85. Key Takeaways from Collision Tech Conference 2023: AI, Startups, Elevator Pitch & Networking

Last week, the UpSkill team attended and hosted a booth at the renowned Collision Tech conference in Toronto. With 40K participants, this conference was a big deal for us -- but it was our first conference ever. 

In this episode, we share the triumphs, blunders, and most importantly, lessons learned from rubbing shoulders with tech titans and promising startups. Tune in for our whiteboard session reflection and discover four key takeaways you can apply not just to conferences, but to any networking situation to propel yourself towards your goals.

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Transcript

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This is episode 85 and I have the pleasure of reflecting on lessons learned from attending collision conference. Collision is one of the world's biggest tech conferences with about 40,000 attendees. It took place at the ANA Care Center in Toronto in June, and Collision brings together people and companies from across the global tech industry to learn, network, and collaborate to validate business ideas and to scale businesses. Five of us from our team at Upscale attended the conference and had lots of opportunities to connect and learn from tech giants as well as startups. We had some successes, made many mistakes, and learned a lot of lessons. After the conference, our team did a debrief to capture the lessons we learned, and that's what I'm gonna share with you. Five of four key lessons from our whiteboarding session. That's what I'm gonna drop in this episode, that you can apply not only to attending conferences, to but most networking situations to uplift yourself and advance your goals. Welcome to Upskill Talks, I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, lead Upskill at Upskill Community. Upskill Talks is a podcast for leaders, leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact. Lead themselves and others in every episode through real life stories and enlightening conversations, we will explore the challenges and opportunities real leaders face in today's everchanging workplace. We will present you with real strategies. For you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. So let's get into it. Number one. Before the session, we got super clear on what we wanted to achieve and we set ex really, really realistic expectations. So we didn't, wanna go there with any undue stress on ourselves because it was our first time attending and that gave us space to enjoy the conference. It was our first time, so obviously we wanted to learn how the conference was structured. We wanted to know what the high value assets would be. We wanted to practice our pitch. We wanted to make connections with a few key stakeholders so we could better leverage the conference next year. So the tip number one. Is to define what you want to achieve from the conference or the event. Whether it's finding potential clients, partners, funding, or learning from industry partners, having a clear and realistic goal or goals will streamline your efforts and resources, and it will help to manage anxieties and expectations. So this sets you up for success as you'll be calm, relaxed, and ready to engage. On your own terms prior to the conference, make sure to research any investors that you'll meet with, any mentors. You'll meet with any speakers whose sessions you'll attend, any exhibitors that you're interested in, and any fellow attendees that you are interested in connecting with. Make sure to identify these individuals or companies in advance and learn about them. Learn about their background, learn about their interests, learn about anything you have in common with them. This will mean that you'll have meaningful conversations when you meet up with them, and that's a key, key, key component of what you have to do. Number two. Devise a strategy and have an action plan. Take time to learn about the systems that are in place to support you at the conference or event that you're going to attend so that you can leverage them and you don't waste time or resources. Here's a mistake that our team made. Being new to this event, we created a connection dashboard. We used digital business cards for our team, and so we made sure that all of us would have connections in one place to make it easier for us after the conference. When we got to the conference, some people had hard copy business cards handing out. Some people wanted to connect on social media. Some people were using the collision app. We had contact information in all these different places and we had to spend time to manually consolidate all of these afterwards. This is a lesson we learned and what we recommend is that you. Find a streamlined way that you're collecting contacts and stick to that approach so that you have contacts in the space that's gonna make it easier for you to leverage afterwards. Next time, we will make sure that we have a more defined strategy another mistake we made as newbies to this conference. That we filled up our schedule with activities, talks, events from morning to evening. We booked talk after talk. It seemed pretty simple if you've never been and you're just adding events on the app, but one session for me finished at one end of the building at 12 o'clock, and I had another session at 1215 at the absolute opposite end of the building. If you know what collision is like, try getting there in 15 minutes when people are stopping to talk to you along the way, saying hello, pitch in their ideas. And you are also noticing something