Conferences that Work

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

I make conferences better by dramatically increasing attendee satisfaction. Increasing attendee satisfaction increases the effectiveness of the event for all stakeholders: attendees, sponsors, and event owners. Since 1992, I’ve designed and facilitated hundreds of conferences and thousands of meetings.

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Conferences that Work

APRIL 25, 2022

Hosted by CSAE Manitoba , this free one-hour online Participate Lab will introduce you to the design of participation-rich events through the direct experience of participatory meeting techniques and formats. Today’s attendees are no longer satisfied sitting and listening to people talking at them. Where & When.

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Conferences that Work

MARCH 29, 2021

The essential characteristics of meeting professionals. If there is a heaven on earth in the event industry, there are four essential characteristics of successful meeting professionals you’ll meet there. Every successful meeting involves thinking about, planning for and executing countless details. Details matter.

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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. Seth Godin describes a desirable meeting mindset: What would happen… if we chose to: …Sit in the front row. Seth Godin, What Would Happen.

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Conferences that Work

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

Companies bombard me with offers to check out online meeting platforms. Butter is an online meeting platform that is designed to support the facilitation of great interactive meetings. So here’s my review of Butter, a meeting platform for facilitators to shine. The usual caveats. Butter — the big picture.

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Platform Meeting Online Production 62

The MICE Blog

JULY 27, 2022

Even after all these years, and a pandemic in between, these principles remain extremely important when we want to create a seamless attendee experience at events, be it live, virtual or hybrid, and put the human in the centre. According to Felix, the term ‘participant experience design’ is a work in progress.

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Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

But Julius didn’t see them catch on and now focuses on other aspects of the meeting industry. I’ve been a facilitator, designer, and proponent of unconferences (aka peer conferences ) since 1992. For example, figuring out what attendees actually want and need to talk about doesn’t happen at the drop of a hat.

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Conferences that Work

APRIL 9, 2018

Over the last five years I’ve heard increasing concern from the meeting professionals community about the deterioration of the quality of our national industry conferences. I’ll illustrate with the area where I have most experience: providing education at these meetings.

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Conferences that Work

MAY 11, 2020

I’ve been designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich in person meetings — aka peer conferences — for almost thirty years. Because participants love these meetings ! Now the covid-19 pandemic has forced meetings online. Zoom has rapidly become the dominant platform for online meetings.

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Conferences that Work

MARCH 25, 2024

Since 2005, I’ve written three successful books on meeting design and facilitation and over 800 weekly blog posts on a wide range of topics. My books continue to sell, and this blog is the world’s most popular website on meeting design and facilitation. Attendees loved my events! Nothing worked.

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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. Minimizing surprises like CoffeeGate is default behavior for meeting planners.

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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. Answering it gives every person present, in turn, an opportunity to share what they would like the ensuing meeting to be about. Those who offer it are usually first-time attendees.

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Conferences that Work

MARCH 14, 2022

Meetings of every kind offer these opportunities. Personal meetings like these, whether brief or extended, between good friends or strangers, are fundamental. Read any of my books to learn specific techniques and designs that create meaningful and valuable conversations during meeting sessions.).

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Endless Events

JANUARY 12, 2018

Get Ready for the Top Meeting Trends in 2018. Meetings have always been more intimate affairs compared to events. But with recent trends focusing more towards personalization and customization, meetings are definitely getting a big tech upgrade this year. One thing did catch our eye from the article though: smart drugs.

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Conferences that Work

APRIL 1, 2019

This (slightly edited) interview by JT Long appeared in the March 2019 issue of Smart Meetings Magazine. At traditional conferences with fixed programs set in advance, at best half of sessions offered are what attendees want. What led to writing the book, Conferences that Work ?

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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. When such freedoms are agreed to individually and as a group at the start of a meeting, ambiguity about meeting behavior dissipates.

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Conferences that Work

JULY 1, 2024

PSFG has a deep appreciation for the importance of meeting design. ” —Extract from an interview with Cath Thompson of Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG) by Alec Saelens on January 25, 2024 Rachel contracted me in 2022 for design consultation on PSFG’s first online peer conference.

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Conferences that Work

AUGUST 24, 2020

Here are five meeting design books I especially recommend. Into the Heart of Meetings: Basic Principles of Meeting Design ( ebook or paperback ). Into the Heart of Meetings: Basic Principles of Meeting Design ( ebook or paperback ). The story is told in the book’s preface.)

