@Ellen
BINGO! You’ve hit the true nail on the head. The traditional conference model is seen as a revenue generator for most associations and organizations. Until attendees stop paying for mediocre and demand better experiences, we’ll continue to get conference sessions on life-support. Thanks for continuing the discussion and adding more on your blog.

@Kare
What a wonderful suggestion of seeing conference sessions within the context of a storyboarded meeting! I so agree that conference organizers must intentionally use methods like this to be successful. I think there are some great examples of these type models like Scott Gould’s Like Minds conference and Liz Straus’ SOBcon. Both involve continuing threads through out the entire conference experience providing emotional and senory based experiences. Great suggestion.

Traditional lecture-based conference sessions aren’t made for active learning, Jeff Hurt points out, but to fit neatly into the session track grid: “So why haven’t we blown up the traditional conference model and updated it for a knowledge workforce …

Haven’t seen any comments here pointing to some of the factors I’ve seen in play — the twisted relationship between “meetings” and “educational events” and finances among them.

My response was too long for a comment — you can see my post on this at: http://alearning.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/life-support-can-be-expensive/

We’re all on life support at this point, don’t you think? (Oh, yes, we all think.)

@Midori – I agree it isn’t always ego. It can be wanting to impart lots of knowledge and value. It can be wanting to meet expectations about the content. It can be bc the audience is so varied.

But what I have found is that often we have these things that we think the audience wants and needs, but often they want something else.

Example: we hold an event at our church, and rather than “preaching” (which is the typical church mode – one person speaking to many people), we decide to have people discuss the content between themselves. What happens?

1. People actually teach each other – rather than the same old “preacher” saying the same thing
2. People teach themselves by teaching others
3. People increase retention by talking the content through

Resulting in:

4. People leave feeling they’ve helped others (bonus)
5. People feel that they’ve learnt and refined their thoughts
6. People feel valuable.

I’m totally leaning more and more towards this. People dont’ remember what was said – they remember how they felt.

More at http://scottgould.me/people-dont-remember-what-was-said-they-remember-how-they-felt/

What say you?

One point I would argue against: “… today’s digital, social world …”

Rather: digital is not the cause or the effect (it only precipitates feedback), and the world has always been social (we just have a relatively new outlet for it nowadays).

A few years ago, pre-Facebook and pre-Twitter, I organized two conference sessions that were both big hits. One consisted of facilitated roundtables targeted to specific types of attendees, so they knew whether it was relevant to them and what format to expect. The other was slightly more traditional in format, but was extremely topical, breathing urgency and reality.

Both sessions benefited from feedback, carefully selected resources (including people), and word of mouth. The roundtable session lived on for years, with continued success, and without the aid of modern devices of the digital variety. Digital is not the panacea, but another tool in our war chest.

Point two: expectations. As Elizabeth mentioned, expectations played critical roles in the success of both of these sessions. I also encouraged and relied upon the experts to engage with attendees at a relatively personal level. There were no talking heads. And everyone knew that up front. They came with the expectation to be engaged, to be active participants, and they left satisfied — if not clamoring for more.

Problem: time is not on our side. One aspect of content preparation that besieges the success of sessions is having to prepare so far in advance. Another is that conference organizers are trying to fill spots with diverse content, which sometimes forces them to select content of less quality or presenters of less experience. These are hurdles that can be overcome with learning and practice and observation, but like any other subject, they are constant, because the field of participants is always changing. Sometimes, we hit a hurdle rather than leaping over it.

Too, there is the paradox that expertise does not equal engagement.

Solution: more setting expectations — and establishing guidance. Organizers can serve their attendees better by guiding stoic or novice presenters, challenging them to break down their own fears and boundaries for the sake of the content and the attendees, and establishing some expectations themselves as to what they want their conference to look and feel like.

End result: on some level, we’re all in this together. Organizers, presenters, and attendees all have to step up and take charge to define — and then create — success.

@Justin Kiddie Concerts? Now I really feel like I need to see this concept of dancing to learn. Awesome!

I agree that the change can be challenging. Every where I’ve worked I’ve received the exact same feedback and resistance.

For me, it was just as important to begin to advertise and teach why the changes were occurring as marketing the conference itself. When we started educating on good adult learning models and how people only retain 20% of what they hear 14 days later versus 70% when they are allowed to discuss what they’ve heard, people got it. See John Medina’s Brain Rules for more data: http://www.brainrules.net/sensory-integration When people understand the why they often will accept the how. That why helped people ease into new models and unpredictable learning moments…at least where I’ve worked.

I also provided options. For example, I provided similar concurrent breakout topics with one that was straight lecture-based and one that was part lecture followed by small group discussions. As the conference organizer, my highest rated sessions, even for audiences of 20,000+ attendees, have always my Peer2Peer roundtable discussions. People want to interact.

IMO, it’s worth swimming against the tide for a while in the name of better retention, learning and ROI. It’s always for the benefit of the attendee.

It’s a systemic issue– it’s caused partly by individual stage fright, partly by ego (“my big chance to stand up and show what I know”), bureaucratic obedience, cultural inertia, fear of risk/ doing something untried or different, etc. etc.

At the same time I keep finding people who see the problem and understand that it needs to be better. But consistently it is individuals, not committees, that go for the improvement.

Just an afterthought, performance standards in general for educational concerts are much higher in europe and south america than they are in the USA. The food is better too. Coincidence? -jl

@midori well clearly we need to get you out on the floor someday