How to Make a Boring Conference Fun

below’s a guest post from my daughter Aurora (10 years old) who attended the Sales Hacker Conference with me, and even got up on stage to help kickoff my keynote. for the adults, i and many others thought the Sales Hacker conference was simply the best of its kind – but for kids, business trips can be boring. make sure you read until the end to catch Aurora’s great call-to-action! And now, enter Aurora…

Enter Aurora…

Hello this is Aurora, owner of MBBTFFK (Making Business Trips Fun For Kids) – that’s you guys, the kids of parents who go to conferences.

I know what you are thinking: how can a bunch of “blah blah blah” be fun for us kids. Well I will tell you. I recently just went on a business trip with my dad. It was so much fun & I did a lot of cool stuff.

Here are some tips:

1) When you’re bored & can’t see anything fun around to do, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing around to do.

Go take charge and find something to do instead of begging your parents to play on their iphone and ipad.

For example, when I finally got bored of sitting in my chair, I went to this really cool place in San Francisco. It was called Coit Tower. At first I said to myself “this is going to be so boring,” but then I found out I was wrong. I was in Coit Tower for nearly two hours, throwing coins over the top, having fun.

[Aaron: my old assistant, Emily Germano, came to the conference and graciously offered to take Aurora out for a break and some fun and trouble-making outside.]

2) If you’re nice to people they will love you for that. Be willing to tell personal stories and life lessons.

I remember when I was at the dinner for the speakers. At first I was not very open to my personal life. But when I was more open I had a way better time talking.

I found out that one of the speakers’ parents had also adopted. They adopted a man from Africa who was 25 years old.

If you don’t already know, I have an adopted brother, so it was fun to know that other people adopt too. I had an amazing time. [Aaron: a post about adoption: people who adopt must be insane.]

3) Make sure if you want to do something, set a goal to ask your parents or chaperone ahead of time.

I remember when I was at the hotel the night before, I asked my dad if I could throw a book into the crowd. He said yes. And it was fun throwing something off the stage!

My favorite part was signing books for the first time.

It was so much fun, I loved doing it! However, the book was not free, you had to pass a test to get one.

It was called the Aurora Test, this is how it worked. A businessperson would tell me, Aurora, what they do for a living, in simple “American”, and then I’d have to understand it and be able to explain it back to them.

I hope now that you feel confident enough to tell your parent that you’re going on the next business trip with them!