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...]
What If Attendees Remember Nothing From Your Event?
Yes, what if they remember nothing from your event? “Meetings are often so overloaded with material that learning may be hurt more than it’s enhanced,” says Andrea Driessen, Chief Boredom Buster, No More Boring Meetings. (Read her article for seven ways to boost learning.) What’s worse than remembering nothing from the event? If attendees learned something and can’t apply it. Then they can’t improve their job performance. Learning Scrap Or Learning Gold? Learning comes before … [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...]
Your Conference Needs To Focus On Providing 4D Experiences
Conferences need 4D experiences: deep learning, deep play, deep reflection and deep connections. You probably recall a time in your life when you viewed a 3D movie. You wore 3D glasses and the images looked like they popped out of the screen. Your conference needs more than the gimmick of 3D glasses. It needs authentic 4D experiences. It needs opportunities for participants to experience deep learning, deep play, deep reflection and deep connections. 21st Century 4D Experiences Too many … [Read more...]
Sagacious And Substantive Gists We Should Appreciate, Comprehend And Respect Regarding Learning
Learning: it is probably one of the most misunderstood and misapplied concepts today. Many of us assume learning results from attending a class. We believe that our brains are like sponges that just absorb whatever it hears or sees. We presume that learning is a byproduct of listening to a lecture. We’ve even given names to this type of learning: auditory learning and passive learning. Oh how we’ve deluded ourselves into a false sense of security about learning. Five Wise Research-Proven … [Read more...]
Why Bother With Conference Education Peer Discussions?
How many conference speakers have you seen that don’t want attendees asking, answering, commenting or participating during their presentations? From the speaker’s point of view, the presentation seems to be moving along nicely as the content is covered. The room is silent except the speaker’s voice. And surely that means that the audience is attentively listening and learning. Right? However, look at the audience and you’ll see from their body language that the speech is far from … [Read more...]
Increasing Active Learning Yields Big Results Infographic
Dr. Russell Mumper, Vice Dean of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC Chapel Hill, decided to try the flipped classroom concept. He knew that with the explosion of information there was no way to teach his students everything. Instead he used his content to teach them how to become active, lifelong learners. He then performed rigorous research to see if active learning and putting lectures online worked. The results changed his perception of teaching. Take a look at this infographic from … [Read more...]
More Dangerous Assumptions About Your Conference Education Part 2
The research* shows that much of what we do in our conference education is actually counterproductive. (*See partial list of research and books at the end of Dangerous Assumptions Part 1 post.) We spend too much of our conference time on delivery of information. The web is a better information delivery model than our events. We should shift our conference education focus to our attendees’ real business results. When we emphasize delivery for application instead of delivery for information … [Read more...]
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