Some pieces of advice to get your best from AWE (or other events about VR)

AWE US is starting very soon and this year’s edition is expected to be one of the coolest ever. Many people are going there and there will also be some very special guests like Palmer Luckey. For some people, it is going to be the classical XR event that happens every year, while for others, this is going to be the first edition they attend. This is also true because this year the event is happening in LA and not in Santa Clara anymore, so I guess there will be many new visitors from the LA area. This will be my 4th AWE and some of the new people asked me how to prepare for this event, so I decided to write for everyone this short post with some pieces of advice to follow if you’re attending AWE the first time.

There are a few things you can do to make the best of your AWE. The most important of them all is to go there with a clear goal. You can not know if your event was a success or not if you did not even have an idea of why you were going there. A goal is what influences all the choices you make and in the end, makes you satisfied about having been there. The goal can be very business-oriented, but can also be something more cozy like just meeting as many people as possible. There is not a right or wrong answer, there is only the answer that is true for you. Why are you going to AWE? Why are you investing your time and money to go there? Answering this question is your top priority.

Organize yourself before the event to do the things you need to do to reach your goal. The website of AWE has a list of all the speakers and exhibitors. There is usually also a networking app where you can get in touch with all the attendees. Go through the list of the people there and see which are the ones that are more interesting for you. Again, there is no hard rule, you have just to look for the people that align with your goals. In my case, to make an example, I’m usually looking for three things:

• Companies with cool gadgets to try that I can review on my blog
• People from companies with which I could start a professional collaboration
• People that I esteem from our industry and that I personally don’t know yet but which I would like to meet

(Remember: these are my goals, do not try to copy them). So I just look at the list of the exhibitors and I select the most interesting ones for a review on my blog. Then I have a look at the list of speakers and I do the same. It’s important to not pick too many names… prioritize your goals. Stick to 3-4 names you absolutely want to meet (must have), then maybe a dozen that you would like to meet (nice to have) and then be open to connecting also with people that were not on these lists. AWE is unpredictable, so it’s important to have clear priorities to know what you have to do even if your plans must be changed. Do whatever you can to meet the people in your top priorities list.

The easiest way to meet the people you are interested in is by visiting them at their booth, or attending their talks and waiting for them to step down from the stage (even if sometimes you end up chasing the speaker like I embrassingly did with John Riccitiello). If these strategies can not work with the person you are interested in, try contacting them via Linkedin, or on the networking app of the event (but remember that not everyone uses the networking app), or ask a common acquaintance for an introduction. If nothing of this works, you can still hope to see that person in the corridors and stop him/her to talk. Remember that AWE is an event with good positive energy, and most people are happy to be stopped to have a chat.

If you can, organize your days in blocks of time with a similar purpose: for instance, you leave the full morning for the exhibition, and then the afternoon for the meetings. Otherwise, since the talks and the exhibitions are in different areas of the venue, you risk going constantly up and down the venue, wasting a lot of time. In my case, for instance, I have the Tuesday and Wednesday mornings which are basically free for the visit of the show floor, while I have set up many meetings for the afternoon.

Do as much work as you can before the event, trying to go there with already some appointments set up in your calendar. But do not make the error to already fill your whole calendar. Leave yourself some time to just go around and enjoy the “serendipitous discovery” typical of AWE. One of the most beautiful things about AWE is just going around the corridors, meeting people, and then letting these people introduce you to other people. And then maybe these people invite you to do some fun activities together. This means you shouldn’t even be too strict with your plans: unless you have an appointment that has been set up, it’s fine to cancel some things you decided to do because you are invited to do something else. I still remember what happened to me the first year: I had decided to attend a lot of talks, while instead I actually then spent the whole morning just randomly meeting people in the corridors. I watched the keynote and then nothing else: I just met some good friends and got to know new people by just staying in the corridor in front of the main conference room. And it was literally amazing: doing this I also met superstars like Tony Parisi or Philip Rosedale.

Throughout the event keep always a positive attitude, and be open to speak with everyone. This is very important. If you see an opportunity, seize it! I managed to try Mojo Vision contact lenses because I randomly saw their private room and I went there praying them to let me see the device. And if you can do something fun and crazy, do it! People will remember even more positively about you. Remember that one of the priorities of the event is having fun!

Talking about fun, don’t forget the parties. Evening parties are a very important part of the networking experience, this is where you truly become friends with the people you spoke with during the morning. This year there is a Google Sheet document that lists some of the afterparties that are happening the three days of the event: you can find it here.

It deserves a special mention also the topic of food: food in exhibitions is always expensive, so if you want to save money, bring something from home. If you are a speaker or part of the press, remember that you have lounges where you can find some free food for you. And then all the parties have some food included. So try to get the best about these opportunities: free food is always more delicious than paid food! Regarding drinking, I don’t know about this year, but the past years the venue was always full of free dispensers of water.

The last advice is: it doesn’t matter how well you organize your event, in the end, you will always have the sensation of having missed something. AWE is so big that it is impossible to do everything you want: there are a lot of interesting talks, and some of them are happening in parallel, and they are all in parallel to the exhibition. The exhibition is pretty big and you can not try all the products that are there. It’s normal that you can not enjoy all the cool stuff that are there. That’s why in the beginning I suggested you prioritize: if at the end of the event, you have met the key people you wanted to absolutely meet, and you tried the XR products you were curious about, you can be satisfied with your experience. As my friend Charlie Fink says, at the end of the day you will still suffer from FOMO, but at least you will know you have reached your goals.

And this is it for my list of suggestions. I’m preparing myself to have an amazing AWE, and one thing that I would really like to happen is taking a picture with Palmer Luckey, because I’ve never met him, and it would be an honor for me to have a photo together with him.

This post comes from what I’ve learned in my experience, but if some more seasoned AWE attendee has some other pieces of advice to add, feel free to do that in the comments of this post!

And to everyone coming to AWE… I wish you are going to have an amazing event!