June 25, 2013 by Sarah Michel
Networking is often the catalyst that prompts people to attend conferences, yet delivering on this expectation can be tricky. What’s even trickier – attendees are getting better at leveraging digital channels to find and connect with the people they most want to meet. They’re not as dependent as they once were on conferences to address this crucial need.
Still, digital meet-ups will never be as rich or rewarding as face-to-face conversations.
The tech industry coined the word “connexity” that hits on two things conference attendees crave most – connection and community. With hundreds, even thousands of people walking your conference and trade show floor, your attendees want to quickly connect with like-minded people, facing the same challenges, to engage in more purposeful conversations to find that next breakthrough idea.
With conference networking expectations rising fast, we gathered our team to study this topic more closely. For months, we engaged in conversations with one another and with many of you to better understand the networking disruptors and accelerants. We observed best practices in action and quite a few networking fumbles. The sum total of this work revealed three big ideas we believe will help you deliver more effectively on your conference networking promise:
Details about how to make this happen have been captured in an eBook we created as a follow-up to a session I am presenting today at the PCMA Education Conference in Denver (Connexity: Reinventing the Networking Experience). We’re also making this eBook available to our blog subscribers. Click the cover below to download this free eBook – no strings attached, no login required!
Once you give this a read, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Which one of the three big ideas struck you as a best fit for your conference? What new ideas would you add to this list?
Filed Under: Conference Networking, Experience Design
This ebook is great. I loved how simple your team made the concepts of connection and community. The point that networking should not just be highlighted at an opening reception and instead weaved through the whole event is spot on. The best connections happen when least expected, and you never know how a conversation in the halls at a conference can impact a life!
Thanks Thom for the nice feedback on our book. We’re proud of it too and it’s great to have the endorsement from you, a REAL network evangelist! See you in a few weeks at NSA.
[…] team at Velvet Chainsaw Consulting has released an informative e-book called “Conference Connexity” (Available free to the readers of their blog). The book is a quick-read and highlights the […]
Awesome book. Everyone should read it. Gone are the days when it was acceptable for a conference to be boring. Those who don’t get in with change will quickly fall behind. Thanks for sharing this valuable content and for making the easy download!
[…] to your conference: Ensure that your conference experience provides solid connexity—opportunities to build connections and community. In addition to connexity sessions, guarantee […]
[…] VCC, we like to call the relationships, connections and community that people form at conferences connexity. We all crave connexity. And we should design conferences that foster […]
[…] recently wrote about how weak ties can make conferences stronger and connexity, and has a series called Perfecting […]
[…] In your conference-experience design, you should be intentional about fostering community and creating connections,rather than adding connexity to the meeting as an afterthought. Read the article or download the free ebook: Conference Connexity. […]
[…] spaces at our face to face events and less lecture halls. We need to design experiences around connexity and less around information transfer of content. Our conferences need to be more about human […]
[…] Conferences offer a unique opportunity for attendees to connect to people outside of their immediate sphere. This increases their exposure to new perspectives, resources and people. They also create opportunities to build connexity. […]
[…] means that conferences organizers must have an intentional connexity plan to traditional conference […]
[…] Does your conference have connexity? […]
[…] Sarah is special because she not only preaches (and teaches) audience interaction, she practices it. See her website at http://www.perfectingconnecting.com/ for some compelling video clips, and then download her free white paper on event design to get a glimpse of what conferences could (and should) be like: “Conference Connexity.” […]
I truly appreciate the strategy of creating “army connectors.” We are seeing an increase in first time attendees and they tell us they want to become participants instead of observers. What we called “room hosts” before could now become our connectors!
Thanks Leslie! I love the idea of turning the role of “room hosts/session Monitors” into ” The Army of Connectors” I think you could have a lot of fun with that metaphor…recruiting army…join the army now and serve…Love it!
[…] on virtual teams has left a new void. A hunger for community and connection which we refer to as Connexity. We thirst for a sense of belonging that simply can’t be fulfilled […]
[…] and move to the next project. If you want to grow community and loyalty, consider these five connexity […]
[…] passive one-way transfer of information to more connected dialogues and polylogues. Creating more connexity, encouraging randomness and accelerating […]
[…] to offer value. I know how misunderstood networking actually is. Velvet Chainsaw uses the word connexity to encourage connections and […]
[…] She recently wrote about how weak ties can make conferences stronger, connexity and speed networking tips as well as has her own series called Perfecting […]
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