“Have a good conference.”

It was a familiar salutation heard throughout the last three days of the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum. For one thing, it shows the friendliness of the insurance community. They compete like warriors for business, but they value friendships, particularly for those on the IT side who like to solve problems.

The phrase also invokes some hope from those who say it—not just for the one on the receiving end but for the person who utters it as well.

Conferences are an expensive proposition for everyone involved. Airfare, hotel rooms, entertainment, and most important, time away from the office all adds up and causes companies—and attendees themselves—to question the value of travel to a conference.

Nowhere is that questioned more than in the world of software vendors. They certainly are one of the big attractions to programs such as ACORD LOMA and one of the reasons associations are able to put on conferences the size of this one, but many of them know the choice has already been made for them. If their competition is going to be here, they have to be here as well.

Nowhere is that competition more evident than in the crazy world of policy administration systems vendors. By most counts, there are over 60 such vendors operating in that space inNorth Americaand here at ACORD LOMA you couldn't walk 20 ft. through the exhibit hall without tripping over one.

I asked more than one policy admin vendor how the conference had been for them and the responses went from, “I got a lot of leads,” to “I wish there had been more people here.”

Now, before you think this is something that happens only at ACORD LOMA, I can guarantee I will get a similar set of responses when I attend the IASA Conference and Business Show inSan Diegoin two weeks. Getting some good leads is the one thing that will make a conference a success for them.

Dining in the exhibit hall on Thursday with Deb Smallwood of Strategy Meets Action, we discussed the whole business of conferences and she pointed out the amount of content that attendees have to digest over three days is staggering.

Attendees get bombarded with information, whether it is the general sessions or the breakout sessions they attended, the pitches they received from vendors, or the media—such as me—offering our wares in paper versions, electronically, and over the airwaves.

It will be several days after I get back to the office before I can fully digest all that I read and heard here inOrlandothis week. Maybe then I can answer the pleasant thoughts passed on by many people here this week with one of my own, “Yeah, I had a good conference.”

Special Reports /

Good Conference? It Depends What You Put Into It

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