Professional conferences are whirlwinds of catching up with colleagues, making new connections, being introduced to new concepts, exchanging ideas, and getting inspiration. By the end of the last day, you’re loaded down with business cards and session notes and bubbling with enthusiasm.

But then you’re home and facing the mountain of laundry and refilling the fridge and easing back in to regular life. The business cards huddle in a pile, the notes get tucked away, and your enthusiasm goes as flat as week-old champagne — just as the next two projects hit your desk (and one of them is inevitably a rush).

If you’re in this situation now (hi there, fellow ACES 2026 Atlanta attendees!), let’s take a few minutes to make a plan together.

1. Deal (with) the Cards

Carefully move that stack of business cards front and center. Grab your trusty pen, paper, and sticky notes or your notetaking app of choice. One by one, go through them and jot down everything you remember about them and why you wanted to connect. Decipher the cryptic notes you wrote on the card. Write/type it all out and tuck it away for future reference.

Don’t remember why you have a card? The cards around it might offer context to jog your memory. Take a peek at their website or LinkedIn; seeing their face might help. Truly at a loss? Set it aside. It might come to you next week or next month.

Now, the magic: Open up your task list app and get your follow-ups into actionable form with dates attached. Then follow up and actually send those articles and photos, ask about guest blogging or being on the podcast, add people to your referral list, email about working with a potential client, sign up for their email lists, follow them on social media, and so on.

2. Deconstruct Your Notes

While the conference sessions are still fresh in your mind, go through your notes (and the presenter’s slides and handouts, if you have those) and pick out the key insights and action items. Get the former into a more useful format and the latter into your task list program and onto your calendar. If you thought “I need to know more about XYZ app” or “Maybe I should consider offering indexing,” put an hour in your calendar to start exploring it. Generally enthused by what a speaker had to say? Sign up for their email list or check out their books, webinars, and course offerings.

3. Leverage Conference Apps

If your conference used an app to provide speaker slides and handouts, take advantage of those. And not just for the sessions you attended, but for anything that sounded interesting. Even if you couldn’t attend in person, those materials could offer some insights and point to other ideas you can explore.

If the app had networking capabilities, mine that for potential contacts. There is nothing wrong with saying something like “I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to meet at the conference, but I’d like to connect.”

Be Strategic Next Time

Post-conference recuperating and follow-up can be exhausting and frustrating, so make it easier on yourself next time. Take a few moments after you have a conversation or at the end of a session to make notes and highlight action items on the spot, so you don’t have to tax your memory days later.

Extra credit: If your schedule allows, plan a buffer day or two after you return home. In between loads of laundry and trips to the grocery store, focus on follow-up and planning based on who you met and what you learned. 

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Lori Paximadis has been a successful full-time freelancer for more than half of her 35-year career in publishing. Her background in project management and production and her broad experience make her a sought-after copyeditor and proofreader for fiction and nonfiction. Her clients range from Big Five publishers to indies. She has been presenting and training on the topics of systems and efficiency since 2016. Find her online at LoriPax.com.