on the job: pa conference for women headshots

The Pennsylvania Conference for Women attracted more than 8,000 women to our fair city last month. It’s been a few years since I attended the conference and I was thrilled to be back! I love what the event stands for and am so grateful I was able to be involved in my own way. If you are unfamiliar with the conference itself, here’s how they identify their mission:

“The Pennsylvania Conference for Women is a non-profit, non-partisan, professional and personal development event for women that features renowned speakers sharing inspirational stories and leading seminars on the issues that matter most to women, including health, personal finance, executive leadership, small business and entrepreneurship, work/life balance, branding and social media marketing, and more.”

I partnered with my friends at Villanova School of Business — who are one of the primary sponsors of the event — to offer free headshots to conference attendees. In hopes of adding extra value to their booth (in addition to career coaching and resume reviews!), VSB thought providing as many attendees as possible with an updated headshot was a great place to start. With more than 8,000 people in attendance, though, that got a little tricky.

We knew from the outset that we had to set realistic expectations. Certainly photographing every last attendee was not going to be possible, but we also wanted to offer the benefit to as many people as possible. So we opted for two photographers (extra thanks to my right hand gal, Theresa, for joining me!) and two photo stations in order to double our efforts. That way we could cover as many faces as possible in the five shooting hours we had to work with.

We set up two identical backdrop setups, one for each photographer. Then, with the help of the lovely folks from Villanova — who helped register people and manage the long and ever-growing line of individuals — we worked as quickly as possible to move people through.

After the conference, the photos got a quick edit from yours truly and were then uploaded to an online link for viewing. Each person who had a photo taken was able to then download their photo a few days after the conference. Once it was all said and done, we had photographed over 960 people!

I love what this conference is all about, and I love that I was able to add something tangible for so many attendees. If you have a conference or large gathering coming up, let’s chat. Maybe your guests would benefit from a similar offering.