So much of our commonplace practices and conventional wisdom about learning is wrong. Educators have been talking about Bloom’s Taxonomy, critical-thinking skills, executive functions of the brain and HOTS — higher-order thinking skills — for more than five decades. However, those foundational learning principles have not transferred to most adult education experiences. Conference organizers still have a tremendous amount of work to do to involve adults in cognitive learning practices. We are … [Read more...]
Association Messy, Convoluted Conundrums With Compliance Issues In Learning Offerings
Do you ever feel caught between a rock and a hard place regarding your association’s education programming? For years, you’ve offered education to your constituents to meet industry or profession CE requirements. You’ve kept detailed data on content alignment with obligations, program and speaker approvals from governing boards, attendance, test scores and customer certification status. It’s worked for decades. However, today, your attendance and revenue is declining. You have increased … [Read more...]
How Is Your Association Using Learning Technologies?
Improving digital learning and amplifying conference content to a larger audience is a high priority for many clients we consult with. With the advent of DIY solutions, business models that include sponsorship and the strategic alignment of reaching a global audience, we’re seeing an increased focus on expanding the impact of digital learning. If you work for a membership organization, whether or not you use technology to deliver or enhance your learning products, we’re asking for your … [Read more...]
How to Improve Your Call for Presentations Process
When Velvet Chainsaw Consulting conducted speaker research with 120 associations with research and consulting company Tagoras Inc. in 2013, we found that nearly 77 percent use a call for speakers/sessions process. Associations value member input. One-third of these organizations accept 60 percent or more of the proposals, indicating either a low number of submissions or very forgiving quality filters. About 62 percent close off submissions eight months or longer before the conference. These … [Read more...]
Mental Effort
I’ve been in this industry longer than I like to admit, during which time I’ve had the privilege to work side by side with some of the most progressive professionals in the conference business. To my mind, there are two things that separate the good from the great: 1) those who are uber-connected and trusted (not on social media, but rather one-to-one relationships) and 2) those who are committed to life-long learning. The life-long learners aren’t necessarily the ones who attend a lot of … [Read more...]
Patient-Centered Care Conferences
Most healthcare professionals are career motivated by saving/improving lives. They make a commitment to lifelong learning to be the best that they can be. Keeping up with the latest in evidence-based diagnosis and treatments is, in itself, a herculean task. In the new world of value-based care and compensation, private practices will have the most difficulty adjusting their business practices to comply and compete. This will cause more private practices to consider partnering or seeking … [Read more...]
We Must Stop Promoting Conference Fast-Track, Artificial, Butt-In-Seat, Surface Learning
How are your conference attendees learning? Yes, of course we should ask, “What are they learning?” More importantly, we need to ask, “How are they learning?” We’ve got to confront the ineffectiveness of our conference education approaches! We must begin to offer effective alternatives to the traditional “sit and get” lecture. If we want to increase conference participant ROI and loyalty, we’ve got to just stop accepting speaker proposals, assigning speakers a time slot and then offering … [Read more...]
Back to School for Trade Show Organizers: Build In More Ways to Learn and Connect
This is the second in a series of posts on the findings of reports published by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) based on research recently conducted on attendee retention strategies. The way we buy has evolved for both the B2B and B2C sectors. Trade show organizers who have re-imagined their expo floors into a solutions-based destination rather than one of a hard-sell shopping place are winning at delivering attendee value. Results from a recent CEIR study bolster that … [Read more...]
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