Author: Jeff Hurt


Improve Your Conference Lecture By Using These Questions For Peer Discussions

Today, most conference audiences would prefer to engage in one-on-one peer-to-peer discussions than listen to another panel or lecture. It is also clear that employers today place more emphasis on securing employees that are good at engaging others in face-to-face interactions to problem solve, work together and interpret data. Ultimately, peer learning is highly valued … [Read more…]

Why Audiences Detest Presenters That Abuse Or Avoid PowerPoint [Revisted]

Revised and updated from original post about presentations and images published on October 25, 2011. Presentations are the business currency of today. PowerPoint is often the legal tender of those presentations. We trade and share PowerPoint presentations like baseball cards, stamps and money. And SlideShare is the largest online community for sharing great presentations! When … [Read more…]

Follow These Tips To Engage Millennials In Your Conference Experience

Millennials are eager to connect, participate and give says the 2013 Millennial Impact Report by Achieve. Since 2009, the report has focused on Millennial behaviors that would interest many nonprofits and conference organizers including trends in communication, service and giving. The report illustrates that the next generation is passionate about people not hierarchies, institutions, organizations … [Read more…]

Conference Organizers Should Be Great CEOs: Chief Experience Officers!

What do conference organizers really do? They organize all the aspects of the conference experience. I believe that title—conference organizer–doesn’t serve us anymore. It doesn’t convey the right information as putting together logistics is like putting together quilt pieces without any plan. It’s just stitching pieces together and crossing your fingers that it will result … [Read more…]

Bringing The Sexy Back To Conferences [And Conference Planning]

If you have ever attended a conference, you know how most of them feel. They start with a general session, followed by a break, followed by concurrent breakouts, followed by a lunch, followed by exhibits followed by an evening activity. Rinse. Lather. Repeat for a couple more days. They all feel the same and follow … [Read more…]

Visual Social Media Rules! Tips To Leverage Visual Social Media [Infographic]

We dream in images. We think in images. We speak in images. Images are the currency of our brains. Is it any wonder that we are drawn to visual social media? Take a look at this infographic from SociallySorted.com What tips would you add to this list about using visuals in social media? Why do … [Read more…]

The Evolution Of Onsite Conferences: 26 Trends Coming To An Event Near You

The traditional conference meeting experience is out! People today are looking for unusual, new, innovative conference experiences. They don’t want to attend last year’s annual meeting that just changed the filler. They want something that feels as fresh as their first conference experience. They want an original experience. 26 Trends Coming Your Way Here are … [Read more…]

These Barriers Keep You From Conference Innovation

Things are changing faster than ever before. Conference owners used to get dominance through scale. That scale came from securing the most industry-related exhibitors, sponsors and attendees as possible for your event. Then, the conference became the industry’s go-to-place for new product announcements from exhibitors, breaking industry research, the industry’s experts and the latest, greatest … [Read more…]

Five Questions For 21st Century Conferences

I believe that questions are the currency of today’s world. We should all be embracing questions like: What’s next? How does that impact me? Where do we go from here? What will it take to make this happen? Why and Why not? Five Questions For 21st Century Conferences And Their Organizers With hat tips and … [Read more…]

Cheat Sheet: Using Group Talk As Discussions For Conference Education

The evidence is loud and clear that peer discussions are more effective than lectures if memory and knowledge retention, attitude, behavior and skill change, and learning are the goals. Just dividing a traditional lecture into 10 minute chunks and then giving the audience two to ten-minute breaks for time for discussion increases learning. How Discussions … [Read more…]