of interest that you want to connect with, that you wanna check out with. Along the way, we try to do way too much, not realizing the magnitude of the event and how many people we had to interact with just walking from point A to B, and this was something we were deeply interested in. As well as attending all of these different events. So you imagine rushing to a session and not having time to talk with someone who could potentially have the answers to all the problems that brought you to collision. And that's one thing we learned and that's the a tip that we're gonna share here, is to make sure to prioritize what essential learning you need for your specific strategy, your specific goals. And to designate team members to attend these events so that everyone is not all over attending everything, even duplicating, and we don't have opportunities to be out meeting people and having those chance engagements. Number three lesson that we learned is to perfect your elevator pitch. This seems so simple. But it's a lot harder than it sounds. So craft a concise and compelling elevator pitch that clearly communicates who you are, what you do, who you serve, why, what you do matters, and what you need while you're pitching. Be prepared to share it confidently over and over and over again. Every time you're introducing yourself to others, maybe even on the big stage, if you're fortunate enough. Getting your pitch right is a work in progress. You'll likely get it wrong a few times, as we did keep sharing it and incorporating the feedback. We are still working on ours. We got a lot of feedback directly and indirectly to make ours better. It won't get better in your head. That's the key lesson that we want you to remember. It won't get better in your head. That's a lesson we learned. Okay. Our pitch was perfect to us and to the small subset of people that we shared it with. Once we started sharing it with hundreds of people a day, we learned what aspects of it worked better with others, and now, now we have clarity on the direction that we need to go to improve our pitch. So, as I said earlier, the lesson learned, start sharing your pitch when the stakes are low. Don't wait for high stakes situations to pitch. Start pitching now. Share with a wide range of people, not just the people that you are comfortable with. Your perfect pitch is the one that others think is perfect. We leveraged Collision to practice our pitch, to get lots of feedback on our pitch to really, really validate our pitch, and we will get closer to a perfect pitch based on our experience at collision, and that is speaking with hundreds of people over four days. We encourage you to get your pitch out there, practice this pitch, and don't assume that because you've got it clear in your head. This pitch is going to be the right one for you or it's going to work for you. An additional piece that I wanted to flag up with respect to the pitch that we have tested many approaches to pitching, and we've found one that works really, really well. In some cases, you have a set amount of time to pitch. Example, if you're pitching on a stage and you have to just get up, get through the content, watch the time and get off. In those cases, make sure you're practicing your pitch with time so you don't have to stop. Before you close your pitch, I've seen a lot of people go up and pitch and the time is up and they haven't done their best part of the pitch yet. I've seen one person, one company, pitch three different stages, and on the third stage completely. Sort of dropped the ball and lost track of time and did not finish the pitch, which they had finished on two previous stages. So just remember that nerves, as the stage gets bigger, will also affect you. So leave room for that. Make sure you get to finish your pitch. That's not the pitch I'm talking about here. What I want to talk about is a strategy that at Upscale, we call pitch and Pause. When you're having one-on-ones, talking to people one-on-one about your business, about your value proposition, about what you do, we have a recommendation that you don't just pitch, but that you practice a pitch and pause a strategy. What that looks like is, in most cases at a conference, when you're engaging in conversations, you'll have an opportunity to sort of deliver a more interactive pitch. That's what we call the pitch and pause. There's, um, this is where, for instance, You're speaking to one person, you can deliver a component of your pitch, and then you can pause, ask a relevant question, give that person opportunity to provide a response, and you listen actively, make note of what their response is. And then incorporate that response to personalize and customize the pitch, the remainder of the pitch specifically to them. You ask thoughtful questions and encourage them to share their ideas. It means that you're engaging them in your pitch. That means it's going to be much more applicable to them. And people also appreciate being heard and given the opportunity to join the conversation rather than being passive listeners, they're active and you are active, active listening, active questioning, and active. Integrating new ideas into your pitch makes it better every time. One of my best connections was when I shared what we do at Upscale with a particular organization, and then I. I did this pitch and pause strategy, and after I gave the first piece of it, I stopped and I asked them, what's the biggest challenge that you're facing in your organization right now? They gave me such great responses, just the right information, that I was able to customize the remainder of my pitch