Most conference organizers see attendees as consumers of the conference’s information. Little thought is given to seeing attendees as active participants in their own learning and experience. 8 Myths That Restrict The Attendee Experience Here are eight conference presentation myths that you should avoid. Myth 1: The lecture or panel best serves all conference attendees. … [Read more…]
Have you ever attended a conference by yourself and you didn’t know anyone there? If you have, you’ve experienced a range of emotions from anticipation to anxiousness to concern. If no one acknowledges or welcomes you when you first step onsite, you may feel like an outsider. Conferences can be some of the loneliest places … [Read more…]
Note: This post was originally published on July 11, 2011 and has been slightly edited. Attention is a payment of the brain’s resources. It requires that we adjust, engage and sustain each of our nine brain areas involved in attention. We must also exclude, suppress or ignore external and internal distracters–and often that’s the real … [Read more…]
Attracting and keeping quality attendees on your show floor isn’t getting any easier. The way we, as consumers and businesses, research and buy products and services has evolved — and so must the trade-show experience. The trade show of the future will focus on helping over selling, which is best accomplished by delivering valuable education … [Read more…]
Networking is often the catalyst that prompts people to attend conferences, yet delivering on this expectation can be tricky. What’s even trickier – attendees are getting better at leveraging digital channels to find and connect with the people they most want to meet. They’re not as dependent as they once were on conferences to address … [Read more…]
It’s not often that we get a chance to fully immerse ourselves in an extraordinary conference experience. Such was the case for me last week at C2-MTL. If you’re a “frequent flyer” here on the Velvet Chainsaw Midcourse Corrections blog, you may recall a post I filed last week as I was midway through C2-MTL. … [Read more…]
In 2010, Daniel Lamarre (CEO, Cirque du Soleil) longed for a new kind of business conference. One where business leaders from all walks of life might come together to explore, discuss and design best options to inspire creativity and innovation within their own companies. Lamarre shared his dream with Sid Lee, a creative services firm based … [Read more…]
Are you perpetually wounding your conference attendees with a one-way controlled experience that demands obedience over engagement? Do you view your attendees as a threat that can disrupt the controlled conference experience that you have designed? Enforcing Obedience Over Engagement I was reading the March/April 2012 Harvard Education Letter on school culture by Meira Levinson. … [Read more…]
I think the meetings and conference industry has reached a plateau. For years the industry has focused on the logistical side of the meeting including registration, food and beverage, contracts, venue space, room sets, schedules, SMMP and more. The industry has matured and many meeting professionals have become very good at the details. Yet, the … [Read more…]
What type of experiences do you crave? Have you ever had any of those types of experiences at a conference or tradeshow? Conferences and tradeshows have a long way to go to merge the experiences we crave and want with those that actually occur at the event. Four Critical Elements To Success The recent report, … [Read more…]
