Evolve into a Caretaker of Content March 2, 2017 by Betsy Bair Imagine designing your next conference or annual meeting from scratch around content instead of picking up the template you’ve been using for years and tweaking it. Not just your education programming, but your breaks, meals, even your exhibit hall (which we advocate for evolving into a solutions center, including changing the name). “Please stop designing … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , 21st century conferences, audience-centric, conference best practices, conference design, conference education, engagement
Conference Experiential Design: Why Emotion Trumps Efficiency May 28, 2015 by Donna Kastner This post, Delivering Experience, by Anthony Iannarino stuck in my mind as it sparked new ideas about conference experience design. Iannarino recounts a dining experience with his wife at a “funky, cool, eclectic” restaurant. Within moments of arriving, drink orders were swiftly taken and delivered. Entrees arrived moments later. Then the check, lickety-split. The Speed … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning, Experience Design Tagged With: , conference design, conference experience design
How Much Faith Do Your Attendees Have In Your Conference? March 10, 2014 by Jeff Hurt Faith. When you read that word does your mind jump to religion? Mine does. Our American experience tells us that “faith-based” refers to an organization that promotes a specific religious belief. Yet, there is another type of faith we need for conference success. Faith In Your Conference Your success as a conference organizer is entirely … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference design, conferences
Sculpting Customer Feedback To Design Your Conference December 9, 2013 by Jeff Hurt The voice of the customer is always right. Or is it? When conference organizers look for ways to improve the attendees’ experience, they typically turn to their registrants for feedback. They turn to their customers to direct their investment decisions for conference improvements. Gaining Conference Attendee Intelligence Conference organizers use a variety of ways to … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference data collection, conference design, conference evaluation, customer feedback, data mining, speaker evaluations
Six Conference Space Properties To Transform Attendee Behavior June 15, 2012 by Jeff Hurt As a meeting professional, you have the power to identify and manipulate the properties of a space to foster specific behaviors and attitudes. These spatial characteristics can be fine tuned to create a unique attendee experience. And it all rests within the power of your planning. Six Properties That You Can Adjust Properties are the … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference design, conferences, design for participation, meeting best practices, meeting space
Conference Organizers Are Space Designers, Cultural Translators And Learning Facilitators June 14, 2012 by Jeff Hurt Meeting space is the body language of the conference host organization.* Conference organizers have the ability to transform behavior, affect mood and foster learning with their attention and intention to the space’s design. Their lack of intention to that design also has an impact on the attendee. Your Space Decisions Define Your Beliefs The conference … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference design, conferences, design for participation, meeting best practices, meeting space
How To Use Your Meeting Space To Create An Ownership Experience March 22, 2012 by Jeff Hurt Have you ever been in an Apple Store? They are bright, open spaces with lofty ceilings, sleek design and great technology to play with at your fingertips. They offer a variety of services from the private one-on-one Genius Bar consultations to how-to classes to events to roving staff that are more like personal assistants than … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference design, design for participation, informal learning, meeting planning best practices, participatory learning, social learning
The End Of Conference Education As We Know It March 8, 2012 by Jeff Hurt “In the spirit of honoring tradition, conferences hang on to past practices imperiling their futures,” paraphrase, Clayton Christensen, Harvard University. Conference speakers present today, exactly the same way they did one-hundred years ago. Little has changed. Yet, we’ve learned so much more about how people learn and retain information. Unfortunately, the conference presentations have not … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference design, conference education, conferences, Education & Adult Learning, meeting planning best practices
Creating An Unforgettable Event: Unlocking Memory By Unleashing The Power Of Thinking July 19, 2011 by Jeff Hurt You are what you eat. What you see is what you get. These idioms are familiar to most of us. Here’s a simple truth: What you think about is what you remember! The implication for your conferences, events and meetings are substantial. Our Memory Is Like A Video Recorder? Not! Many meeting professionals and conference … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference design, conferences, learning, meeting planning, meeting planning best practices, meeting professionals
The Art Of Sculpting Conference Design April 5, 2010 by Jeff Hurt Recently I wrote Two Reasons Why Crowdsourcing Your Conference Content Won’t Work. In that post, I referred to organizations that were using crowdsourcing as a voting platform to source their conference topics, speakers and sessions. These organizations were not using crowdsourcing in its purest form as a distributed problem-solving and production model. It was strictly … [Read more…] Filed Under: Experience Design Tagged With: , conference design, conferences, content, content design, crowdsourcing conference content, Education & Adult Learning
