Creating More Value at Your Conference

Conferences must help people bridge the crucial gap between inspiration and execution.
As a speaker on innovation, I have opened several conferences recently with a simple question for delegates. "How many people have attended a conference like this before, made notes, and never looked at them again?"

Usually two-thirds of the audience sheepishly raise their hand. From the perspective of innovation, this is a disaster. Ironically, these events could have been fun, entertaining and informative. They may have rated highly on conference surveys. But, were they a success? Was the investment effective? It depends on how you define these words.

There are many factors nurturing the need for greater effectiveness for conferences. Budgets are tighter and accountability is growing. On the other hand, people need to sit back to reflect on their organizations and create new opportunities. Conferences are the ideal place for new ideas and concepts to be created. I define conference effectiveness in terms of logistics,
learning and leverage.

Logistics
Logistics tend to take the majority of our energies. Logistics involves everything from selecting venues to registration to name tags. Effective logistics is best measured by how easily everything falls into place during the conference - knowing that hundreds of decisions and actions have already been taken and a small army of people are coordinated to make everything seem easy!

Learning
Conferences must be driven by objectives for information presentation, sharing and creation. The format and structure of the event must be conceived to maximise the opportunities for people to get new ideas and to act on them. This is much more involved than breaking a day into six slots that are filled by a speaker. It is carefully assessing what participants "need" to be successful and finding the best ways to get this information to them.

This also means we need to revisit a lot of the basic assumptions we have used in the past. For example, do people have the skills to be effective participants? As a writer on innovation, my observation was that we still give people a blank pad of paper, similar to what we used in school. Is this good enough? We conceived the Conference Navigator Guide to replace the blank pad of paper with a tool to help people get more from the event.

Leverage
This is the trickiest element. It is the X-factor. When it is present, the event stays with people. When it is missing, the event is forgotten. It can be the overall agenda, some innovations, or a location that is used in some new way.

Once in a while a speaker makes it happen but you can't expect them to do this for you.

The answers will be found in finding what is unique about your event, its people and bringing something new, original or meaningful to life during the event. That's creativity.

Effectiveness will mean different things to different people. A conversation with the editor of Inc. Magazine in the USA led to the theme that I view as critical for conference organisers. He said, "Conferences must help people bridge the crucial gap between inspiration and execution."

When people bridge the gap by acting on the ideas they gain from your event, innovation will happen. The column will look at these issues in the future plus provide some interesting references and links to articles and website.

Whose Job Is "Learning"?
Research from Meeting Planners International suggests,
"Meetings should be planned around clearly identified problems or issues with specific desired outcomes. These outcomes should dictate the form and process of meetings. Meetings should be viewed as learning experiences designed to change the behaviour of attendees."

Making Conferences Innovative and Effective
Help your conference participants bridge the gap between the inspiration of a conference and execution of their ideas in the work place

The Meetings Industry Association of Australia recently hosted a training program for conference organisers. I presented on the theme of "creating more value at conferences". I started with a very simple question; how can we make conferences more effective?

The discussion bounced between improving venues and getting a bigger budget, to using technology. I steered the group into a new direction and asked. "Think about the last conference you went to - how many people made notes and never looked at the them again?" Most raised their hands. Secondly, "did you have some good ideas that you forgot?" Most raised their hands again.

When I ask these questions at a conference the response is the same; two-thirds of the people raise their hands. Despite the money that is spend on speakers, venues, and meals and accessories; the participants seem to be the weak link.

For the participants in my workshop, it did not occur to them that an important aspect of making conferences more effective is to look at people and how they use ideas and information. As a definition, I proposed that our objective must be to help people find more and bigger ideas at conferences, and prompt them to act on these on ideas after the conference. That is, to bridge the gap between the inspiration of the event and the execution of the ideas in the workplace.

Meeting Planners International, a US based organization is researching issues related to improving the effectiveness of meetings in terms of return on investment. The very notion of measuring effectiveness opens up a black hole of indifference for some organisers. Bums-on-seats and feedback forms are generally used.

The report commented on this approach:
"Perhaps the easiest of the traditional methodologies is audience participation. Simply put, if there are more bodies in the seats than last year, you must be doing something right. That may be true, but people can be learning nothing and doing it with enthusiasm. So one key is to measure not only their enthusiasm but also their grasp of the content."
One study looked at the opinions of the three stakeholders of the conference industry;

• the professional conference organisers,
• the conference participants, and the
• company managers or executives who commission the conference.

What is "effective" depends on whom you ask.
Most business managers (85%) think their meetings are successful and produce a somewhat or much higher ROI than other investments. Some measure success by quantitative measures (eg. ROI, sales leads), while others focus on qualitative measures (eg., interaction, appropriate speakers, clear purpose or mission). In terms of meeting outcomes, managers think meetings are most successful in conveying a clear sense of organisational priorities and strengthening the organisational culture.
Managers are less convinced that attendees leave with concrete plans, take away important messages, develop a greater commitment to the organization and leave motivated and inspired to be more productive.