specifically, specifically to their needs. The pitch went from generic to very specific to that particular organization's challenges, and right away they said, we wanna talk with you further. And so this is what I mean. If I had given a generic pitch, the pitch that we memorized from home, it doesn't hit the nail on the head for every single person. And so you're going to miss a lot of that. But if you have the opportunity one-on-one pitch, pause. Get some of that information, incorporate it, complete your pitch, that really works really well for us. So when you're networking, Even when you're pitching this way, it's just important to listen more than you talk, cuz the pitch idea that we have is sort of push information across to people, but the pitch really means that you have a great idea of what you're offering. The question is whether or not. What you're offering, as in pitching a ball will land appropriately to the other party, and you have the opportunity in these situations to pull some information from them to tie your pitch closer to their needs. And that's what's important because. If you're serving a broader audience and there are five or 10 different things that you do, you will not be able to include that in one pitch. But if they indicate what their problem is, then you can pull that component off your solution and address it directly to their needs, and that's really why the pitch and pause method is better for you in those situations. Pay attention to what others are saying and ask questions to uncover more and more of their secret sauce. Their secret sauce is your secret sauce. Pitch and pause. Make it interactive wherever possible. All right, now, lesson learned number four. This is about making meaningful connections. In episode 71, I talked about networking and the importance of being authentic and what networking is and isn't. Go back to episode 71 and listen to the strategies that I provided there around networking. I'm gonna share a story with one connection I made at collision. I'm going to refer to my connection as Jane. We were in a small group session together, about six of us. Everyone went around the table and took turns to pitch their ideas. Jane and I had nothing in common in terms of business ideas. But we had similar vibes. We seemed to pick up on similar things in the room and approach the interactions in a similar way. We liked each other right off the bat, and at the end of the session I said to sh to Jane, shame, we won't have a chance to collaborate since our ideas are not at all related. Anyway, later that evening, at an after hours event, myself and a teammate are sitting together grabbing a drink, and I notice Jane sitting alone across the way. W our eyes connected. We smiled and waved. Soon she joined us at our table. We started chatting about random things. We debriefed the small group session we had, and we started girl talking. She liked my ideas, I liked her ideas. I agreed to help her out with hers. There was really nothing um in mind that was open to her. We sort of exchanged numbers and planned to meet up the next day at her booth. And midway in the conversation, I repeated something I'd said to her the previous, uh, in our previous interaction. I said, you know, such a shame we can't collaborate. We would make a killer partnership. And Jane responds, well, don't count me out yet. I haven't told you all that I do. This is only one aspect of what I do. Then she shared this incredible opportunity that she could potentially connect us to a bigger opportunity than I had put in my goals, an opportunity. I had no way of knowing she would've been remotely connected to this. Only came out because we were there just hanging out and talking. Here's the lesson. Learned informal. Events are as important as formal events for building relationships. This conversation started at a formal session and really built on itself at the informal session. So take advantage of networking events that are organized during a conference such as receptions after parties, you know, anything that's informal as well as the formal pieces. These events provide excellent opportunities to sort of meet new people, expand your network, but also to deepen and have more real unstructured conversations with people to build it and to go deeper and deeper and learn more, and really to anchor down that that relationship has happened with Jane and I. The other lesson I learned here is that as I discussed in episode 71, We not, we are networking with people. It's not about the potential for opportunities, so authentic connections. The value of networking lies in establishing authentic connections, going beyond transactional relationships to truly understanding the person, seeing the person. Beyond the title, beyond the business idea, beyond anything else, just getting to that real place. This is what happened with Jane and I. We had no, we had no sense that there was anything at all that we would be able to work on together based on the ideas that we pitched each other, but we connected on a human level, and that is the level that has helped us to be able to say, you know what? Let's talk about other opportunities, and so it's very important that we do not treat people on a transactional level, but we always stay at the relationship level. Really try to push yourself to come out of your comfort zone here to seek support if you need to, to don't just go focus on networking with people who are similar to you. Similar businesses seek out connections from people, from different industries, different backgrounds, different perspectives. Be proactive in nurturing these