Where better to find targeted lists of names than from associations or groups that knowingly or unknowingly digitally publish their conference attendee lists via the web? With the exception of a very small group of people, most of the attendees to conferences or annual meetings are there because they specialize in that area of focus.
Keep in Mind that Attendee Lists Are Published in Various Digital Formats
Sometimes you’ll get lucky and actually find the list in a spreadsheet format, be it .csv, .xls, etc. Having it in this format will save you plenty of time when “cleaning” up the list for sharing or saving. After all, most Content (or Contact) Management Systems allow easy importation of good .csv files.
Yet, sometimes you’ll find them in .pdf or even .doc or the like. This can be annoying as you may actually find a list that really cannot be edited and/or imported in a reasonable amount of time. For example, a locked .pdf or a .pdf in an image format. Sure, you can do an OCR scan on it, but you’ll end up (very likely) getting a mess that you’ll spend way too much time cleaning up. In this case, your only (reasonable) option will be to use it as a call list or a list that can be manually entered via PAINFULL data entry.
So, how does one find such gold mines? Well, there are a variety of ways, and this is in no way a comprehensive guide (will come later).
Note: The queries you’ll see below are in no way comprehensive. They are meant to serve as a basic template or guide. They can (and likely will) be edited as you see visual cues in the search engine results and as you change them up to fit with your focus. So take from the tips below and edit as you see fit.
If You’re Unsure of Where to Start
If you’d just like to take a lucky stab, and maybe just get a feel of the “lay of the land” in terms of sites to target, you could start with a simple and basic Boolean query that focuses on titles combined with industry keywords.
So, for example, (“plant manager” OR “operations manager” OR “engineering manager”) AND (metals OR copper OR aluminum OR steel OR etc…….) AND (company name OR company name OR etc…..) AND (conference OR “annual meeting” OR society OR association OR organization OR gathering OR etc….) AND (attendees OR “attendee list” OR “list of attendees” OR etc…).
This should, with a little digging and by paying attention to visual ques in the search engine results, bring you to some good results or leads. You’ll now know what conferences and associations exist for your area of focus. Use your eyes and look for clues and you’ll eventually find gold.
If You Know the Associations You’d Like to Target or At Least Know that You Want to Target Associations
My preferred method these days is to actually target key associations in the area of focus by doing an “x-ray” of their website. Put another way, performing a site search using targeted keywords. For those of you who want to know what x-ray or site search is, read my quick guide on x-ray or site search “X-Ray” Search or Site Search: A VERY Basic Introduction and Why Use it in Internet Recruiting and Names Sourcing
But of course, unless you have some in mind, you’ll have to find associations to actually x-ray. You can do so by doing another Boolean query with industry keywords manufacturing ~engineer ~association. OR, use a directory of associations such as that found through the great search interface at http://www.asaecenter.org/directories/associationsearch.cfm or via the listings at the Weddle’s website at http://www.weddles.com/associations/index.cfm .
Again, this can be done a variety of ways and I can’t go into each one. But, simply put, use basically the same query above, but add this to the beginning of the query:
site:siteurl Example site:nspe.org Keep in mind that adding www to the url will effect the results, so try both.
Then, construct the query: site:nspe.org (“plant manager” OR “operations manager” OR “engineering manager”) AND (metals OR copper OR aluminum OR steel OR etc…….) AND (company name OR company name OR etc…..) AND (conference OR “annual meeting” OR society OR annual OR gathering OR etc….) AND (attendees OR “attendee list” OR “list of attendees” OR etc…).
Play with that. You will likely need to change some things up, as again, this isn’t a comprehensive guide. In fact, you may want to remove the company names if you’re not fully familiar with companies in the focus and you may even want to remove the materials and only focus on titles. It may even be wise to remove the (attendees OR “attendee list” OR “list of attendees” OR etc…) as these can be restricting keywords or keyword phrases.
Note: There are other possible ways of restricting your query such as searching for keywords in the title (intitle:), or by file type (filetype:xls)
If You’d Like to Target Specific Conferences
I’d like to add that you may choose to simply do a site or x-ray search - of conferences themselves just as you did with the associations
You may already know the names of some. Yet, if you do not, there are a few resources that actually serve as directories of conferences. ODP provides a decent list: http://www.google.com/Top/Business/Resources/Conferences/?il=1
You may also get to specific lists via ODP by following this basic browsing method: category and then to conferences - Society > Philosophy > Conferences.
For the Yahoo! Directory by category - Computer Science > Conferences)
You you may use these conference directories. This is not an exhaustive list! Feel free to add any others you come across that you find helpful.
Once you have the names figured out, you’ll basically use the same site search query above, but will tailor your query slightly to focus more on title and/or company. So, site:CONFERENCEURL (“plant manager” OR “operations manager” OR “engineering manager”) AND (company name OR company name OR etc…..) AND (attendees OR “attendee list” OR “list of attendees” OR etc…).
Just as I said above, you may want to remove the company names if you’re not fully familiar with companies in the focus and you may even want to remove the materials and only focus on titles. It may even be wise to remove the (attendees OR “attendee list” OR “list of attendees” OR etc…) as these can be restricting keywords or keyword phrases.
Good luck and have fun!
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