How to Use NetNote: Conference Mode

It's day two. You've met twenty people, maybe more.

You look down at a name you typed into your phone yesterday. Marcus. Something about logistics. You can't picture his face, you don't remember what you said you'd send him, and he is somewhere in this building right now.

You're not bad at this. Nobody's brain holds forty strangers in two days. That's not a character flaw, it's a storage problem, and it has nothing to do with how well the conversation went. You and Marcus got on fine. Nothing caught it.

Normal Mode is built for one conversation you want to keep. Meet someone, record a voice note, move on. That works when you meet one person.

A conference is a different animal. Forty conversations in two days, a room full of strangers who are all there for the same reason, and no chance of holding any of it in your head.

So the event gets its own space in the app. Its own directory. Its own connections. Its own reminders. Everything pinned to that one conference.

1. Get in

Three doors, same room. Tap the link the organizer sent. Scan the QR code on the badge or up on the screen. Or open NetNote, flip the toggle from Normal to Conference, and type in the event code.

One thing to know up front: you need the app. There's no web-only version of this. If you don't have NetNote yet, the link sends you to download it, you sign in, and it drops you straight into the event. Better to know that now than at the registration desk.

2. Fill out your profile for this event

Name, LinkedIn, photo, job, school. Plus whatever else the host asked for, because they pick the questions, and they picked them for a reason.

Fill it out like you're introducing yourself to the one person there you most want to meet. That's what it is. This is the version of you the rest of the room sees when they look you up.

And it's per event, not permanent. You show up differently at a career fair than at a founder summit. Your profile follows the room.

3. Your event has its own pages

Five pages, all scoped to this one conference:

• Home: where you record

• Connections: the people you connected with here

• Directory: everyone at the conference who's on NetNote

• Reminders: just for this event

• Settings: your own page

The Directory is searchable, and that's worth more than it sounds. Most people treat a directory as something you check afterward, to find someone you already met. You can also read it first. Scan who's in the room, pick the three people worth finding, go find them. That's a very different conference from the one where you wander around hoping.

One honest note on it. The Directory is built from the profiles people fill in when they join, so it shows the attendees who are on NetNote, not the ones who never opened it. If someone you met isn't in there, they didn't join. Which is a decent reason to tell them to.

4. Record live

Same loop as Normal Mode. Meet someone, walk away, hit record, and talk. Fifteen seconds is plenty. Out loud, like you're telling a friend who just wandered over.

“Just met Marcus Webb, he runs ops for a freight startup out of Rotterdam, we talked about how nobody's solved returns, he's hiring an analyst and said to email him after the summit.”

That's the note that would have saved you on day two. His name, the one thing that makes him worth remembering, and what happens next. No structure, no forms, no typing with one thumb while holding a drink.

The record screen knows where you are. It carries the event name and the day you're on, because conferences run long. Day 2 of 6 is a different animal from a three-hour career fair, and the app tracks it either way.

The rule from how to remember everyone you meet at a conference still applies. Don't wait: record within ninety seconds of walking away. Details fade fast, and that doesn't change just because there's an app involved.

5. Say who you talked to

This is the part that makes Conference Mode more than Normal Mode with a directory bolted on.

NetNote asks who you talked to. Search the attendee list, tap their name, done. Your note is now attached to a real person in the room instead of a name you half caught. Marcus stops being a word in your phone.

If they're not on NetNote, hit Skip linking. You keep the note, you just don't get the link.

Anything you promised goes on the Reminders page for this event. That's the difference between the last day of a conference where you're staring at a list of promises, and the one where you're trying to remember whether you made any.

6. Your report

When the event ends you get your own read on how it went. Who you connected with. The reminders you set. How many people you met, and what kinds of people they were.

Think about the ride home. Everyone else is scrolling a camera roll of business cards, trying to rebuild three days out of photographs. You're reading the room back: who you met, why they mattered, what you owe them and by when.

One more thing worth doing while it's open in front of you. Find the three people who were genuinely interesting but didn't have an obvious next step. Those are the ones to come back to in a month, when “saw this and thought of you” turns a conversation into a relationship. Almost nobody does this, which is exactly why it works.

7. Then the event ends, and they're just your people

Here's the part that matters most, and it's the part nobody expects.

The event space isn't a box you leave things in. Switch back to Normal Mode and everyone you met at the conference is right there with everyone else you've ever recorded. NetNote also creates the event in Normal Mode, under the conference name, with all of them inside it. So you can find Marcus by searching for Marcus, or by opening the summit and looking at the whole room at once.

The conference is over. The people aren't.

That's the whole difference. Not that you met more people. That you still have them.

A few tips

Record between conversations, not at the end of the day. The twenty seconds after you walk away is the best window you'll get. By the closing drinks it's gone.

Link them while you can still see the face. Matching a note to a person takes three seconds during the event. A day later it's guesswork.

Say the follow-up out loud. If “I told him I'd email after the summit” is in the voice note, it ends up on the card with everything else.

Take your own profile seriously. The Directory works both ways. People are looking you up too.

Don't overthink it. Rambling is fine. The AI sorts it out.

That's it

Get in. Fill out your page. Record between conversations. Say who you talked to. Read the room back on the way home.

Nobody remembers forty people. You just don't have to anymore.

Meet. Talk. Never forget.

NetNote is free to Download.