Reflecting on ‘In-person’ Again

On April 25 – 27, 2021, I attended the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Southeastern Regional Conference (SERC) in Nashville, Tennessee – live and in-person. Full disclosure, I am fully-vaccinated and well past the date of my second Fauci Ouchie. Please get vaccinated.

SMPS SERC, the planning committee, and the local SMPS Nashville chapter hosted the event and kept to CDC Guidelines. There was hand-sanitizer everywhere, social distancing especially at meals, masks were worn, temperatures were taken daily, hands were washed routinely, and general good sense was commonplace. I’m writing to talk about the social interactions and how it went. Sooner or later, we’ll likely all come face-to-face with our first in-person event in months. There were a few key things worth sharing:

1.     Seeing your friends after 14 months of Zoom is emotional. If you’ve been around SMPS for any length of time, you develop really strong relationships. You hear phrases like “the SMPS family” or “the community of SMPS.” Networking is the number one value most members point to when asked why they belong to the organization. And while we’ve all stayed connected through virtual meetings and happy hours, social media, and phone calls – nothing replaces the human bond when you see a good friend in-person. Prepare for tears, laughter, and a sense of relief.

2.     Handshakes and hugs still prevail. In the beginning there was a degree of fist-bumps and elbow-bumps, but in time, there were hugs and handshakes. The handshake is a quintessential aspect of American business, it’s not going anywhere. In cases where I knew (through phone calls or social media) that people in my network were double vaccinated, hugs and handshakes, usually while masked up, were instant.

3.     Expect uncertainty. No one wore a pin or badge that said, “I’ve been vaccinated.” In fact, it would’ve seemed odd, if someone had. So, like with politics, you never really know where people stand. You have to take a degree of risk. Elbow bumps with new connections were as normal as handshakes. There wasn’t a lot of judgement. There was a lot of grace.

4.     In-person is exhausting, the first time back. I’m a fairly extroverted introvert. I really like people. I like to laugh and have fun; I like to hear people’s stories and share my experiences. Conferences are great for this and can often mean 12- to 16-hour days of being “on.” Be kind to yourself when you go back out there. Call it a day when you feel that tiredness coming on. The “on” feeling is a lot.

5.     Learning is different. At the end of the conference, my friend, Melissa Rysak with EDiS, pointed out the great programming at SERC was content heavy and, interestingly, relationship building light. This might be a result of a strong demand for content, when in-person connections couldn’t prevail. There is still an adjustment, maybe even a pivot, to something between virtual meetings and in-person when it comes to business development and we need to recognize that it might not (likely will not) go “back to the way it was.”

6.     Questions were scarce. Maybe another outcome of the Zoom reality that we’ve lived in for the past several months, was a hesitancy to ask questions out-loud, live, in front of an audience of your peers. Speaker after speaker mentioned getting sense for fewer audience questions than usual. Asking questions, somewhat anonymously, in a Zoom chat box is not the same as standing up in front of your peers and asking a question.

7.     Saying good-bye is more meaningful. As the conference closed, the good-byes seemed richer. Reflecting back on my last conference, pre-COVID, circa January 2020, I wish I had said more meaningful good-byes, maybe hugged a little harder, maybe made sure people knew how much I cared about them. As this one closed, I felt myself going out of my way to say good-bye with more intention, more caring, more love.

It’s a strange new world, my friends. We’re likely not out-of-the-woods on this pandemic yet. My optimistic nature wants more of this in-person touch. My spirit needs it. And, as a culture we’re demanding it. We just need to be logical, thoughtful, and careful. We need to not show up, if we’re feeling poorly. We need to get vaccinated. We need to be honest and empathetic. We need grace.