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 categories, making it a priority. On the other hand, you have the attendees or customers — the currency we use to get suppliers to invest in our events in the first place. Attract a smaller or a lower-quality … [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, where conference committees act more like content curators and advisors and less like graders and slotters. Session and abstract submissions are still an important part of the process, but a greater … [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 participants who are able to justify their attendance in part because their oral or poster abstract has been accepted. We’ve analyzed some conferences in which the percentage of attendees who are on the … [Read more...]
Looking into the Future of Event Tech
Your guidepost for event-technology decisions should be to put your customer’s experience before your staff efficiency. As the event-tech space continues to evolve with a number of mergers and acquisitions, I see four changes coming for larger annual conferences. #1. Security is Expensive, but Critical Conference organizers are generally unaware that last year most event-technology software companies lost three or more months of future development time to focus instead on compliance … [Read more...]
What True Learning Is at Participant-Centered Conferences
Putting the participant at the center of your conference programming by becoming more learner-centric, that is planning and offering education sessions that go beyond surface learning, is one of the biggest challenges facing conference organizers today. You need to enable participants to find meaningful and mentally stimulating experiences. The knowledge gap between the stage and the audience has shrunk substantially over the past decade. Conferences that are able to leverage the intellectual … [Read more...]
Free-Agent, Lisa Block, Joins Velvet Chainsaw
While many have been focused this winter on who is going to land free agents like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, Lisa Block inked a deal to join the Velvet Chainsaw Consulting team! Lisa will join our team just in time for opening day – April 2, 2019 – as Executive Vice President, Conference Strategy & Design. Qualified Lisa is one of the most respected, innovative and experienced event strategy professionals in the majors. Since 1991, she has been responsible for growing and innovating … [Read more...]
How Much Do Sellers and Buyers Trust Our Tradeshow Environments?
The most glaring reality I’ve pointed to previously in this space — that three out of four B2B buyers conduct the majority of their research before talking to a salesperson — greatly affects the sustainability of the tradeshow business model. That, and the others explored in the five realities of today’s B2B buyer post, and how those insights can be applied to evolve the traditional expo, remain major issues today. Add to that fact the high cost of purchasing, setting up and staffing an … [Read more...]
The Right Rewarding Student Strategy For Your Conference
Many associations struggle with the right strategy for involving students in their organization and events. Some attract students to join and participate in the organization’s programs and services while still in college. They offer significant membership and registration discounts as well as ample presentation opportunities. They usually have a “get them while they’re young” and “let’s put the kids in the show” mindset. They invest in these young professionals with the hope that doing so … [Read more...]
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