I was the co-chair (along with Heather Farley from Access Intelligence) of SIPA’s 28th Annual Marketing Conference in Miami Beach.

It was fun and an interesting experience. Here’s my de-briefing, based on my own thoughts as well as the responses I got from attendees. (I tried my best to work the crowd and solicit reactions from the good folk who were there.)

It’s a lot of work, but the more work you put into it, the better it will be. We definitely could not have done it without the professional assistance of the staff at SIPA. They took care of a lot of the details.

You need to work with the presenters ahead of time to make sure they have enough material, that it’s well organized, and that it’s on target. Require them to submit their presentation beforehand (or at least an outline) and run it by some people who know the topic to be sure nothing obvious is missing.

You should also get some assurances that the person is at least a decent public speaker.

The #1 thing people want from a presentation is actionable content — an idea they can use when they get back to the office.

Each presenter has to ask himself, “What’s the ROI on my session?” Somebody spent a lot of money to come to this conference, and they could be using that time building their business. The presenter’s job is to make sure the content they hear more than pays for the cost of the conference.

People like interaction in the sessions, especially when the speaker is getting other opinions and perspectives on a problem. But most people don’t want to interrupt the speaker and volunteer their own thoughts. (And the people who do aren’t necessarily the ones with the good ideas.)

You can encourage conversation within the session by having a few moles in the audience. Ask the speaker to select two or three people in the audience and ask them to interject something. Ideally he should pick people he knows are knowledgeable about the subject.

Nowadays people also interact on Twitter. Some of the speakers at the SIPA conference tried to get people to interact with them via a twitter hashtag, but that didn’t work out so well. It’s very hard for the speaker to do his presentation and also watch his twitter feed.

A solution may be to ask someone in the audience to monitor the Twitter feed and get the speaker’s attention from time to time with the questions and comments that are tweeted. (BTW, I hate using that word.)

We tried something new this year. We had a “training track,” which was a series of presentations designed to give new marketers an overview of the kinds of things they should know to be effective marketers in our industry.

I was afraid nobody would attend the training sessions. I thought they might be offended at the idea that they need basic training in marketing. But it was very well attended, and there were lots of positive comments.

Anybody can issue a training certificate, and it’s a nice thing to put on a resume.

“Certificate in basic marketing from the Specialized Information Publishers Association” … or whatever.

And I think there’s some value to presenting the content in that context. If my goal is for you to leave my session adequately equipped to do X, I’m going to be a little more sure that I cover everything.

There is a custom in our organization that the people who organize the conference do a lot of the introductions and other announcements. I’m not sure that’s the best idea.

I’m decent at public speaking, but the skills you want for an organizer are not the same as the skills you want in a “master of ceremonies.”

If the goal is an excellent program, it might be a good idea to separate those functions.

Finally, on a practical note, it would be really helpful if the hotel or the conference host set up an internet-ready workstation (with a printer) so people can print their boarding passes.