Tag: association


Conference Curiosity Didn’t Kill The Proverbial Cat. It Awakened The Attendee

Imagine a conference where every attendee was learning, a world where what the attendee wondered was more interesting than what the expert presenter knew, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge. (With nods to a quote from The Cluetrain Manifesto.) I don’t know about you. I certainly want to attend a conference where what … [Read more…]

We Are The Problem: We Are Selling Conference Snake Oil

80 percent of what we learn comes from informal learning.* Ironically, 60% to 80% of a conference attendee’s time is spent in formal learning, passively listening to a presenter. Unfortunately, 14 days later we only recall 20% of what we hear in those presentations. (John Medina, Brain Rules; E. Dale, Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching). 30 … [Read more…]

Bob Garfield’s Chaos Scenario

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevancy even less.” ~ General Eric Shinseki, 2003 The Chaos Scenario, by Bob Garfield, is about the historic re-ordering of media, marketing and commerce and traditional business triggered by the revolution in digital technology. It explores examples of adaptation to what is literally a new age … [Read more…]

The Conference Session Is Dead

The conference session is not the appropriate shell for most learning experiences. The sixty- or ninety-minute presentation was created for the convenience of the institution, not the learner. The conference session is a triumph of standardization and it is so ingrained in our thinking we still buy and sell seat time rather than performance improvement. … [Read more…]

Two Reasons Why Crowdsourcing Your Conference Content Won’t Work

Let’s put children in charge of their own meals. Being the forward thinking leaders that we are, we’ll allow kids to decide what they want to eat. We’ll use an online voting system similar to Digg so kids can crowdsource the suggestions. They’ll even be allowed to announce to their friends which food items they … [Read more…]

The Wal-Mart Conference Experience: Why It Doesn’t Scale

We’re not in Manhattan anymore. That’s the tagline for the Sarah Jessica Parker, Hugh Grant movie Did You Hear About The Morgans? The plot: An estranged New York couple observes a murder and is relocated to a small town in Wyoming as part of a witness-protection program. In the movie, Parker’s character did not pack … [Read more…]

The Extreme Makeover: Conference Edition

Keep the tissues box handy because the tears may flow. And prepare to cover your ears when Ty Pennington belts out that infamous phrase, “Move That Bus!” What often keeps many viewers riveted to the weekly show The Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is the heart wrenching family story. One filled with anguish and great sorrow … [Read more…]

Do Conference Session Learning Objectives Really Matter?

This is the last in a series of posts on writing better conference session descriptions. Read the previous posts Conference Descriptions That Whet The Appetite, an overview of the four elements of a successful conference description, How To Write Killer Conference Session Titles That Attract Attendees and Crafting Better Conference Materials: Writing Session Descriptions For … [Read more…]

Crafting Better Conference Materials: Writing Session Descriptions For Dummies

This is the third in a series of posts on writing better conference session descriptions. Read the first post Conference Descriptions That Whet The Appetite, an overview of the four elements of a successful conference description, or second post How To Write Killer Conference Session Titles That Attract Attendees. Begin With The End In Mind … [Read more…]

How To Write Killer Conference Session Titles That Attract Attendees

This is the second in a series of posts on writing better conference session descriptions. Read the first post Conference Descriptions That Whet The Appetite, an overview of the four elements of a successful conference description. What is the primary purpose of most conference session titles, descriptions and learner objectives? Did you say, “To get … [Read more…]