Top 7 Things I learned from attending my first conference at 15 y/o
Hey!
I’m Emma, a 16 y/o (had a birthday since the conference!) robotics nonprofit co-founder and IoT innovator. I’m passionate about exploring and developing applications for IoT disease detection and impacting our education system.
And I’m Ciara, a 15 y/o interested in how the combination of AI and VR/AR can create an innovative impact on the education system. I spend lots of my time learning new things that spark my curiosity, meeting new people, and being a co-host for the TechnoGypsie podcast.
We went to the EAGxBoston conference in early April and had a great time!
We learned a ton about how to approach people in a professional environment, hold meaningful conversations, ask questions to get to the root about things you actually care about, and how to continue connections you create after the event ends.
Here’s what we’ve learned that we hope you will use to crush your next conference!
1. Meal times are a great opportunity to meet people.
If there are a group of people sitting that you think look like their having an interesting conversation, ask to join them! It can be intimidating at first, but once you realize you have almost nothing to lose, your confidence will soar. Make it a goal to sit with new people each meal. Or identify certain people you’d like to talk more with and ask them to meet up during meal times. While people are happily eating, you can learn some pretty interesting insider scoop on their work.
2. Decide YOU WANT to learn a lot from people smarter than you are.
While there are many ways to go about this, talking with people is the most effective. Don’t “network” with people because you think you’re “supposed to” or make it super obvious all you’re trying to do is get a job or an internship. Maybe you actually are looking for an opportunity, but if you let your curiosity take over instead, you’ll find that you’re genuinely interested which brings out the best conversation on both sides.
This brings us into #3:
3. Be authentic!
People don’t care about meeting a fake person. There are a lot of ideas around what people think you’re “supposed” to talk about at a conference, but especially as a young person, people want to see who you really are. This means you don’t have to try to be all professional. Smile and be yourself. :)
4. Don’t lead with your age.
I can’t speak for if you’re in university or older, but as a 15 year old at a conference, introducing myself as a “15 year old innovator…” immediately brought the exciting business or tech conversations down to a mundane “high school” level. Instead of leading with your age, sneak it in later into the conversation. Once you’ve had a fire conversation with someone, and you reveal you’re only in grade 9 or 10, they are completely blown away.
5. Don’t just meet people in areas of your interest.
Conferences attract a variety of people, so while you may be interested in one thing, a person from another field may have some insights you didn’t know you needed. This takeaway is especially geared towards younger people in high school or college, because interests, academic majors, and jobs change the most when you’re young. So, it’s in your best interest to get out of your comfort zone and learn about topics that you may not be as knowledgeable in. Being able to give others the floor to speak and drop knowledge is such a humbling and valuable experience.
6. Strive to help other people.
As a high schooler, you may think you don’t have much to offer to the daunting tech entrepreneurs, but you do! You are the next generation who will use their product or service, and they want to hear from smart, young people. (And if you follow tip 4, they won’t know just how old you are :)
One easy way to help people is to refer them to someone you think they might be interested in talking to at the conference. This is a small gesture that can make a person reciprocate the same to you, so you gain some cool connections as well.
A last way to help other people is to ask someone whom you think has a cool job or works at a cool company if they need any help with a project they’re working on. This sometimes leads to apprenticeship/internship opportunities as well as them thinking that you’re a dope person to have asked that.
7. Have a boss mentality.
Yes, going up to people will be uncomfortable. Yes, you might hate it. Yes, you might feel like a fish out of water. But are you going to still do it? That’s only for you to decide.
Remember this:
“No one can make you feel inferior without their consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
Confidence comes from within your mind. If you give yourself the permission to feel inferior, you will. If you don’t make inferiority an option, you will embrace the challenge and possible discomfort.
A strategy for forcing yourself to go up to people if you feel intimidated is to set a specific numerical goal for each session/day. Let’s say you decide you’re going to go up to 15 people today and start a conversation. It helps if you’re going to the conference with someone else so you can keep each other accountable. Ciara and I did this, and it definitely motivated us to go up to people we thought seemed cool and start a conversation.
Let’s recap: If you utilize meal times to make connections, want to learn, are authentic, exemplify a killer boss mentality, branch out to meet people in different fields, help others make connections, and smoothly slide your age into the end of a conversation, you will have a head start on crushing your conference goals.
Most importantly, enjoy yourself. If you’re young, no one is expecting anything from you, so go out there and set a high bar that is authentic to you.
Best of luck!
❤️ Emma & Ciara
