Your brain is built to survive! It’s in the biology and chemistry of your brain to survive at all costs. Survival and protection are at the top of the list when it comes to brain activity. It even outranks thinking in priority. Survival Trumps Thinking Your brain will avoid thinking in order to conserve energy … [Read more…]
“How can I increase engagement at my conference?” It’s a question I hear a lot. “How can I help my attendees increase their engagement?” What’s my answer? Increase the relevance. Increase the relevance of the content. Increase the relevance of the learning experience. Oh and by the way, what type of engagement are you talking … [Read more…]
Conferences (and associations) used to be the go-to source for information and content about a profession or industry. Today, the tools of content creation and distribution actually rest in the hands of individuals. Anyone can create and share content. While not everyone wants to be a content creator, everyone has an interest in organizing and … [Read more…]
The empirical research on how we learn and remember shows that… …Most of what we know as truth about learning is nothing more than wasted effort! The learning opportunities that we offer to our customers and members are based on outdated theory, lore, past experiences and gut instincts. And the empirical evidence says much of … [Read more…]
As young children, curiosity made us jump in a mud puddle. Try to catch fireflies. And chase our shadows. It was our motivation for learning and play. When we discovered that if we mixed red and yellow finger paint, we created orange, we went on a frenzy mixing all types of colors. Our final images … [Read more…]
Recently, I wrote about how most conference organizers are really bad at measurement. Oh, we’re fairly good at measuring our conference goals. As long as those goals are based on common conference inputs and outputs. You know, expenses/revenue, attendance, exhibitors and sponsors. But rarely do we measure anything else that proves ROI, ROO or ROA … [Read more…]
Most conferences suck at collecting data. (Oh, were good at collecting registration and fees but that’s about it!) It requires work, intentionality, time and interpretation to get the feedback we need to make improvements and drive innovation. I like what CEO and meetings professional Hugh Plappert says about conference measurement: Measuring requires planning. Planning requires … [Read more…]
Conference professionals suck at measurement. If you trust your conference smile sheet evaluations as a barometer of how effective your conference education was, you are just being foolish says learning research psychologist Dr. Will Thalheimer. Ouch! The truth hurts! The Emptiness Of Smile Sheets Evaluations Thalheimer points to research that the smile sheet evaluation shows … [Read more…]
Peer conversations are more important to your conference than you know. I’m not talking about one of your attendees serving as a speaker talking at the audience. That’s a lecture. I’m referring to peer conversations in pairs, threesomes and small groups. You know when it’s happening at conferences because the rooms are buzzing with discussions. … [Read more…]
Brainstorming is out! Brainwriting is in! Brainstorming Challenges Brainstorming is something most of us know and have used at some point in our lives. It’s a tool often used to create a list of spontaneous ideas contributed by a group. Alex Faickney Osborn popularized the tool in 1953. Osborn claimed that brainstorming was more effective … [Read more…]