relationships, that smile, that extra connection, sitting down and continuing an informal conversations. This will help you to broaden your knowledge and opportunities as well as a better quality of life. Jane and I are now friends, sharing pictures and so on from the event. This is what I mean by going the authentic pathway. Now the last lesson from this is that you can add value in your own way. When I met up with Jane, the reason we exchanged. Our text, our, we exchanged, um, phone numbers and started texting was that I would be able to go to where she was working and make sure that she got a bathroom break or a lunch break or something. We were going to support each other. That had nothing to do with the business, but that was a way that I could support her cuz I'm doing meetings and events and walking about, and she was going to be stationed in one place so I could support that way. Networking is about adding value where you can, adding value in your way, seeing people at the human level and treating them. At that level, and this is one thing that it takes time and effort, but it really is important because it is this pattern that over time becomes persistent. If you are patient and really the rewards are there for you, don't expect immediate results. You're building relationships. These are not transactions, these are relationships. It will come down the road. Look for ways that you can provide value to others. Always, always think about that, even if it's introducing someone that needs to be connected. And that leads me to the last point, which is the last lesson that we learned, collaborate versus compete. This was a massive conference and there were many competitors there, and I had a great conversation with a competitor discussing how similar our businesses were and how we would differentiate ourselves. We wished each other well and moved along. About an hour later, my competitor brought someone to introduce to me. It was an organization that had helped that organization a lot to get to the space where they are, they are now. And he thought this would be a great connection for me. So, He then said, don't forget us as you scale. It's really rare that competitors help each other, but it does happen, and that is a best practice where we collaborate instead of compete to support each other, to recommend others, to introduce people. These are things that we do that we can do to support competitors. The lesson learned here is that you need to look for opportunities to collaborate, share knowledge with others. Collaboration beats competition offer to help or provide value in areas where you excel. This can lead to mutually beneficial relationships and opportunities is about knowing the game, knowing the players, and playing together. After the conference, I saw a social media post that summed up collision conference in a sentence. The sentence read ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, and indeed AI was the talk of the conference. The key that I want you to take away is that you need intelligence first before you can make it artificial. So you can add value with the skills you have. We at Upskill received Resound Inval valid validation from the conference tech player after tech player agreed that soft skills are so important and missing from a lot of what they do these roles. In AI and tech don't just require technical proficiency. They also require skills like collaboration, presentation, effective communication. In many other ways, the hype around AI or any tech trend should not diverge your attention from solving real world problems. These are tools of the trade. Good business ideas aren't exclusive to trending technologies. They run parallel to each other and integrate with each other. Don't overlook the intelligence component. AI is only as intelligent as the model it runs on, which is determined by the intelligence of the person who creates the model. And when those skills are missing and not integrated into the tech conversations and these models, the AI mishaps result. As our world becomes more interconnected, tech and AI make our transactions more seamless. And our interactions with each other more complex. There's an increase in demand for upskilling to bridge soft skills, intercultural skills, and leadership skills gaps. These are not distinct categories. Leadership has to consider intercultural and intercultural and soft skills are supporting leadership skills today, the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively across silos, borders. Intercultural spaces is now an imperative both for working with AI and for working with each other. The lessons learned from collision can be applied on a daily basis to how we connect with each other to support each other, and that advance our collective goals. These are the human skills that AI struggles with the most. Get ahead by mastering your intercultural leadership and soft skills. Nothing soft about these skills. They are even hard for ai. Thank you for listening to this episode of Upskill Talks. We bring you new episodes every Monday. Please take a moment to subscribe. Leave a five star rating and a written review at Apple Podcast or follow us on Spotify, Google podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Don't forget to share Upskill talks with other leaders like yourself, so they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to upskill community.com to review show notes, and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the globe. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, and again, thank you for joining me on this episode of Upscale Talks.