Tag-Archive for » ASAE «
My post for ASAE’s Acronym’s “Big Ideas” month for association bloggers.
What if associations provided brain-friendly annual conferences?
- Planning Brain-Friendly Conferences
If you wanted to create a conference environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like today’s conferences, meetings and workshops. If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you would design a full day of lectures in general sessions and breakouts. (Just like today’s learning institutions).
What if associations tore down old traditional conference models and started over?
Here are four brain-friendly principles from brain scientists that association leaders and meeting organizers should consider when planning their next annual meeting. (There are many more!)
Passive Listening Versus Movement And Interactivity
1. Your brain is not designed to sit passively for eight hours a day listening to lectures.
In the evolutionary process, our brains developed while working out and walking. The brain still craves that experience. Movement boosts brainpower. Physical activity is cognitive candy.
Suggestion: Conference organizers should encourage presentations that get people up, moving around and require interactivity, not sitting in chairs all day.
Your Short Term Memory
2. Your brain is not designed like a recording device—push record to learn new information and push playback to remember it.
German psychologist and memory researcher Hermann Ebbinghaus is best known for one of the most depressing facts in education: people usually forget 90% of what they learn in a class within 30 days. The majority of this memory loss occurs within the first few hours after the presentation. Wow, normal conference attendees only recall 10% of what they learn at the annual meeting. That’s low ROI.
The moment of encoding, or learning, is mysterious and complex. We do know that the process is similar to a blender running without a lid. The information enters the blender, is sliced into pieces and splattered all over the insides of our mind. Content and context are stored separately. Recalling that information requires more elaborate encoding in the initial moments of learning.
Suggestion: Conference organizers need to structure and provide emotional arousal, context and meaning which lead to more elaborate encoding and thus better recall.
Adult White Space
3. The brain is not an open vessel that you can constantly pour content into during an eight-hour day and expect it to recall the information at will.
Have you seen the film Mondo Cane? The Italian shockumentary consists of vignettes intended to raise Westerner’s eyebrows. One memorable and disgusting scene shows farmers force-feeding geese to make Pâté de foie gras. They stuff food down the throats of these animals and then fasten a brass ring around their throats, trapping the food inside the digestive tract. Repeatedly jamming them with an oversupply of food eventually creates a stuffed liver pleasing to the world’s chefs. The geese are sacrificed in the name of expediency.
Most conferences try to overstuff their attendees with several days of eight to ten hours of presentations. Subject matter experts shovel data dumps into attendees’ minds thinking more is best. Pushing too much information, without enough time devoted to context, meaning, connecting the dots and digestion, does not nourish the brain. The attendee’s learning is sacrificed in the name of expediency. The brain needs breaks.
Suggestion: Conference organizers need to schedule adult white space: time for attendees to discuss new learnings with each other. They should plan for moderated chats where attendees re-expose each other to the information and share detailed elaborations of their impressions. When attendees spend time in these gabfests sharing their new learnings, retention increases. Brains recall information that is repeated out loud. The more the experience is retold, the more the brain encodes it and the more likely it will be remembered.
Attention Spans And Boring Things
4. The brain does not pay attention to boring things. (I know, you’re saying, “Duh!”)
Research shows that presenters have 30 seconds to grab someone’s attention and only 10 minutes to keep it. Most conference presentations are 60 to 90 minutes long. If keeping someone’s interest in a presentation were a business, it would have an 80%-90% failure rate.
Presenters and conference organizers can help grab attention by ensuring every 10-minute segment is rich with meaning, stories and emotional connections. Connecting each segment to previous segments also helps the brain learn and remember.
Suggestion: Conference organizers should secure speakers that change their content and raise attention every 9 minutes and 59 seconds to restart the attention clock.
These four brain-friendly principles are just some of the things association leaders and meeting professionals can do to create brain friendly conferences. What others would you add?
Have you read Carol-Anne Moutinho’s Playing the Not-for-Profit Prophet?
Association predictions and trends.
