British Ecological Society Conference

Last week I did my first exhibition for me / Maptastic this week at the British Ecological Society Conference in Edinburgh. The run up to getting things designed and printed for the stand has been epic and it's been a steep learning curve!

I can totally see why people do shell schemes for these things and if in future they're possible in the budget ill go for it.

Also, I'm also only just tall enough to put those banners up by myself 🤣.

After battling with banners I think my stand looks pretty good - even if I'm red faced and exhausted after a 6 hour drive

When you realise you've worn an outfit that's so on brand you blend in with your tablecloth!

As I've no experience of being the exhibitor and strong feelings when it comes to how I prefer to interact at conferences I wanted the experience for people to come to my stand to be pretty relaxed and not too 'sales oriented'. I was of course at the event to show off my products and services but if they weren't the right fit I wasn't going in with a hard sell.

I created an A0 poster for one of the stand walls with an image of the world landmass (Antarctica, sorry) and invited conference attendees to put a dot for where they travelled from as it was an International event.

The big poster that would hopefully entice people to come and talk to me at my stand!

Lots of dots from Europe!

After day 1 was almost done I'd had 35 people pop their location sticker on the map at my stand which was great. They were mostly European Countries and had stickers in 5 of 7 Continents!!

One of the best things about the conference was meeting such a wide range of I've met an excellent variety of people conducting research across the world on things I didn't know were even a thing (microbes in arid deserts affected by mining). It's lovely to expand my knowledge horizons and see how people are collecting and using data.

The big world map continued to collect dots too!

I very much enjoyed exhibiting for my business and learned a great deal for next time... in summary:

📅 3 days

🚗 400 mile round trip

👤 66 people put dots on the big map - take a look at the carousel to see where they had travelled from!

👤 Over 100 conversations about GIS, peoples research interests & their work - I didn't actually count of course 😉 

🌆 61 Towns/Cities

🗺️ 23 Countries

🌏 5 Continents

😴 1 very tired person (me). 

Thank you to everyone who came over to say hello and ask about Maptastic Limited and putting a dot on the big World map at my stand.

This is me now done for the year and I'm out of office until January. A big thanks to Max Beaton & the team for the excellent event co-ordination and information for me as a first timer.