Curation: it’s more important than you think. And it’s extremely critical to the success of your education programming. When it comes to choosing education programming, curation involves deep excavation of the right content for the right audience at the right time for the right issue. Authentic Curation For Education Programming Curation is more than just identifying content for your customers. It’s picking the right education issue that is like currency and helping attendees exchange … [Read more...]
How To Choose Education Content That Leads to a Treasure of Learners
Pirates are treasure hunters that don’t always play by the rules. As an association education professional, you too can buck tradition by searching for hidden treasures of content and delivering them to your members. The Pirate Spirit Many of us have negative images of pirates as shipmates that pillage and rob other vessels. Some of us think of the children’s version of Captain Hook in Peter Pan or of Johnny Depp’s drunken, flamboyant Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. Curating … [Read more...]
Establishing A New Model To Select Conference Content And Programming
Is it time to end the speaker call for proposals? Does the traditional open call for topics and speakers actually meet the conference audience’s needs? The traditional call for volunteer and professional speakers is a roll of the dice that the submissions meet the needs of the conference attendees. Too often staff and committees rely on the call for proposals to fill their conference education programming. There is little to no attention given to ensuring that the content is the right … [Read more...]
The Person Who Chooses Your Conference Content Has All The Power
"If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power," says Seth Godin. Currently many conference hosts put the power of their conference content into the hands of administrators focused on shuffling speaker proposals and scheduling speakers. Or they allow a volunteer committee that is often focused on personal agendas to choose the conference content. Rarely do either the … [Read more...]
Your Conference Content Is Cheap!
Our conferences need less information and more meaning! Information is cheap and easy to find. Meaning is difficult to acquire! Finding Answers Is Easy Google created a program to crawl the entire Internet, collect data and index all the answers. They got us to ask questions. Then they created a map that connected those questions and the data they indexed. Now finding answers and information is easy. The arduous part is making meaning of those answers. Information Is Cheap Conferences that … [Read more...]
Three Infographics On Conference Content And Delivery
Dare to color outside the lines. Have the courage to take risks. Let go of outdated, dead sacred cows. These were just a few of the overarching themes from Experient's e4 2011 Conference "Outside the Lines." Bye, Bye Breakouts! Hello Innovation Labs! The Experient team always delivers a stellar conference that's engaging. They are willing to take risks, experiment and push the boundaries. It's one of the best planned experiences both logistically and strategically. This year they created a … [Read more...]
The Next Big Conference Job Of The Future: Conference Content-Curator-Strategist
Most organizations receive hundreds of emails and phone calls asking about their speaker call for proposals. In one of my past jobs, we received 30-50 inquiries a month from professional speakers trying to land a speaking gig. And we were flooded with industry speaker requests as well. We hated those inquires. They were like speaker spam to us! And rarely did we hire someone who interrupted our work day with a cold call! Developing A Conference Content Strategy The challenge for conference … [Read more...]
Dying, Boundary And Emerging Meeting Practices: Barbecuing The Sacred Cow
Does your organization have any meeting planning practices that are sacred cows? Don't you wish you could grind them up for a barbecue? Well, it's time to kill those traditions and make way for new, emerging ideas. e4 2011 Innovation Labs Recently I attended Experient's e4 2011 conference, "Outside the Lines" as one of their Innovation Lab Facilitators. Participants didn't move from breakout to breakout each day. Instead they committed two days to deep dives in facilitated collaborative … [Read more...]
