Best conference re: the future

[liz1965]

I’m looking to attend a conference in the U.S. that helps business leaders look “over the horizon” to ensure their business is well prepared. I’m not interested in attending a conference that focuses on just one thing (i.e. sustainability, AI, DEI) but rather is 1-3 days of a variety of speakers or breakouts with smart and compelling speakers talking about what’s going to be relevant and impactful in the next 3-5 years that we should start thinking about soon. Thoughts?

 

[godsprincess]

@liz1965 Quite often these are organized by whatever industry organization that your business is in. So I would start there. My business had a number of these each year. Some were technical and operational sharing and others were more strategic and rah-rah meetings, but all were helpful. However the best thing I ever did was organize a 'study group' at one of these meetings with a few of the best business owners I knew in my industry. We started in 1989 with 7 people in the same business but in different areas. We met twice a year for 2-3 days until 2020 when Covid and retirements thinned our group. At our peak we had 25 regular members. At each meeting we had an event coordinator and a speaker coordinator from our regular membership. The event coordinator would arrange the venue, the hotel, the rooms and the food. The speaker coordinator would arrange for the 12-18 speakers we would invite to speak to us and also decide (with suggestions from the membership) what subjects we wanted to hear about. If you have a successful business it might be hard to attract a top CPA, Attorney, business consultant to spend time with you, but if there are 20 of you representing 20 different similar businesses the best and brightest are generally willing to come to your meeting and share their thoughts and visions with the group.