Attending a conference can be a great move for your career, with all the opportunities for learning and networking that these events offer. However, if you have sensory sensitivities, these events can also be overwhelming and draining. This article covers some tips for how to get the most out of your conference experience while balancing your sensory needs.

Before heading off to a conference

When you have concerns with sensory overload, it is always a good idea to do some preparation. In this section I will cover a few of the things that I consider essential.

Understand your own sensory profile

To be able to tailor your conference experience to your own needs, it’s important to know those needs first! If you’re not already intimately familiar with your own sensory profile, spend some time before you go thinking about which sensory experiences cause you the most discomfort – bright lights, loud noises, crowded environments, strong smells, uncomfortable clothing.

As well as identifying areas of sensory hypersensitivity, it can also be worth considering any areas where you benefit from additional sensory input – you might enjoy the sensory stimulation of noisy places, seek out specific types of movement, or benefit from the pressure of tight clothing.

Scope out the venue

Before attending an event, it’s also worth researching the venue to get a sense of the space where the conference will be hosted and the types of rooms that sessions and social events are likely to be held in. This can help you understand and manage any specific sensory needs that might arise from the event’s location.

This information may be available on the conference website, the venue website, or from the event organizers, and it may also be possible to find images online from sessions and socials from the previous year’s event.

Prioritize in advance

Understanding what you’re most hoping to get out of attending the conference, and which experiences will be most valuable, can also help you manage sensory overload. Depending on the extent of your sensory sensitivities, it might not be possible to attend everything you’d ideally like to, so think strategically ahead of time to maximize the value you can experience from the event.

Study the program and think about your own goals. Are you mainly attending to build your network? Is there a vendor you particularly want to discuss your situation with or receive a demo from in the exhibitors’ area? Are there specific sessions you want to prioritize because they’re particularly relevant to your learning and development needs?

It’s also worth thinking about things like the times of day when you’re at your best and trying to plan key activities relevant to your goals around those times, assuming they line up with the conference schedule. It can also be beneficial to find out whether any of the speaker sessions will be available on-demand after the event – more on that later!

Live karaoke at PASS Summit can be fun, but it might be one to avoid if you’re sensitive to loud noises or crowded spaces…

While you are at the event

In this section, I will cover some of the things that can help you as you navigate the conference.

Manage your schedule & routine

Unless you’re lucky enough to live in the event’s host city, it’s likely that you’ll be travelling to attend – potentially sleeping in an unfamiliar space like a hotel, where you have less control over your sensory environment, or even dealing with issues like jetlag and acclimatizing to a different time zone if you’ve travelled a long way.

Maintaining all the habits that help you manage sensory overload at home – such as nutrition, managing caffeine or alcohol consumption, sleep hygiene, and exercise – are even more important when you’re travelling for an intense event like an industry conference. It can be tempting to treat a conference trip like a vacation, but you’ll feel fresher, and be better placed to take advantage of everything the event has to offer and achieve your own goals, if you try to keep on top of the habits that help you stay on an even keel at home as much as possible while you’re away.

It also helps to manage other sources of sensory stress as much as possible – wear your comfiest clothes and shoes, and don’t be afraid to make use of helpful sensory aids.

Make use of sensory aids

There are a wide range of sensory aids available to help you manage overstimulation, depending on your needs.

If you’re sensitive to sound and noise, bringing ear defenders can help, as can seeking out any designated quiet spaces at the event if you need a break. Wearing sunglasses or tinted glasses can also help with light sensitivity.

Tools like eye masks, melatonin and white noise or familiar meditation apps can all help maintain your sleep cycle when you’re away from home, allowing you to conserve more energy so that you can participate in the most valuable sessions and social events.

And if you find it helpful to signal your needs more visibly, you could consider wearing something to flag this to other attendees – a sunflower lanyard to subtly communicate hidden disabilities, or a pin badge that indicates how much social battery you have right now.

Personally, I’m always a little jealous of dogs who get to wear those ‘I need space’ harnesses!

Keep prioritizing while you’re on site

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, people and buzz of an in-person event. To avoid sensory overload, it’s important to keep your priorities in mind. Remind yourself of the list you made beforehand of all the things you most wanted to get out of the event and commit to spending most of your sensory energy on the must-haves from that list.

Or it might be reasonable (and sometimes more realistic!) to decide you’re going to let some things slide – accept a higher level of sensory overload, or the fact that you won’t sleep as well in a hotel as you would at home and make a conscious trade-off to participate in things you wouldn’t normally have the social or sensory battery for. You could choose to take time off to relax and recover at home afterwards if you know you’re going to have a hard time saying no to specific activities while you’re attending the event.

Once the conference is over

The conference is over, and you’re back home. As well as taking time to rest and recover, there are still opportunities to make the most out of the event experience after the in-person component has finished.

If there’s on-demand content available after the event, this can be a great way of consuming information in a way that meets your sensory needs – for example, you can watch video content with captions enabled, or at a faster or slower speed than the session was delivered live. This can also be a great way to prioritize your energy on site, knowing that you don’t have to attend every session on your list in person, since you can catch up on some sessions after you get back.

And if in-person socializing seems overwhelming, there’s still time to build connections after the event. Consider reaching out to people you met during the event through LinkedIn or other social media platforms or sending a message to a speaker whose session you enjoyed or another attendee whose work you admire, even if you didn’t get a chance to connect with them in person.