Are your conferences effective?

Every organization at some point asks, "Are our conferences effective?"
By Ed Bernacki, The Idea Factory

As a speaker on innovative thinking, I noticed something at a conference that led me to ask, "How many people take notes at conferences and never look at them again?" About two-thirds of people put up their hands.

This prompted me to look at the design of the events I was involved with. It was easy to see that some carefully align participants and speakers in the direction of specific learning and engagement strategies. Other events feel cobbled together with no objective in mind and an ad hoc collection of speakers that seem to have little in common.

It was easy to see that much was invested in the logistics and management of many conferences, but I wondered if the learning or content side of the conference got as much attention. My interviews with meeting planners and those from associations and corporations suggested the answer is no. In fact, some people suggest the ratio of time invested in logistics is 10 times greater than that invested in designing the event.

To design conferences that lead to more ideas and innovative results for the participants, we need to raise our expectations of how we can engage our audiences and transform our planning approaches. This means investing more time and creativity to consider what is possible when people, speakers and important issues come together.

To start, what is your definition of an effective conference?
Coming from the innovation perspective, I believe a useful definition is people finding or creating new ideas at a conference and then acting on them after the event.

This may seem like one of the BHAGS many speakers talk about: big, hairy, audacious goals. I realize that this is not a common goal and some in the industry will have reservations about it. If so, remember that the return-on-investment models say that the conferences with the greatest returns will be those whose participants act on their ideas to create a positive bottom-line impact on their organizations.

Here is a useful way to incorporate three innovative strategies into the design of your conference.

• Create the opportunity for ideas
  What opportunities do you create for participants to create, capture or develop ideas? If your program is packed with speakers with no time or opportunities to reflect, discuss or review, then there is little opportunity to distill the value from the conference. You must build in opportunities, not hope they happen.
• Create the motivation to create ideas
  Every conference, just like every organization, creates a culture unique to itself. Some encourage and nurture new thinking and ideas. Others don't. The culture of a conference is reflected by the venue, the content, the people and so on. It starts with registration and your opening session and continues until you close the event. What culture do you create? Does it engage people and give them the motivation to find ideas and the conviction to act on them afterward?
• Enhance people's skills to innovate when they participate
  While audiences tend to be educated and experienced, do people have enough skills to participate effectively in a conference? How would your participants answer these questions?

1. Do you take notes and never look at them again?
2. Do you put your conference binder on a shelf and ever look at it again?
3. Do you go home with business cards from people you cannot remember?

In the past few weeks I have opened several conferences with a simple message to prompt people to think about how they will participate in the conference. Once people think about this issue, many start to change their behavior. You can start by asking people, "Why are you here?" or, "What do you want to accomplish during this conference?" This will prompt people to set some objectives for their personal involvement in the conference.

My interest in applying innovation to the design of meetings led to the writing of a book, Seven Rules for Designing More Innovative Conferences. The Rules help people to broaden planning discussions when you engage in this process. I will highlight a couple of rules to prompt your thinking.

Rule 1 The experts at your conference are in the audience, not on the stage.
This may sound obvious, but do you plan to use the expertise that walks into the conference room? Start by recognizing the expertise of your participants and see how you can use it to benefit others.

Rule 2 Learning objectives drive the design of your content.
It is easy to talk about learning objectives but tough to design them. Start the process by asking, "How do you want people to participate?" For example, focus on these questions as a background to the design of the content of the event:

• Exactly how do you want to involve people in the event?
• What do you want people to achieve or create at the event?
• How can the conference be used to provide the insights, contacts or opportunities that add directly to the bottom line of the participants?

The answers to these questions are very challenging. The discipline to develop useful answers may open the door to the executive levels of the organization. Don't fear trying something new or challenging your speakers to come up with new and different ways to present content and engage people during presentations.

Rule 3 Always use the brainpower of an audience to create something.
When people come together, great ideas are possible. Too few events use the brainpower to help people create new ideas. I have worked with events that gave me some flexibility to add a mini brainstorming session to a keynote or workshop presentation. The size of the audience will dictate the mechanics of such a session.

I recently engaged 300 human resource managers in a presentation and then spent 20 minutes having participants answer this question: What is the biggest HR challenge facing your organization next year?

Each participant was given a page with instructions to prompt his thinking. I asked participants to talk with people around them and then write down one or two challenges using full sentences to capture the importance of their challenges. Most people submitted their big challenges. These will be reviewed and used for articles, workshops and conference themes for the next year.

We should not limit our imaginations to harness the brainpower of the people inside our conferences. Start with something small and notice the results. You may find very useful insights that lead to big ideas. For staff conferences, it may be as simple as spending 20 minutes to ask: What is one idea that would make our organization a better place to work?

Rule 4 Put structure into your networking and mingling opportunities.
We know conferences are a great place to meet people, but do you leave it to chance? The fact is that many conferences use the label of "networking time" to fill the gap between two sessions. Start your brainstorming by answering two questions:

1. Who would benefit by meeting whom?
2. How can you structure your networking to ensure that these people meet?

Rule 5 Assume that your conference participants have weak skills for participating in a conference.
Most people do not think much about their personal skills or strategies to listen, make notes or manage their ideas. It's time to start! Start your event with some ideas for your participants to think about how they will participate over the next day or two. If you want to add a challenging question to your conference review, consider asking: How would you rate your participation in this conference?

Your learning and engagement strategy should fully use the learning potential of your resources.

Don't leave this to chance. Many events use a "call for speakers" to source their content. This limits your objectives to whatever speakers want to present, not what your audience needs to hear.

When great logistical plans start with great learning plans, you can create great conferences. Well-defined learning objectives can be used to sell your event, to focus your speakers and to measure the bottom-line impact. This is the key to an effective event, one that prompts people to act on their ideas after the conference.