This is not a typical story. The American Association of Suicidology's annual meeting had been growing steadily in recent years. When their reimagined conference couldn't take place in Portland, Ore., in late April, staff and volunteers went into overdrive to transition the physical meeting to a virtual one in a matter of days.They knew how critical it was to deliver much-needed content to their global community. Jonathan and Colleen will share the unvarnished truth about what they learned, … [Read more...]
Five-Step Framework for Effective Collaborative Design
Your conference strategy should include a plan to inject fresh content or experiences each year as part of an ongoing improvement process. There are a million ways to make these improvement plans. Some work and many don’t. Working with one of our clients, we devised a simple framework to help develop innovative plans for meaningful and lasting change. This isn’t about tweaking schedules, adjusting formats or adding activations at your event. The framework puts the participant at the center … [Read more...]
Your Conference Content Has Magnetic Pull
Content marketing has grown by leaps and bounds during the past five years. Unfortunately, too few event organizers fully embrace the long-tail, pull benefits of content marketing. Likewise, many conference professionals have no idea what embracing the long-tail, pull benefits of content marketing even means. It’s a foreign concept to them. Most marketing and communications teams agree that content marketing serves as the foundation to their conference marketing strategy. Still, very few … [Read more...]
Ninja Moves for Improved Conference Session Marketing
Better session copy helps put butts in seats! As conference education trumps the exhibit hall experience at many association meetings, or creeps into your trade show experience to create a solutions-driven, holistic experience for your attendees, upping your game with session titles, descriptions, and learning objectives has become more important than ever. In 2013, we partnered with Tagoras on a research project and produced The Speaker Report. 48 percent of the 120 conference/education … [Read more...]
Getting More Value from Conference Keynote Speakers
Not long ago, becoming a professional speaker was a third step in a thought leaders career path. Many built their expertise in an industry or function, shifted to consulting and then wrote a book to launch their speaking career. In today’s digital age, the path to creating a thought leader platform, leading to speaking gigs, is shifting to a second career play. This is good news for planners. More quality options result in a buyer’s market...now and in the years ahead. What to Look For Keynote … [Read more...]
Four Stupendous Strategic Steps You Should Practice Regularly
One of the biggest challenges we face—especially nonprofit association and conference professionals--is spending adequate time thinking. For some reason, we believe that doing is better than thinking. When we do something, we seem to make progress. Well, at least that’s what we tell ourselves. When we think, there doesn’t seem to be any forward movement. We’ve not checked anything off of our task list. So we believe that spending time thinking is unproductive. Poor Strategy Well Executed … [Read more...]
What a CEO Can Do For Your Conference
Wanted: An individual with a laser focus on, and advocate for, the conference customer. Someone to educate leadership on the advantages of being customer and experience focused. A silo buster. A strategic professional with a high empathy quotient. Many conferences are planned and implemented leveraging a variety of departmental silos and often, several volunteer committees. One person or group owns education. Others are owned by marketing, business development, meeting planning, … [Read more...]
In Today’s Economy, Significance Precedes Momentum
So many people ask me, “If ______________ (fill in the blank) is so important for conferences, why aren’t more conferences implementing it?” “So you wait to make changes to your event once you see other conferences are already doing it?” I respond. “You wait to copy someone else instead of being the leader?” Frequently, conference planning teams wait until others have tried something before they’ll embrace it. They are risk-averse followers, gripping on to the status quo instead of … [Read more...]
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