Meeting Engine

Pre-booked meetings are the primary metric for any event where money changed hands. This is the operation that produces them.

When to use

• Any sponsored conference, immediately after signature
• Any conference you are attending without sponsoring
• An owned event with a VIP track that needs scheduled conversations
• Post-mortem, when an event produced almost no meetings

Inputs

• Reads: workspace/events/<event>/contract.md (the matchmaking answers), workspace/audience/target-list.csv, workspace/program/charter.md
• Needs from user: who is attending from your side and for how long, the matchmaking platform details, and the attendee or registration list if the organizer shares one

Workflow

1. Derive the target, do not pick it

Expected attendance (confirmed with a human at the organizer)
  - sponsor and exhibitor staff
  = buyer-side population
  x share in ICP industries
  x share at or above the seniority bar
  = senior ICP pool

Target meetings / senior ICP pool = penetration rate

Order matters. Net the staff out first. They are entirely non-prospects, not a slice distributed across ICP and seniority like real attendees, so subtracting them at the end removes them twice. On 1,000 attendees, 30% ICP, 50% senior, 100 sponsor staff: the wrong order returns 50, the right order returns 135.

25 to 35% penetration is aggressive and achievable with a stage slot and a long matchmaking window. Above 50% is fantasy. Below 10% means the event is wrong or nobody is trying.

Then check it against staff capacity. Two people running back-to-back thirty-minute meetings across a seven-hour day, minus sessions they must attend and a lunch, is a hard ceiling. If the target exceeds capacity, either bring more people or lower the target. Do not book meetings nobody can hold.

Validate weekly. Many organizers share a running registration list. Check the target against real registered names each week rather than defending an abstract number.

2. Sequence outreach around the matchmaking window

The date the platform opens decides everything. Get it from a human, not from the booklet.

Landing wave 1 before the platform opens is the correct sequence. Those people arrive at the platform already knowing your name.

Keep 20 to 30% of slots unbooked. The best conversations at a conference are the ones you did not plan, and a fully booked calendar means you cannot take them.

3. Write the outreach

Short, specific, and about them being there rather than about your product.

Subject: <Event name>, Thursday

<Name>, saw you're speaking at / attending <event> on <date>.
<One clause on why them specifically: their session, a recent announcement, a
shared connection, something at their company.>
We're on stage at <time> talking about <topic>. Any chance of 30 minutes
either side of that? Happy to work around your schedule.

No deck attached, no calendar link in the first message for senior recipients, no product description. Every invitation runs through writing-quality.

4. Use the transferable passes as the strongest outreach you have

A comped pass is a reason to call a prospect that has nothing to do with your product, and it works on people who ignore everything else. Assign every pass to a named person, chase the registration personally, and set an internal cutoff a day before the real one. Passes unredeemed at the deadline are the most expensive waste in an event budget.

5. Build the schedule

Per person, per day, one page per meeting:

• Time, place, and how to find each other. "By the coffee station" is not a location at a conference
• Who is attending from both sides
• One page on the account: why they matter, history, the point of view, the ask
• The next step you want, written before you walk in

Distribute the night before, in the huddle. Never on the morning of.

Location matters more than people expect. A booth is a bad meeting location. A quiet corner, a hotel lobby nearby, or a booked meeting room is better. If the venue offers meeting rooms, book them the day they open.

6. Run confirmations

A meeting booked three weeks out and never mentioned again is a 50% show rate. Confirm at T-3 days and again the morning of, with the location and a phone number.

7. Capture on the day

Every meeting gets a note the same day: what was discussed, the next step, and the date. Notes written three days later are worth a fraction as much, and the follow-up written from them shows it.

Output

• Writes: workspace/events/<event>/meetings.csv from templates/meeting-tracker-schema.csv, and per-person schedules
• Prints: the derived target with its arithmetic, capacity check, the outreach calendar against the platform window, pass assignments, and current booked against target

Rules & quality bar

• Derive the target from attendance arithmetic, then check it against staff capacity
• Wave 1 lands before the matchmaking platform opens
• Keep 20 to 30% of slots open for what you did not plan
• Every transferable pass is assigned to a named person and chased personally
• One page per meeting, distributed the night before
• Same-day notes. No exceptions
• No fabricated personalization. Do not claim to have read something you have not

Related skills

• Reads: sponsorship-negotiation, audience-machine
• Pairs with: conference-activation, staffing-and-briefing
• Feeds: event-followup, event-measurement