Part 1 of a 2-part Q&A transcript from last week's webinar, "Maximizing your PDAC Experience".  To view a slidecast of the complete webinar, please visit "Webinar: Maximizing your PDAC Experience".

Speakers:

• Joe Racanelli – Vice President, Resource Pod
• Lumir Hladik – Chief Creative Strategist, Strategic Design Group

Q: [Joe] talked about setting up meetings outside of PDAC and how it might be difficult.  Given the competition for this audience’s attention, how many meetings should a company realistically aim to set up?

A:  Over the course of three days, every banker is going to be approached for meeting setup.  It depends what stage you are. If you’re an early stage exploration company and you want to engage in some financing work in 2012, three to five meetings would probably be a realistic target. 

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t hit that mark because at the end of the day, you know every other company there is trying to target these same individuals. If you’re having a hard time setting up these meetings directly yourselves, leverage some of the contacts of your advisors, board members, etc… because even a 5 minute quick discussion starts that process of dialogue that you can carry out throughout the course of the year. 

Q:  [Lumir] talked about producing a booth. How long does this process typically take (design and production) and what should a company expect in terms of costs?

A: First of all there are different sizes of booths – I will talk about the minimum size, which we showed in the presentation (approximately 8x10).  If the hardware is supplied it could take from a few days to a few weeks depending on how complicated it is.  Few days, If you have the pictures available and if you have all the data available, but obviously the production takes longer if there are many images and… in many cases we have to up-rez the files because nobody shoots at “booth size”  size. And the cost? Just the design itself, no hardware, could be somewhere from 3-15k. Depends again if you have to buy stock photography. There are a lot of factors.

Having said that, there is still plenty of time for companies to look at their existing booths if they have one in place and think about doing a refresh. Ask some questions, does it look dated? Does it capture the information you want to convey?  Is the progress you recently made conveyed in the booth itself?

Q:  [Joe] talked about promoting a company’s presence at the conference via Waggle.  Can you tell me what that is?

A:  Waggle is a brand new social network set up by the TSX, designed to facilitate dialogue and the exchange of information between issuers and investors.  If you visit www.waggle.ca, you can get a good sense of the site’s capabilities- quite a few issuers that have set up profiles and are using it to supplement information that they are already disclosing whether it’s through their own websites and in SEDAR.   The site is free to use for issuers and investors. 

NOTE: For more information on how to get your company registered on Waggle, please contact Cheryl Mascarenhas, Waggle’s Community Manager, at (416) 815-0700 ext. 279 or CommunityManager@Waggle.ca. 

Q: Re: the elevator pitch. How do you make sure that you’re able to find a balance between keeping it high level but making sure you have enough meat?

A:  We talked about practice, practice, practice.  As you practice, you may want to consider delivering the pitch to individuals who aren’t that familiar with your company.  The reaction they will give you based on eye contact and types of questions that they come back with should give you an indication whether you’re on the right mark. 

As we’ve talked about, putting together an elevator pitch does take some effort and does in fact require a lot of revisions back and forth. So that balanced approach, practice it, deliver it, and see if it’s resonating with audiences and individuals. And if it is, you’re probably on the right track. You’re crossing that line of providing enough information and providing the information and details but still keeping it at high level and keeping it at 20 words or so.

...Stay tuned for Part 2 and the remaining Q&A transcript later this week!