Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

Special events involve a mixture of entertainment, celebration, and raising money. While some may include impromptu participant involvement, they concentrate on creating a wonderful experience for attendees. Shortchange the time needed, and you and your attendees will be frustrated and unhappy. I thought you’d never ask.

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Meeting Design Conference Meeting Conference Design 88

Conferences that Work

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

And yes, I admit it, during the second day of my vacation while enjoying the harmonies I hear, I’m jolted to think about religious meeting design…. Religious services are thought to be around 300,000 years old — by far the oldest form of organized meeting that humans have created. Include lots of communal activities.

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Conferences that Work

APRIL 25, 2022

Today’s attendees are no longer satisfied sitting and listening to people talking at them. If you want to hold meetings where effective learning, connection, and engagement take place, you need to build in authentic and relevant participation. This workshop is limited to 100 attendees, so register now ! What We Will Talk About.

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Conferences that Work

MARCH 13, 2017

How do we get people to participate at meetings? We know that participants — people who are active learners — learn more, retain more, and retain more accurately than passive attendees. They are also far more likely to make valuable connections with their peers during the event. Read the full article at Conferences That Work.

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Attendee Education Booking Meeting Design 80

Conferences that Work

AUGUST 16, 2021

And it made me think about meeting design. And, me being me, I thought about what Marcy had just said in the context of meeting design. And meetings are no exception. The art and craft of the meeting designer. It’s a meeting designer’s job to create these contextual layers.

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Rehearsal Meeting Design Conference Planner 126

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

I still believe that these events, when well-designed and facilitated, offer the best attendee experience for the majority of conferences that are held today. 2—Poor unconference design Half a century ago, as a lowly graduate student, I attended tons of traditional academic conferences. Here are my six reasons.

Preparation 106

Preparation Venue Conference Attendee 106

Conferences that Work

APRIL 11, 2022

First, you need to understand before the meeting what your practitioners and suppliers want, need, and expect. As a meeting designer, if a meeting is going to include both practitioners and suppliers I always ask my clients about the relationship between these groups and their wants and needs.

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Meeting Vendor Sponsors Attendee 118

Conferences that Work

JULY 3, 2023

Back in 1992 , I developed The Three Questions as a fundamental opening process for participant-driven meetings and conferences. Those who offer it are usually first-time attendees. Read the full article at Conferences That Work The post Exploring the Second Question appeared first on Conferences That Work.

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Conference Attendee Meeting Design Booking 62

Conferences that Work

JANUARY 24, 2022

Read Nancy’s article to learn how an office redesign strengthened connections amongst a group of formerly loosely connected peers. Similarly, your design layout will affect the likelihood and value of hallway learning conversations. Give your attendees plenty of breaks. And she gets a hat tip for inspiring this post!]

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Conference Attendee Meeting Booking 144

Conferences that Work

APRIL 18, 2022

The first novel hybrid meeting format was invented by Joel Backon back in 2010. The second is a design I’ll be using in a conference I’ve designed and will be facilitating in June 2022. 1—In-person attendees participate in an online session! Have you experienced other novel hybrid meeting formats?

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Conferences that Work

MARCH 14, 2022

Given the fundamental human need to tell, meeting stakeholders owe it to participants to create opportunities and environments for rich conversations in the sessions, rather than just the gaps between them. Let’s give attendees the priceless gift of someone to tell it to at our events.

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Meeting Design Conference Online Audience 65

Conferences that Work

MAY 11, 2020

In person meetings have vanished overnight. It’s time to implement what we’ve learned about great face-to-face meeting design and process into online meetings. Meetings will never be the same. Regardless of the time needed, conference attendees should be otherwise engaged during step #2.

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Online Conference Platform Attendee 150

Conferences that Work

APRIL 1, 2019

At traditional conferences with fixed programs set in advance, at best half of sessions offered are what attendees want. I was an amateur in the meeting industry, and that led to some mistakes, but it also gave me a fresh perspective at a time when meeting design wasn’t really a “thing.”

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Booking Conference Meeting Design Speakers 97

Conferences that Work

JULY 19, 2021

If you want maximum learning, interaction, and connection at a meeting, small meetings are better than large meetings. This is the classic hybrid hub and spoke format that we used 10 years ago at Event Camp Twin Cities (ECTC). Producing Event Camp Twin Cities 2011. What do you think about hub and spoke meetings?

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Conferences that Work

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

I think of status at events as the relative levels of proclaimed or perceived social value assigned to or assumed by attendees. And power at events is an individual’s capacity to influence the actions, beliefs, or conduct of attendees. Typically, but not always, higher status implies greater power at meetings.

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Meeting Conference Speakers Booking 129

Conferences that Work

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

So here’s my review of Butter, a meeting platform for facilitators to shine. In this review of Butter, I’ll share a big picture overview, what I think is Butter’s finest feature, an example of how to implement a meeting design in Butter, and my closing thoughts. Meeting design case.

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Platform Meeting Online Production 62

Conferences that Work

JUNE 13, 2016

Why mention this on an event design blog? Well, the most effective aspect of China’s online censorship regime illustrates what happens when you don’t incorporate covenants into your meetings. Read the full article at Conferences That Work. The Chinese government runs a massive online censorship program.

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Meeting Conference Online Education 63

Conferences that Work

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Participant-driven and participation-rich peer conference designs improve on traditional events because they don’t treat openings and closings as necessary evils but as critical components of the meeting design. Read the full article at Conferences That Work Related posts: Participate!

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Conference Conference Design Meeting Design Education 64

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Let’s look at these three conclusions in the context of meeting design. Most meeting presenters still lecture. And most meeting session presenters resort to lecturing as their dominant session modality. Attendees learn more when presenters use active learning modalities.

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Publishing Speakers Education Booking 85

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

After I talked about my meeting design work with pioneer tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, the testing community somehow adopted the term peer conference for their get-togethers. That’s the way to improve meetings! A day to get to know people a bit already.”

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Conference Meeting Design Proposal Retreat 62

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

I decided to design the wake as a three or more hour event. This timing is not great for potential European attendees. Attendees (~90 right now) are registering on an online platform that’s free for free events. Have you designed and/or run one? We’ll use two online platforms for the wake.

Online 126

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Conferences that Work

APRIL 16, 2018

Fun fact: the testing community often uses my term “peer conferences” for their get-togethers, due to a chat about meeting design I had with tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference.) Most meeting conveners concentrate on feedback about meeting content (“great speakers!

Logistics 58

Logistics Conference Trade Show Attendee 58

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Venue owners can make other attendees co-hosts. The host can broadcast a text announcement to all attendees in all rooms. A Rally attendee just needs a link to the venue, and only needs to provide their name. Right now, it’s good to have a dedicated host who notices when new attendees appear and helps them acclimatize.

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Conferences that Work

JUNE 18, 2018

I’ll bet that even today, if you asked attendees what they remembered about the event, most would immediately recall the There Was No Coffee moment. Experienced meeting planners know that every meeting has its share of unexpected surprises. Surprising Meetings But not all meeting surprises are bad.

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Meeting Conference Planner Attendee 70

Conferences that Work

MARCH 25, 2019

Ultimately, the attendees are the losers when this happens. A client asked me to facilitate a 90-minute workshop for 600 attendees. But when it was time to start, no attendees appeared. But I was disappointed and puzzled that so many attendees had missed out on an excellent experience. Obviously, I wanted to find out why.

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Conferences that Work

JULY 30, 2018

Ironically, in my experience it’s almost always easier to create memorable learning and valuable connection for attendees by employing participatory workshop formats.

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Consulting Education Venue Conference 54