If you’ll be one of the hundreds of people joining us in Atlanta this week for Big Seminar, now is the time to look over your packing list. After all, Big Seminar is one of the best networking and marketing opportunities around – so you want to take advantage of it!

So here are five things you need to do before you head for Atlanta.

1. Determine your ideal outcome. Are you going to learn new tactics? Meet the movers and shakers in the industry? Enlist potential JV partners? Find offers you can promote? If you are clear in your objective, it’s easier to prepare. Remember, you are more likely to achieve your goal if you write it down.

2. Gather your marketing materials. The most important item is business cards. In spite of my designer cringing, I continue to create my own business cards. That’s because I customize and test my cards. (That’s how I came up with the current design – I tested 2 designs at every networking event I attended and this one kept getting the “oohs and ahhs” and better call-back rates.)

For this Big Seminar I’m taking two cards – one for people I meet and one for the JV partners I need to recruit for my new course and member site (details later this week!). The cards have different information, different URLs and different messages on them.

The other marketing piece I always carry is a bulletin board post. Often at conferences there is a JV board where you can post who or what you’re looking for. If you prepare yours ahead of time, it will stand out from the hand-written last-minute torn sheets of paper other people post. Generally I’ll do mine on a half-sheet of paper so it doesn’t dominate the board.

3. Pack your camera. This is the ideal opportunitiy to get your picture with the product producers in the industry. Then, when you’re promoting their product, you can talk about meeting them and use the picture in your recommendation of their product. Plus, you can add more pictures to your blog! (See upper right corner of this blog or click on a photo album.)

I also love to get pictures with my readers and clients, since we rarely see each other face-to-face. So if you’re going to be there, please come up and introduce yourself!

4. Pack your photo clothes. Most seminars are business casual, so you’ll see a lot of khakis and polo shirts (plus a jacket for the COLD room!) But there will be two special opportunities at this seminar.

Mary Mazzullo of Seminar Photography will be there. Mary is a photographer extraordinaire and takes most of the headshots and web photos you see online. That’s her specialty. So if you need photos for your website – and who doesn’t – make an appointment with Mary.

Joining her for the first time will also be a videographer with full green-screen capabilities. If you’ve seen any of the really cool effects being done with video (here’s one; here’s another), then you know how effective green screen video can be. You will be able to literally walk up, shoot your video, and come away with your ready-to-use video.

Now for both of these opportunities you need to do some pre-planning. What do you want to wear? What shots do you need taken? (See SeminarPhotography for pose ideas.) Do you need to take any props with you?

I cannot emphasize enough how important these photographs and videos are. You will not find a faster, easier, more affordable way to do them. So plan to take advantage of this.

5. Get into your bravest skin. Most of us online marketers work alone in our office. We don’t meet the public face to face on a daily basis. We don’t even spend that much time talking to people on the phone! So thrust into a group of people you don’t know, you might want to retreat to your room and order from the room service menu.

Resist that temptation. Be brave. Invite yourself along. If a group of people are going out, ask if you can join them. (They’ll tell you if it’s a private meeting.) If you see someone alone, ask them to join you. Walk up to people and introduce yourself. Stand up when they ask for volunteers.

If you retreat into your comfort zone, you’ll miss much of the seminar’s impact. Instead, pretend to be the person you know you are inside. You can pretend and role play for several days – and no one will know otherwise!

And be sure to look for me! I’ll be there, having my picture taken, shooting video, handing out business cards, talking to JV partners, and bravely introducing myself to people I didn’t know. And I’ll look forward to seeing you, too!