Hintonblogger

"This above all: to thine own self be true". - (Hamlet Act I, Scene III)

I attended a session that I was really disappointed in yesterday and I think there is an important lesson to learn here from the experience. Sometimes sessions don't connect with us, that's a reality and okay. The problem I ran into yesterday was I attended a session that said it was going to cover a particular topic and covered something completely different.

We all want people to attend our sessions when we present (I know I do). Likewise, we attend sessions because something about the topic interests us. The whole point of these sessions is to have the attendees come away satisfied, having received something they were looking for. When that happens, the session/workshop is successful. Both presenter and attendee got what they wanted.

As attendees, we have to go into a session with a level of trust that what we read in the description is what is going to be covered. When a description says one thing and covers something completely different, that breaks the trust between the presenter and attendee and, generally, the attendee will leave feeling deceived and unsatisfied. Of course any good session description and title with have a little marketing savvy to them. There are so many good sessions that you have "sell" your session a little bit to grab someone's interest. The challenge in doing this is to not market your session as something it is not.

So the lesson here is: Trust in what you have to share, people will come.