Take it from me – someone who has spent up to as many as 130 days on the road each year for decades. Conferences are the most fundamental learning opportunities for business leaders. WAV Group was built on conferences, relationships, conversations, and sorting out the direction of each business throughout the year. There are probably thousands of people reading this blog who run companies and built friendships with us through a conference.

Online Conferences Suck!

I attend conferences online now. Honestly, I think that they should just stop. They are all pre-recorded anyway. Call the sessions what they are – either webinars or podcasts. Paying a fee to go to your virtual conference is BS. I am not going to call out any conference in particular – if you attend them, then you agree that they all suck – only some suck less. #whatever

Let’s Meet

My friend Mark McLaughlin called me in the early days of COVID. That’s what Mark does. He reaches out to his people in good times and bad. Amazing human. He told me that we are all going to make more careful choices in who we meet with physically – he was right. In the earliest days of COVID when we were all having our “holy crap” moment, we all went on lockdown. I was sick early on in March 2020. Most of the people I knew had not experienced COVID and they were very concerned and quite curious. I believe that many other people had similar experiences. We all created small bubbles – some reachable by zoom or whatever – and others where person-to-person meeting was possible.  

P to P

Remember when Napster taught us about P to P networks and invented cloud computing? For me, conferences are about P to P – Peer to Peer. Lobby Con. I spend the day meeting with people. P to P is the ability to connect physically with a lot of people – all day long – all night long – is the greatest benefit of my chosen profession. 

I will be attending the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World Convention in Las Vegas at the end of this month – send me a note (victor@wavgroup.com) if you are attending and would like to get together.