How to get the most out of the 2016 Rocky Mountain Private Investigators Conference

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blogger
 
The 2016 Professional Private Investigators Association of Colorado (PPIAC) Rocky Mountain Private Investigator’s Conference, which takes place September 22-24th at the Renaissance Hotel in Denver, Colorado will provide training and networking opportunities for professional private investigators throughout the Rocky Mountain region.
 
This year’s focus topics ---which include surveillance, counter surveillance, surveillance detection, skip tracing, report writing, data mining, computer forensics, witness interviews and trial preparation--- will be taught on the basic and advance level over the course of two days (Friday and Saturday) and culminate in an awards banquet on Friday night.
 
Whether you’re new to the private investigator industry, the PPIAC conference, and/or both, we scoured the internet for guides on how to get the most out of a conference and these are our five favorites:
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Pre-introduce yourself
This is the first suggestion made by the Harvard Business Review and according to Harvard Business School professor, Francesca Gino, creating a priority wish list of people you’d like to meet then sending them an email introducing yourself –ideally through a mutual friend or colleague—will be welcome. Especially if the person is presenting. If the person is not presenting, you can ask to sit together during a presentation or grab coffee after.  

Snap photos of contacts with lanyard
“Put a face to the name of the people you meet by taking pictures that include their faces and name tags,” suggests Legalproductivity.com While it may seem easy to put names with faces a week or even a month after a conference, if you’re attending an annual conference like PPIAC where a lot of people return year after year, and you have trouble putting names with faces, this is a great strategy.

Don’t make non-work plans for the evenings
US News’ advice may not the advice you want to follow while you’re smack in the middle of downtown Denver but that Red Rocks concert you go you is costing you valuable networking time, not to mention energy that you could be available for a last minute dinner or outing.

Follow up after the event
Isn’t this a little obvious? Entrepreneur’s advice is nevertheless critical to reaping the benefits of the time, money and effort you’re invested in these two days of networking and training. Even better, they suggest following up on Linkedin.

Bring more business cards than you think you’ll need
The Denver Private Investigator Blogger would like you to learn from her mistakes and always bring more business cards than you think you need to the conference. Maybe another obvious one but business cards are a pain to replicate by hand so just bring more.