Remember that feeling when you sat at your desk in a high school classroom and your teacher strolled in through the door pushing a TV cart? Bliss.
Or when you woke up one early morning and remembered that today, this ordinary Tuesday, was a field trip day – so you’d get to spend it exploring someplace fun instead of listening to lectures and receiving homework assignments? Delight.
I loved that feeling: the regular rules and routines are suspended, freeing me up to just experience something fresh and rejuvenating and curious. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it would be worth seeing – certainly worth trading in the monotony and pressure of everyday work.
Now, as a fully grown-up professional in the business world, that feeling comes back again in the days leading up to RelFest. My calendar gets blocked, I write up a celebratory out-of-office message, and the possibilities unfold: learn, listen, drink a lot of coffee, eat at daily buffets, chit-chat with familiar and brand-new faces. It’s just the best.
Of course, if I’m not careful, all that energy expends itself pretty quickly on that rapid-fire conference room floor. Everything looks awesome, the FOMO flares up in my overstimulated brain, and I’m zipping from one idea to the next without time to process much of anything – which is not ideal. (And it goes by much too fast that way.)
All this to say: your pre-conference excitement does the most work in your favor if you channel it into a little pre-planning. It doesn’t have to be all operational business; this part is fun, too.
Here's how to do it.
#1: Read the session catalog before you leave home.
This one sounds obvious, but it’s also the sort of task that tends to sink to the bottom of your to-do list – until it sneaks back to the top juuuust as you’re tidying things up before heading out of the office. Showing up to a 100+ session conference without having scoped out your options in advance is a reliable way to miss something fascinating.
Set aside some time before you travel to work through the session catalog and build your personal agenda on the event platform. You don't have to lock in every hour – in fact, leaving room for spontaneity and casual coffee chats is a winning strategy – but knowing your priorities before you hit the conference floor ensures you're navigating with intention rather than happenstance and instinct.
Current you has a million other things to balance, I know. But future you will be grateful.
Bonus Tip: Prioritize some time for gathering hands-on experiences. One of the biggest benefits of RelFest is the opportunity to give the latest and greatest features a test spin; reading about them is nothing like using them in real life. If you’re able to front-load some time in your trip to Chicago, sign up for a pre-RelFest workshop to check this box early. If that’s not an option, no problem – workshops and hands-on exercises will be offered throughout the event.
#2: Book time with your people (even if it's loose).
Similarly, if there’s anyone in particular you hope to catch up with in Chicago, get that meet-up on everyone’s calendars. There will be thousands of attendees at RelFest, which means finding a specific person in the crowd without a plan is roughly as reliable as bumping into them on the street. Don't leave those connections to chance.
Before you head to Chicago, reach out to the colleagues, peers, and contacts you're hoping to see. You don't need to schedule formal meetings – a simple “let's find each other at the opening reception” or “want to sit together at lunch on day two?” goes a long way. Formalize it with a calendar invite so it doesn’t fall off your radars.
The serendipitous hallway conversation is real, but it's even better when it's with someone you actually set out to find.
#3: Build in breathing room.
Go ahead and map out a full, ambitious agenda. Then deliberately punch a few holes in it.
The instinct to fill every slot is understandable; there's a lot happening, and FOMO is a non-zero force at an event like this. But, in my experience, you get the most out of RelFest when you give yourself space to be present – and let go of the expectation that you should fill every moment with tactical productivity.
These little gaps are where unplanned conversations don’t have to get cut off mid-sentence, mini coffee breaks with a new connection happen naturally, and a few quiet minutes to absorb what you just heard unfold.
#4: Use AI to find the sessions you didn't know you needed.
Here's some advice I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have given you three years ago: before you finalize your agenda, try running it by your favorite AI assistant.
Share the session catalog, give context around your goals (what you’re most excited to learn about; what you’re most obligated to learn about), and see what your chat buddy comes up with.
You might ask it to flag anything that connects to your current projects, your role, your career ambitions, or the problems you're actively trying to solve. Ask it what you might be overlooking based on where your field is heading. You might be surprised by what gets flagged – a session that doesn't immediately jump out from its title, a track you'd normally scroll past, a conversation you didn't know was relevant until someone (or something) made the connection for you.
I bet you've already got an AI copilot at your desk. Why not bring it into your RelFest planning, too?
#5: Let AI do the note-cleanup heavy lifting.
And bring it to your post-event reflections, too!
You're going to gather a lot: ideas, observations, snippets of things that sparked something, names you want to follow up with. If your experience is anything like mine, a solid portion of that will live somewhere between your notebook, your phone’s camera roll, and your memory. If you’re not careful, a meaningful chunk of it could evaporate on the flight home.
Find some time to capture it somewhere more useful. Whether it’s at the end of each day, before you leave Chicago, or on the way back, take your raw notes – messy, fragmented, half-finished thoughts and all – and hand them to that AI buddy to have it help you organize and synthesize.
Ask it to pull out key takeaways, draft a quick summary you could share with your team, and surface any action items you buried in shorthand and promptly forgot about.
It’s not a shortcut for bringing insights to impact once you get back to the office. But it is a great way to make sure the thinking you did in Chicago follows you back to the office in a usable form, where, I have no doubt, it will blossom into something amazing.
#6: Protect some time to reflect back at the office.
Studies show that time passes approximately 189 times faster at a conference. (Okay, not actual studies. But observationally, this is absolutely true.)
Even with the best intentions, it's easy to arrive home from RelFest buzzing with ideas that never quite make it into action. You’re going to have some catching up to do in your inbox. There will be questions waiting for you in Slack. A deliverable or two will need immediate execution upon your return. I get it.
Building in dedicated reflection time can help you guard against that overwhelm. The week you get back, block a two-hour period to review your (already AI-optimized! how helpful!) notes. Ask yourself questions like:
- What sessions shifted your thinking?
- What's one thing you want to try in your own environment next week?
- What would you bring back to your team if you could only share one thing?
Want a pro tip? Tell your team, before you leave for Chicago, that you’re going to present some of your biggest lessons from RelFest to them upon your return. Schedule that for a week after you get back. An ambitious-but-impactful deadline will help you stay accountable for coalescing your excitement and intellectual sparkle into something you can meaningfully share and discuss with colleagues.
Enjoy Your Field Trip
RelFest goes fast. Like, dizzyingly fast – every time, I end up wondering where the week went. But if you arrive with a plan, you'll get to surf on that out-of-office glow each day and leave with more than you brought: innovative ideas, new connections, that special kind of tired that only comes from a really delightful day. Worth it.
We can’t wait to see you in Chicago. In the meantime, use #RelFestChicago to share your plans and find your people ahead of the show – and if you haven't registered yet, there's still time to grab your spot.
Graphics for this article were created by Caroline Patterson.
