When I think about attending conferences, I think of overly air conditioned rooms, really bad coffee and processed meat sandwiches. I’m one of those people who always ducks down the street during the breaks for a hearty meal. But I love them (conferences, not the sandwiches) because I thrive on learning new stuff and meeting interesting people.  As the direct marketing ‘guru’ Drayton Bird has taught me in his writings… '[Study]…the difference between the winners and losers in marketing is mostly just that. Study. And the only reason I can give you these ideas is the same reason you're reading them. I study - I'm not that talented. I have a library of thousands of examples - good and bad - and I add to them constantly.'

I remind myself of this constantly. For the minute we start believing we are great, we are destined for failure. Or as Drayton would say, “the road to failure is paved with success.”  Alas, I recently trudged off from sunny Toronto to humid and sticky Washington D.C. (for the Direct Marketing Association of Washington and AFP DC’s Bridge conference). As I sat there in the first session on the Thursday morning, still grappling with the fact that I hadn’t made a dash to Starbucks for my daily fix, something so obvious but equally brilliant landed right in my lap. Sue Woodward, a D.C based consultant, was talking about new media and integration. She spoke about how her clients had effectively used webinars as part of their communications mix to lift their appeal income. Really simple, but clever joined up thinking: the charity holds a webinar, invites some key, probably major, donors along, then inspires them with some dialogue about a really important area of their work, and then lodges the appeal the next day.  The point is I learnt something that five minutes earlier I was none the wiser to.
I can't stress enough how important it is to put ourselves in situations where we are prepared to absorb new and useful information. And I don’t just mean attending loads of conferences but include subscribing to useful blogs, e-updates, industry websites, fundraising magazines and the like.  And as I meet many talented and successful people during my travels, they all have one thing in common: an insatiable appetite to learn from others. So next time I’m stuck in some freezing conference facility, sipping some cold and distasteful caffeine, I’ll remember Drayton’s words, I’ll remember Sue’s advice and I’ll remember how powerful it is to learn.