We’re excited to announce that Katie Winter has joined the Velvet Chainsaw team as Client Projects & Stories Specialists! Lucky for us, Katie and her family recently relocated to Cleveland, OH from Chicago, IL. Katie will work closely with our Director of Client Project & Stories, Michele Frania, to conduct in-depth conference audience … [Read More...]
Deliver Superior Conference Education Value
Here’s what hasn’t changed: Education continues to be essential to a participant’s experience. Here’s what has changed: I’m convinced that “something for everyone” programming — including basic content for the novice or intermediate practitioner — is no longer the right strategy for positioning your … [Read More...]
Five-Step Framework for Effective Collaborative Design
Your conference strategy should include a plan to inject fresh content or experiences each year as part of an ongoing improvement process. There are a million ways to make these improvement plans. Some work and many don’t. Working with one of our clients, we devised a simple framework to help … [Read More...]
Transform Your Expo into a Networking and Learning Destination
Expos are the most disrupted element of association conferences today. If you’re still using “tradeshow,” “market place” or “exhibit hall” as names for the area where you feature solution providers—who are there to help your attendees deal with the problems and challenges they’re facing—it’s time … [Read More...]
Expo Decisions: Attendee Preferences over Exhibitors—Always
For those of you who organize large annual conferences and trade shows, there undoubtedly is a chicken-vs.-egg debate. On the one hand, your organization might receive as much as 50 percent (or more) of your event’s revenue from supplier investments in exhibits, sponsorship and advertising … [Read More...]
Education Committee: More Advising and Curating, Less Slotting
Most meeting organizers invest a significant amount of time creating the educational programming for their annual conference. Models vary, but most include a 15- to 20-person conference committee (slotters) and army of reviewers (graders). Progressive organizers are shifting to a blended model, … [Read More...]
Fostering a Winning Conference Culture
I have been struck by the disparity in how an association’s organizational culture translates (or doesn’t translate) to the on-site implementation or planning of its live events. There are many associations that tout their open and supportive cultures. But when it gets to “go time,” does that … [Read More...]
Are Your Speakers Speaking to Speakers?
I wonder about the future of peer review for conference abstracts. While it is a critical filter for high-quality journals, it is a very inefficient process for accelerating innovation and discovery at conferences. Many healthcare and STEM conference business models are heavily dependent on … [Read More...]
If You Build It, Will Teams Come?
This is the second installment of a two-part blog on team learning. In the first, we looked at why it’s a smart conference strategy. In this post, we’ll explore how to design, promote and execute it for your next conference. Since our work culture is mostly team-based, it’s about time we … [Read More...]
