Re: Ideas for conference presentation?

[Beth Agnew <Beth -dot- Agnew -at- senecac -dot- on -dot- ca>]

Conferences for clients or user groups can be very successful when you 
provide plenty of valuable content. While your agenda is to upsell and 
cross-sell, as well as gather information from them, attendees are 
looking for tips, tricks, trends, and ways to maximize every dollar 
spent and get more out of their present investment in your products. If 
you give them information that  goes beyond the boundaries of your 
product areas, clients feel they've received more than their money's 
worth in attending.

Therefore, what broader business topic can you present that is related 
to your area of expertise? For example, Plain Language appeals to a 
variety of industries and gives you the opportunity to talk about how 
you use plain language in your company's documentation; Communicating 
Across Cultures reminds clients of things to pay attention to when doing 
business in other countries, and can include anecdotes about your 
localization efforts for documentation. Digital Publishing can enlighten 
clients about the various methods, tools and reasons to consider when 
moving certain printed documents into exclusively electronic form, as 
well as explain why your documentation is digital (if it is) and how it 
must be crafted differently for different delivery media.

You want the conference to be a less of a lightly-veiled sales meeting 
and more of a rich professional development experience for the clients. 
That will keep them coming back year after year, and increase loyalty to 
your products.
--Beth