Attended a minor business procurement conference recently and like many networking-oriented items, this was a lot of conversations, business card swapping, and hopeful contract meshing. Avanceé is not exactly within this side of space, but it makes sense to go to these affairs to get an idea of the technical and operational hurdles our target market identifies with. If you will, it’s not so much the folks looking to get work done we focus on, but those folks who technically and operationally have gaps where they might try to leverage better relationships or acquisitions to fulfill.

This makes for something of a research opportunity for Avanceé. First, a parousal of the event attendees to get an idea of the layout and temperature of the meeting space. While a conference like this would be setup by topical layout; it was also key to look at how industries were setup. Then there was the shape of the people who manned respective tables. How were they positioned at the spaces? How would they respond to various folks who were at their table?

Based on that first walk through, there’s a couple of paths to take. Either there is the route to conversations (semi-random, with an eye to listening to gaps in planning and strategy) or a route to product development (listening more for operational flexibility and challenges with connecting dots to people/resources). At some events, there’s a bit of both. With a slight shift one way or the other based on how some of the conversations flow. The key here is paying attention to the flow. It isn’t so much about being able to grab an opportunity as much as it is about positioning for opportune moments.

Here’s where the connect and comms comes in. Previous connects leveraged the Humane AiPin as secretary and business connector. These days it’s more of figuring out how to use the Brilliant Labs Frame glasses alongside NFC cards, stickers, and a few other engagement points. For better and worse, this becomes a technical demonstration of capability just as much as it is the funneling of relevant opportunities. We’ve moved from research to validation/qualification of those potential leads in this moment as well; at least until there’s some better summarization which comes to the Frame 👓, it is a bit of a manual process.

It could be a bit smoother and easier in such events from our perspective. Using the event registration to align to direct and indirect connections before the event. Then use something of a “hey, we already know you” kind of beacon could close some connections faster. For those folks doing the more random connections, there’s probably not much better than a hello-convo-business card swap, but perhaps there is (maybe working on better lead capture options makes sense - scan my card and I get outgoing as well as incoming connections).

But this is waxing a bit too close to the sun. How we figure out opportunities is a continuous process, hence sharing it once again here. If there’s something that works without adding overwhelming admin for non-sales types, we will likely go about procuring and connecting thru it.