What You’ll Take Away
◆ Why the biggest flex at any industry event is not the yacht invite or the sizzle reel but showing up curious and following through on every conversation.
◆ How to use AI as your personal chief of staff before, during, and after conferences so you come home with actionable relationships instead of a pile of business cards.
◆ The exact prompt and workflow to turn a chaotic week of meetings into a clean summary with prioritized follow ups.
The Real Cannes Flex
In the spirit of Cannes Lions, this one is for all the marketers, creators, and partnership pros heading to the Croisette.
Here is what I have learned after years of attending industry events: the people who win at conferences are not the ones with the best parties or the flashiest booths. They are the ones who show up genuinely curious and then actually follow through. That second part is where almost everyone drops the ball. You have incredible conversations for five days, collect a stack of contacts, fly home exhausted, and then life takes over. The follow ups never happen. The momentum dies. And all those “let’s definitely connect” moments evaporate.
This year, I am not letting that happen. And neither should you.
Your AI Chief of Staff
I have been leaning into AI all year, from managing meetings and staying organized to helping me be more present in the moment instead of drowning in calendar chaos. And here is a conference hack that is 100% free and will change how you operate at events.
Before you board that flight, drop this prompt into your AI tool of choice:
“You are my personal assistant for this conference. Your job is to help me prepare, track, and follow up on every conversation and interaction I have throughout the week. I will feed you meeting details, contact names and titles, random ideas, action items, and follow ups. Please organize everything by day and company. At the end of the week, give me a clean summary of all meetings, a list of key follow ups, and priority action items. Act like a mix of chief of staff, EA, and strategist. Remind me what matters and help me not drop the ball.”
The conference is not the event. The follow up is the event. Everything else is just the warm up.
Then keep dropping notes in throughout the week like you are texting a smart, judgment free chief of staff. Set up a shortcut on your phone and voice input as you walk between meetings. “Add the following to my conference file.” That is it.
The Payoff
You will come home with clearer follow ups, stronger relationships, and maybe even your next big idea already mapped out. The people who treat conferences as networking theater miss the point entirely. The people who treat them as relationship building opportunities with real follow through are the ones who turn a week in the south of France into a year of new business.
Show up curious. Leave organized. Follow up relentlessly. That is the formula.
Community Challenge
This week, whether you are heading to Cannes or not, pick an upcoming meeting or event and set up an AI assistant to track your conversations and follow ups in real time. Try the prompt above and see how much more organized you feel by the end of it. Two keywords to carry with you:
CURIOSITY / FOLLOW THROUGH
Dan Page