Review Time
I liked that a lot of information about various countries was available and that there were representatives with whom to discuss various issues about which we have questions or in some cases which we hadn’t considered.In my opinion, the individual presentations varied widely in quality, depth, and usefulness. As an example, many things discussed by the presenter on moving internationally was potentially useful but his slides were unreadable given background picture and type font. Similarly, another presenter talked about slow walking through Europe without leaving Europe but didn’t explicitly state how to do that. Many presenters obviously had not practiced, some were not the greatest public speakers, some hadn’t proof read their slides or had content coordinated with the slide. Many presenters flipped through slides so quickly that it didn’t make sense to have had a slide in the first place although the rapidity of their flipping through slides in most cases reflected poor time management in their presentation or accrued time loss across multiple presentations in a session block. All reflect a lack or quality control and preparation both by individual presenters and by IL.Finally, it is not useful to have a short introduction presentation followed by a more in depth discussion later in which the former information is repeated in whole taking up the short time available. Moreover, while I recognize there is an issue with wanting to repeat some sessions, there are presenters who materially took up too much time of the overall conference to the detriment of other content (RETA repeated in whole or part at least 2-3 times, CRYPTO in part at least 3 times, etc.). While I recognize there may be demand for that content and it is central to IL’s content and services, your attendees likely only need one opportunity to see that and presenting it once without competing presentations would afford much more time in your schedule to accommodate more in depth or longer presentations of other information that is just as important and harder to acquire.To close, the food service within the conference was too little and the time for lunch given the number of attendees and venues nearby was too short.
(1) Provide at least a box lunch. 400+ senior citizens is a lot to unleash on a hotel restaurant at one time - this was a holiday weekend and other area restaurants were closed. (2) People pay a lot of money for this conference and gave up an entire holiday weekend to be here. Every session should be value-add. To that end: (A) Laypeople/expats are maybe OK for the speed-dating portion but their deeper-dive talks were almost always a verbatim repeat - waste of time. (B) The in-depth talks on countries should be the attorneys etc. who can talk knowledgeably about what is required to move there. (C) There was a LOT of duplication (oil&gas, Ronan and Jeff in particular stand out here). Remove the overlap, have them make their spiel only once and use the extra time from their 2nd/3rd/4th spiels to give more time to complex topics like tax, social security, Medicare, finances. 10-15 minutes is not enough for those. (D) We all felt for the Thai expat who is not a public speaker, but that should have been vetted ahead of time. (E) The presentations should be rehearsed to run to time. France’s expat ran long and didn’t care, which gave short shrift to the immigration attorney whose content was actually useful. (F) The slide decks were almost always illegible. Too small font, white text on patterned background, too much text, and then the speaker flipped through them without speaking to them - wasted slide. You need to provide coaching and guidance ahead of time, break up the slides yourself if you have to. (G) The nuts and bolts of moving - 1st speaker had 10 minutes and spent 7 of them on his life story. Otherwise all we learned from him was “be careful.” 2nd speaker was more of a sum-up of what we’d already been told - if it’s “nuts and bolts” of moving, I expected to hear about actually moving stuff overseas - customs? Packing? Things to consider? None of that was covered. (H) Pet session didn’t discuss bringing pets back to the US from overseas - that is different and harder. (I) Medicare presenter was MAGA and it showed. Biden was “crafty” and the OBBB “isn’t going to change Medicare next year” (when everyone but Fox News viewers knows the changes won’t hit till after the midterms). If he’s an expert he should have more to offer than Fox’s talking points. It hurt his credibility. His talk also assumed a level of familiarity with the subject matter that I at least didn’t have - less breezy chitchat and more step-by-step explanation. (J) Jeff’s session on Schengen hopping didn’t actually explain the mechanics of how to hop or what that is accomplishing. (3) Bottom line: IL is in the business of communication. Many of these sessions did not have good communicators. There were useful tidbits scattered throughout, but more rehearsal, more focus on polished and professional presentations with less overlap and repetition would enhance your brand rather than detract from it. I recognize there will be some sales pitches like crypto, oil&gas, RETA, etc, but there was a very heavy emphasis on those and less on information that would be more useful to your attendees.
The conference sessions were very interesting even regarding subjects I didn’t come to learn about. It was well-organized from beginning to end, and I met lots of terrific people. The reason for only four stars is that my European country of interest, Portugal, only received a 10 minute session, as did the other countries. A lot of the conference seemed catered to investors. In addition, the information booths were mainly for countries in Central America. I don’t recall seeing one booth for a European country. Nevertheless, a good time was had and I learned a lot.
The very broad range of topics presented by experienced and knowledgeable people made it easy to find something relevant to me. Having 3 choices for each time slot was very useful and the choices at each time slot were diverse so that we found something interesting for almost every session. The Bootcamp information packet has so much useful information to refer to after the event
The conference was A++. I came with preconceived ideas about where I wanted to go and the conference confirmed it but also provided other countries and opportunities I hadn’t thought about. This was 100% comprehensive. A soup to nuts conference in what to do to move to another country. Just fantastic.
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