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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. Conclusion.

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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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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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Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

Under pandemic conditions, former alumni, faculty, staff, and other friends of the institution cannot even meet in person to grieve. So I decided to design and run an online memorial service. I decided to design the wake as a three or more hour event. This timing is not great for potential European attendees.

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Conferences that Work

NOVEMBER 29, 2021

There have been many times when I’ve been understandably silent/disengaged/distracted during meetings, and I’m sure everyone else has too. Luckily, this is typically part of good meeting design — it’s not something that you need to awkwardly or artificially introduce. People who are distracted or disengaged.

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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!”)

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Conferences that Work

APRIL 8, 2019

Invent a way to make the conference successful based on the collective needs, wants, and experience of the attendees. Organizations hear about these conferences and ask me to design and facilitate them. I quickly discover the size and interest of the meetings industry. The conference has run continually for the last 27 years.)

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Conferences that Work

AUGUST 29, 2016

Whenever I’ve had the pleasure of meeting David (not often enough!) The cover proclaims “What’s Next in Event Design?” There is nothing in the 2016 BizBash Design Issue that explores the heart of event design: what will happen at the event? 2 — Elementary Meetings.

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Conferences that Work

JUNE 26, 2017

I’ve spent 25 years working on changing outmoded mindsets about what we should be doing in meetings. Historically, topics had to be determined in advance, the meeting format was mainly lecture and did not encourage interaction, and content was king. Read the full article at Conferences That Work. And it is changing.

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Conferences that Work

AUGUST 8, 2016

For over 25 years, I’ve been designing and facilitating Conferences That Work : successful, innovative, highly interactive, participant-driven events that leverage attendees’ expertise and experience to create just the conference that participants want and need. The attendees are still here talking to each other!

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Conferences that Work

MARCH 25, 2019

Though it’s clearly sensible to keep a conference running on schedule, we’ve all attended meetings where rambling presenters, avoidable “technical issues”, incompetent facilitation, and inadequate logistics have made a mockery of the published program. Ultimately, the attendees are the losers when this happens.

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Conferences that Work

MARCH 28, 2022

My work at a pre-con is different from that of a typical meeting planner since I focus on the meeting’s design and facilitation. I’ve been convening meetings for decades, though, so I know a fair amount about meeting planning. The traditional bread and butter of a meeting planner’s job.

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Conferences that Work

JULY 19, 2021

Ever since my first encounter with the hybrid hub and spoke meeting topology at Event Camp Twin Cities in 2011, I’ve been a big fan of the format. Yesterday [see below], I realized that hub and spoke is a great format for purely online meetings too. What’s a hub and spoke meeting? But first…. A terminology reminder.

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Conferences that Work

OCTOBER 21, 2024

I’ve not always agreed with Freeman’s Reports , but, if you’re in the meeting industry, Freeman’s Trends Report Q4 2024 is a must-read. “We’ve calibrated our research and confirmed our hypothesis: many organizers are operating on outdated definitions of attendee and exhibitor value. The good news?

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Conferences that Work

APRIL 18, 2022

I’ve been writing about hybrid meetings for a long time; my first post was in February 2010. The COVID19 pandemic created an explosion of interest in hybrid meetings, and the marketplace and event professionals are still defining what “hybrid” means. (No, 1—In-person attendees participate in an online session!

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Conferences that Work

DECEMBER 12, 2016

significantly increase owner and attendee satisfaction and participation at your sessions and events. The POPWORKS format focuses on active learning through direct experience of a multitude of participatory meeting techniques. The attendees are still here talking to each other! I’m excited!

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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. But when we are fully engaged in a meeting, we are just there , immersed in and responding to what is happening. Attendees want to feel safe.

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Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

For decades, I’ve championed responsible conference designs that prioritize participants. This approach benefits everyone—participants, sponsors, and organizers—because when attendees’ wants and needs are met, their satisfaction positively impacts all other event stakeholders.

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Endless Events

OCTOBER 19, 2018

So, our blog provides comprehensive and personality-packed articles with the latest tips, tricks, and trends for event planners to create more epic events with a focus on technical production. . Speaking of opinion, here’s a great article on sustainably supporting local communities , while creating authentic experiences for event goers.

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