5 Practices for Improving Concurrent Sessions

Conference organizers know that the “main course” of their education offering and value proposition is in the concurrent education sessions. These learning experiences are primarily guided and selected by committee members who have little to no training or experience in adult learning principles. This model can be very risky. What happens in those rooms will … [Read more…]

Recent Posts

Time to Prune Your Sponsor Offerings

A number of associations we work with have seen their annual convention exhibit space sales lag attendance, which has recovered since the pandemic. Conversely, sponsorship revenue is back to pre-pandemic levels and has upside potential. If your sponsorship menu and prospectus look similar to 2019, a refresh can help you seize this growth opportunity. Here’s … [Read more…]

Meeting the Needs of Lifelong Learners

Our friends at Leading Learning/Tagoras are conducting a survey to help guide your association’s future learning strategy. We’re sharing this because Leading Learning has a great track record of doing high-quality research and sharing the insights with those participating in the survey. To contribute and learn about the trends that will have the most impact … [Read more…]

Two Tensions Keeping Senior Event Professionals Up at Night

According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), the business-to-business exhibition industry is still in recovery mode. The bad news is that full year performance for 2023 participation and revenues is expected to be 9.5% below 2019. The good news is that 2024 is expected to eclipse 2019 results by 3.6%. (One can only … [Read more…]

Better Because We Will Be There

Many of our clients have had to navigate unchartered waters as venue contracts (that were secured years ago) are now being questioned and challenged by members in states that have adopted discriminatory and women’s health laws that go against the mission and values of the association. In response, we posted this article back in April … [Read more…]

APA Gathers in Washington

You belong here….was the theme of the American Psychological Association’s “more than just an annual convention” recently at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Our team had the opportunity to participate and observe both the in-person and virtual event as the post-Covid rebound continues. That theme manifested most successfully in: Intentional content and messaging delivered … [Read more…]

Configurable Conference Journeys

For many annual meetings, the Great Resignation has resulted in erosion of loyal, regular attendees and an increase in first-timers, whose experience can be improved with guidance on the best course for them to follow during your program. In his book, The Paradox of Choice, author Barry Schwartz writes: “Learning to choose is hard. Learning … [Read more…]

Improve Your Output by 10% with ChatGPT

With AI and ChatGPT on the rise, event professionals now have a helpful tool that can elevate efficiency and improve work quality —and you don’t need to be an expert to harness its potential. Over the past few months, I’ve tested out real-world applications for leveraging the power of ChatGPT. Here are three work tasks … [Read more…]