Canadian association professionals have been weighing in on what they think nonprofit associations will look like in five to six years from now.
Bud Crouch, a speaker for an upcoming CSAE 2009 Governance Summit, shared his thoughts. Carol-Anne, the great association oracle that she is, follows with her six predictions for nonprofits: Customized Membership; New Revenue Models; Flatter, Less Hierarchal Structures; Evolution of Volunteerism and Engagement; Transparency No Longer An Option; and the Great Age Divide.
Being one that enjoys forward thinking forecasts, I thought I’d join the soothsayers and make a few predictions myself. Here’s what I added to Carole-Anne’s list.
Customized co-created, stellar content for member-only consumption
I think nonprofits will have to begin to provide exceptional, unique, provocative content for its members. Not something members have to pay extra dollars to consume but something that is exclusive to membership only. Members already pay a membership fee and they want tangible returns from it. (Not just discounts to meetings, events, webinars or a free magazine!)
That content must be beyond the typical 101 and 201 levels of instruction. The free content distributed to all can be at the 101 or 201 levels but in order to keep members and show value, the association will have to provide deep, high-quality content. And they’ll have to provide many opportunities for members to engage in analysis, debate, and co-creation of knowledge with that content.
Unique Face-To-Face and Digital Experiences
Every touch point with a member will have to be viewed under the lens of “Is this adding value to our membership community experience or detracting from it?”
For example, members won’t put up with a barrage of ongoing emails asking for donations or marketing for fee-based Webinars. They’ll want emails and social interaction that provides unique experiences all year long. And nonprofits that can frame those experiences with the thought of building and maintaining rich relationships will succeed. It’s time to return to basics and view all of the nonprofit’s annual experiences as an opportunity to engage a community with a mission.
A New Breed Of Members With Limited Dollar Mindsets
While many claim the Great Recession is over, I believe that nonprofits will feel its impact for another 12-18 months as they are traditionally laggards behind the economy. I also believe the Great Recession has created some consumer habits that will stick for a long time such as steadfast frugalists, penny-pinchers and pragmatic spenders.
Micro-Volunteerism
Those that choose to become members will be looking for ways they can contribute to the organization and the mission. Due to the demands on their time and money, they’ll look for short-bursts of volunteer opportunities–micro-volunteering if you will. They’ll take a half day off work to assist with stuffing envelopes or building a house—but they want those opportunities to feel like unique experiences–not grunt work the staff refuses to do. And, they don’t want to commit to a full year’s of meetings or long-term projects.
Bonus Prediction That’s Pretty Obvious
I also think we’ll see the rise of mergers and acquisitions of many nonprofits as well as those that close their doors because they’re unable to be nimble, change on a dime and find alternative revenue streams.
What predictions do you have nonprofit association professionals? Add to the list.
Brian Birch asks an interesting question on ASAE & The Center’s Acronym Blog: Who are we really, as association professionals? If you work for a nonprofit association as I do, I suggest that you read his post and the replies.
Here’s how I responded to “Who are we really, as association professionals?”
I could answer this question with I’m a humanitarian, a heretic, a servant-leader, a contrarian, an advocate, a peace-maker, a fool, a strategic big-picture futurist with a penchant for implementation, a conduit, a life-long learner or a number of other labels.
We might be shaped by our pasts but our futures are always open. People ask repeatedly, “Where’d you come from? What have you done? Who are you?” The larger question is always, “What are you becoming?”
What are you becoming? Who are you as an association professional?
The truthful answer to this question—and to all moments of becoming—is, “We have no idea.” We can move in any number of directions. We will have false starts and dead ends; we will find some paths congenial; we will dodge some challenges and embrace others. But movement will always be forward.
Today, tomorrow and many years from now, we can be blessed by the opportunity to become, the chance to try something new, the occasion to develop into something different, the opening for a do-over.
The world looks backward—mainly to stifle life, if you ask me—but I like to focus on bearing forward with a restless spirit and a burning desire to help.
Recent Comments