According to the Convention Industry Council ( pdf ), in 2012 there were over 1.8 million business meetings, events and conferences held in the US attended by 225 million participants generating over $280 billion in spending. The volume of participants has grown 10% since 2009. Clearly, the business conference industry is booming. The number of marketing and communications conferences alone is overwhelming compared to when I started attending and speaking at conferences in 2005. Attending and speaking at business, marketing and client user conferences is a big part of our marketing and while there are changes with so many new, niche events popping up, I don’t think our conference participation will change
In the next 2 months I’l be speaking at 7 different business events and conferences in cities ranging from San Francisco to New York to Denver. When I present at a business conference, I’m not just there as a speaker, but as an attendee – just like any other business person. The interesting thing is, I’ll probably get more business benefit from just one of these events (not including the effect from speaking) than most people get from multiple events