't . He made it clear that he wanted my business and that he would be more than fair. I respect that.

Here's the flip side. The sexy, alluring topic of the weekend - what else but sex? How to Write Sex Scenes jumped off the conference guide months before the conference even began. What writer doesn't want to write strong compelling sex scenes that don't get vulgar or prurient. Ok, if you're into that type of writing, you don't need this presentation, but let me tell you, it was nearly standing room only.

I didn't get to attend. I was obligated to man a booth for my writing mentor while he and an author friend went to the sex seminar. Five minutes after it started, my mentor walked by and told me he was headed back to his hotel room to meditate for an hour. The author friend came back an hour later and told me the presentation was clumsy, didn't address the mechanics of writing sex scenes and lacked any pizazz whatsoever.

These two were not the only ones. The buzz the rest of the conference was about how the presenters did not come through and how the attendees felt massively short-changed.

This is a big no-no. If you are presenting on a hot topic like sex in the twenty-first century, you had better come through with something that sizzles. A Victorian approach only serves to diminish your stock in the eyes of those you want to impress.

Presenters should work hard to deliver the goods on their hype, especially an 'over-the-top' subject like sex. I'm fortunate to have been spared that seminar. When presenters only tease their audience no one wins. The attendees go home with nothing and feel they wasted their time and/or money and the presenter does not generate the business they'd hoped.

I realize as a presenter you have many levels of knowledge in the room. Dumbing the presentation down to simple overviews of your topic will only satisfy newbies and wannabes. My strong suggestion is to gear your presentations to accelerate those writers working hard to move up in the writing world. This means aggressive information where everyone should be frantically taking notes.

If you go over some of your audience's heads, that's good. They'll come to you for answers and you'll have impressed the more mature writers with your knowledge. Everyone wins. This calls for more preparation and being pressed to answer tougher questions, but the respect you garner from an aggressive presentation is priceless.

Don't leave your audience feeling cheated. Give them loads of information they can use. Don't take on a volatile subject like sex and wimp on the presentation. Do make your material challenging. Create a presentation where people will be taking notes and asking questions. Do make yourself accessible AFTER the presentation. If writers are able to approach you one on one, you will find yourself picking up more clients.

Ultimately, don't chase away the very people you want to attract.