It’s conference season! So, I have a question you should consider before you leave for your next conference, workshop, professional development day, or seminar: What do you do with the notes and handouts you bring back?
Obviously, you’re going to a conference or other professional development event because you intend to learn something from it. Some people have the superpower to retain a lot of information without writing it down. Alas, I am of the forget-it-immediately-if-I-don’t-write-it-down school of conference attendance (and life in general). So, what can I do with my copious notes and the handouts that I cling to like a lifeline to information, once the conference is over and I’m back in my office?
Here’s my current method:T At the conference, take notes in a relevant space of the agenda or program. (Example: Notes about the keynote on the page where the speaker’s bio is.) This puts my notes in better context for later reading, and cuts down on extra pages.
Reduce:At the conference, take notes in a relevant space of the agenda or program. (Example: Notes about the keynote on the page where the speaker’s bio is.) This puts my notes in better context for later reading, and cuts down on extra pages.
Reuse: A few days after returning, I actually read the notes. I’ll also probably make a list of action items (reach out to a new contact, outline that idea for a new research project, add that book title to my TBR pile), and share any information I thought other colleagues might be interested in.
Recycle: Once I leave the conference, I won’t need maps, dine-around invitations, or pages thanking vendors (unless I used them for overflow notes). Into the recycle bin they go.
File them. Ideally, I would scan the useful notes/handouts and file them neatly in my Google Drive (and then recycle the originals), but I’m still a paper hoarder, so for now I still have an extra step: they go into neatly labelled paper folders so I can find them again if necessary.
But what works for me might not work for you! Here are some other ideas (some I’ve tried, some I haven’t):
- Keep a dedicated notebook for conference notes. This one doesn’t work for me, because I never look at it again, much like the collection of takeout menus in my kitchen. For someone more diligent about revisiting the notebook, this might be a good choice.
- Scan them immediately. You could skip straight to scanning the notes and saving them to Google Drive (or Box, Evernote, etc.) For some people, this would make it easier to read/edit your notes, and it would also make it easier to search them. It has the same danger of being ignored/forgotten as the physical notebook, though, and perhaps moreso, since there isn’t a physical object to catch your eye and remind you to open it from time to time.
- Add to a professional reflective journal, bullet journal, work diary, etc. This would be my preferred method of conference note maintenance if I used a different type of notebook for my work journal. You can either take your original notes at the conference in your notebook, or summarize your notes in the notebook after you return, putting them in the context of the rest of your work at that time.
- Add them to your professional reading TBR pile. For now, I can stay on top of my To Be Read pile of professional reading, both digitally and in print. You could slip your notes into the stack of reading so you revisit the notes and increase retention a few days or weeks after your return. Then you can pass them on or discard them (whatever you do with your in-print publications).
- Papier-mache? I’m kidding, of course, but if you don’t do something useful with your notes and handouts, you might as well craft with them, for all the good they’re doing you.
Another consideration is whether your habits change for a paperless/green conference. If you get all your handouts and agendas on a flash drive or by email, do you still print them out and take notes on paper, or do you bring a laptop and type them? If your post-conference notes maintenance method is paper-based, do you print out your typed notes afterward, or save them differently from the rest of your notes? If you do the latter, they might be forgotten because they’re not consistent with everything else. Maybe, as you start to attend more paperless conferences, your methods will switch to a paperless filing system, and soon you’ll be taking all your conference notes on your laptop, even if you were originally a paperphile like myself.
What do you do with your notes and handouts? And, perhaps just as importantly, does your method work for you? I would love to hear your suggestions!