Getting Attendees Wrong: The Age Of Discontinuity September 28, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Some conference planning teams get their attendees wrong! So why do we get it so wrong? It has everything to do with the rapid pace of change—the age of discontinuity as Drucker called it—and our default thinking. The heart of our current organizational challenges is that we rarely diverge from our default thinking. We assume … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , Attendee Acquisition, attracting attendees, conference audiences, conference best practices, conference planning team, Qualitative measures
Using Human Sciences To Navigate Your Conference’s Future Through The Fog September 11, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Our linear and rational conference business models are our default thinking. Unfortunately, those traditional models cause us to navigate in a fog when the conference challenge is less straightforward. There are better ways to understand how to grow your conference than what you’ve done in the past. As conference professionals, we are inclined to continue … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , anthropology, big data, big insights, conference best practices, conference evaluation, education best practices, human sciences, measurement, phenomenology, Qualitative measures
An Anthropologist Walks Into A Conference September 9, 2015 by Jeff Hurt As your conference grows, it faces increased complexity. According to a recent IBM study of 1,600+ CEOs, the biggest challenge their companies face is the complexity gap. Eight out of ten of those CEOs expect their business environment to grow in complexity but less than half are prepared to face that change. Your conference’s growth … [Read more…] Filed Under: Experience Design Tagged With: , anthropology, big data, big insights, conference best practices, conference evaluation, education best practices, human sciences, measurement, phenomenology, Qualitative measures, speaker evaluations
Quantitative Or Qualitative Conference Measures. Which Matters Most? April 2, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Many conference organizers and their organizations tend to focus only on linear, incremental improvements. Most of those improvements are transactional in nature. Improving online registration, ecommerce, confirmations, lodging, CEU tracking, etc. Or they tend to copy what another conference is doing. Rarely do they explore the actual reasons behind number trends. Instead, they just twist … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference design empathy, conference empathy, customer empathy, design empathy, empathy, empathy mapping, Qualitative measures, Quantitative measures, strategic empathy
