AQT‘s Big Bang event is a major annual gathering focused on sales and marketing challenges and opportunities of the technology industry. This event is organized for the industry, by the industry.
In order to demystify the experience, Ubity participated in a webinar to address some popular questions. If French is not your mother tongue, you can read the answers in English here!
Panel
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Why is the Big Bang on your agenda year after year?
Camille: It’s the annual event where I can best sharpen my skills in two intensive days. As a new marketing coordinator in the technology field, a networking environment is best to learn, rather than a simple complementary training. Since we all face the same challenges, getting tips from each other’s successes and lessons learned from each other’s mistakes is super enlightening.
Marie-Eve: I’ve been going to the Big Bang for a very long time, and have even been on its organizing committee for many years also! This is the best time of year to take two days for me, in terms of professional training, which is very enriching, but also in terms of personal resourcing, because having the opportunity to talk to people from different sectors of the industry always gives me better ideas and better contacts. And, since I’ve been participating for several years, I also go there to see my crew! This event has become a must.
Who do we find at the event?
C: There are professionals from all types of techno enterprises who are eager to discover new sales and marketing methods, and ones that are eager to share which ones have been successful. It’s not easy in everyday life to interact with presidents and vice-presidents in a field that you are just starting in. The Big Bang is the opportunity to join this network, without any hierarchy.
It also allows us to develop a network of business allies for our various professional needs. Then there is the AQT’s mobile networking app, which allows you to connect with the professionals you would like to talk to during the event, and especially to keep track of the encounters you’ve had over the course of the two days.
M-E: It’s true, the opportunity to approach presidents and vice-presidents alike is what makes the event unique: there is no hierarchy. You meet motivated people and quality speakers: there is something for everyone and for all tastes. Whether it’s marketing representatives, presidents or salesmen, everyone can benefit from it. It’s by exploiting this formal and informal networking that we can explore new ideas. The opportunity to speak to high-level speakers and experts who come to talk about very specific topics outside the conferences is one of the big perks of the event.
There is also the somewhat playful aspect of the team-building activity, where you can meet people you wouldn’t have met otherwise. In this regard, it is very rich in establishing new business connections and even, in some cases, make new friends.
What can new participants expect?
C: It’s an opportunity to get a lot of new ideas. Companies that join the event for the first time can be sure to return to work with a list of new strategies to try according to their challenges.
Personally, from my experience at the Big Bang, I retained a lot of ideas to better showcase our services, and I applied several strategies that significantly improved Ubity’s visibility.
In fact, when the two days are over, the excitement of trying out all kinds of new ideas in itself is worth it. It’s like a sudden overdose of energy and a surge of inspiration!
M-E: Indeed, the kind of hyperactivity that follows a Big Bang is part of the charm of the event! There is something for everyone and in different formats. Each format appeals to the different learning capacity of the participants. After two days, we are overloaded with information and we want to follow and do everything! Acquiring experience and using it in different types of activities allows us to assess how we interpret information compared to others, and this is the reflection that makes the Big Bang so enriching.
If this is your first time participating, don’t worry, we won’t abandon you out there! We’re going to make it as easy and enjoyable as possible for you: it’s part of our role as well, in the organizing committee.
How do you convince your boss to sign you up?
C: All superiors expect their employees to evolve constantly and, especially in our industry, we’re expected to keep abreast of the latest technology opportunities. The Big Bang is the perfect place to do it: if your boss wants to provide you with the tools to make you more productive and generate more success for his company, this is where it all starts! In fact, it is important to note that participation in the AQT’s Big Bang event is eligible for the 1% training law!
M-E: The program is very extensive. If you go alone, you can’t attend all the different conferences. The best argument – and I use it for my boss every year – is that you have to go as a team, because there are too many interesting things! It’s a bonus for me to be able to learn during the event and it’s very good in terms of my engagement, but the advantage of going together is to synthesize the concepts acquired by each, that could transform or enhance our organization.
How do you maximize the benefits for your company?
M-E: We’ve mentioned it several times: ideally, it is to have more than one person present. We can go gradually and add members each year, but the majority of the enterprises who started with us bring more and more colleagues because it allows them to acquire even more good practices and to implement them in their organizations. We don’t always have a lot of resources, so we can’t waste them! Sharing and receiving ideas from others to improve the way we do and see things is the best way to leverage what we learn at the Big Bang.
How do you measure the benefits of the Big Bang today?
C: Since I have been attending the event, the marketing of our services has evolved significantly. It’s by testing various approaches that we can identify which ones work for our industry and our market. The Big Bang serves this precise purpose: filling up on potential approaches. Then we go back to work, we debrief and evaluate which ones are relevant within our own organization, and then we put them into action.
M-E: We interact with people who don’t necessarily come from our specific field; this gives us new tips and different ways of looking at the market. It’s very rewarding! It’s the best opportunity to meet new suppliers, in an environment that is informal enough for us to develop reliable relationships and partnerships with other companies to help scale our services.
It’s a win-win, whether we gain new distribution ideas or in save time by not repeating the mistakes that others have made before us – just the cost I save in therapy fees by being able to talk to others who face the same challenges as me, it makes me realize that I’m not alone! The fun part is that, after the Big Bang, we stay in touch. This is also part of the magic of the Big Bang, but also of the AQT in general.
You have until August 17, 2019 to take advantage of the early bird rates!
