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Engagement.
When you read that word, what does it mean to you?
I was talking with BeEvents’ Ray Hanson, Event Solutions Publisher Meredith McIlmoyle, Pink, Inc.’s, Deb Roth, and Conference Content Strategist and Emcee Glenn Thayer at Event Solutions Conference this past week. During our conversation, someone dropped the “e-bomb: engagement.” There it was resting on our ears and brains as if we each understood its depth and meaning. The all allusive, slippery 21st Century e-word. Engagement had announced its arrival once again.
I asked the $64 billion question. What does engaging a conference attendee actually mean? What does engagement look and feel like?
During our time together, several others joined and left the conversation. Our discussion was fluid and always changing directions as we deconstructed attendee engagement and others added their input.
To some, it meant that a presenter was engaging. The presenter had good eye contact with the audience, proper presenter body language and adequate inflection in their voice that appealed to the listener and viewer.
To others, it meant the obvious: a promise to marriage and the period of time between proposal and marriage. Ironically, Elizabeth Beskin was in Vegas at the same time at the Wedding Photographers Conference and joined the conversation as well, thus her spin on engagement.
Some said it meant that the presenter had a high energy and so much stage presence that it captured the attendee’s attention and became engaging.
Still to others, it meant that the presentation was hands-on, interactive allowing the attendees to talk with each other, discuss the presentation and maybe even do something. It was more than a panel allowing audience question and answer.
Before “engagement” becomes another overused business cliché done to death, how can conference and event organizers create engaging attendee experiences in a 21st Century digital world?
I believe that the future of conferences and events is about engaging attendees more than corralling them into general sessions and commanding them to sit, be quiet, listen and learn. People want to be engaged in conferences that help them work with a purpose. They want insight into how their conference attendance is linked to their work and ultimately to larger organizational and societal goals. Attendees want to know where they fit into the industry and how to continue to succeed. They want to connect with each other on a higher level than just a passive conversation held in the hallway or tradeshow booth. Engagement requires a level of participation rarely experienced by attendees at most conferences and events. Engagement means active involvement and not passive contributions.
I’ve been reading Stanford Professor Byron Reeves and physician J. Leighton Read’s Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete. It’s about how massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) like Halo, Mafia Wars and World of Warcraft will change careers, companies and competitions…and I believe conferences, events and face-to-face meetings. (If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about when I mention those games and are more familiar with Pinball Wizard, Pacman and Space Invaders, go ask your kids what multiplayer online games they play.)
More than one hundred million Americans and many more around the world played a computer or video game last week with levels of engagement and focus rarely seen at face-to-face meetings and events. (Online Gaming Report 2008) The hours flew by for people immersed in sophisticated online interactions.
These new MMOGs represent a high level of interactivity and continued refinement. Digital play is already engaging and will continue to improve. Great MMOGs have light-speed pacing, constant feedback, transparent levels and reputations, compelling narratives and interesting methods for self-representation in action.
So why do people play these online games? Why are people willing to spend so much time in these games? Nick Yee’s 2006 study the Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences and two subsequent studies by Richard Bartle and Thomas Malone categorized two types of reasons: personal and social. Personal motivations include achievement, immersion and exploration. Social motivations include competition and socialization.
These reasons sound very similar to the reasons people attend conferences, events and face-to-face meetings. Yet these MMOGs have found a way to get people involved in cooperative explorations that afford an opportunity to begin a social relationship.
I think the key to successful future conferences, events and tradeshows are designing experiences that include elements of successful online games: achievement, competition, exploration, immersion and socialization.
What do you think? What experiences have you had with online games that you wish conferences and face-to-face events provided? What lessons can conference and event organizers learn from online games to provide more attendee engagement?
What event professional do you know that takes full responsibility for the entire attendee experience at their face-to-face event or meeting?
What would meetings and events look like if meeting professional’s quit blaming others for the content, programming and experience of the event?
For the past 18 months I’ve consistently heard meetings and event professionals denounce the government and organizations for lack of support of face-to-face meetings and events. I’ve heard them cry and bemoan that their value is not appreciated by their executives, the Board of Directors, the public and even the President. Many have said that our industry associations need to do more to promote the vale of face-to-face meetings.
Typically, when event professionals try to educate their boss, executives or Board members on their value, they talk about the value of logistics they perform. You know, cost savings, cost avoidance, those kind of things. Or they state the past conference’s evaluation smile factor. Or they quote the economic impact of meetings as the primary reason to meet as handed down from our industry associations. Or they start talking about the number of jobs each meeting creates.
So what! The publication industry created thousands of jobs and had a positive impact on the economy. But that didn’t stop that industry from experiencing disruptive innovation.
So tell me, how can you prove your value to the CEO or executives if you can’t prove the value of the content or the programming? How do you know that lessons learned at your conference were applied to your attendees’ business? What were the results six or twelve months after your meeting?
How can meetings and event professionals continue to distance themselves from the real meat and experiences of the conference? Are we seriously kidding ourselves that meetings and events, for meetings sake are more important than the content and programming of that meeting?
If that’s the case, then no wonder the government, elected officials, and executives have doubted the value of meetings. We’ve tried to prove the dollar’s worth of a meeting without proving the value of the content of the meeting. That’s like saying schooling is important because it provides hundreds of thousands of jobs and provides a place for our kids to go during the day. Yet, we hold our public schools to a high standard and expect specific outcomes. We’ve standardized the education process and if the kids don’t meet specific knowledge and skills assessments, they fail and the schools fail. And who wants to send their kids to a failing, poor-rated schools?
With limited professional development dollars per head per company, who wants to send their employees to a conference that doesn’t stimulate the heck out of them from a learning perspective? Oh, but the content and learning opportunities are not the meeting professional’s job, you say.
Can you imagine what would happen if the public started failing meetings and events because the content and programming was below expectations? Oh wait, that did happen and we call it the AIG effect. But instead of increasing the value of the content and programming, meetings professionals have cried foul! Or we’ve screamed, “But my meetings aren’t like AIG’s.”
Guess what, the public doesn’t care. Society has moved the goal posts and imposed new expectations on meetings and events. They want new measures of performance! And attendees want content that is relevant, that pushes them to change things up when they get back to the shop. They don’t want another set of meeting rooms with chairs in a row!
When are meeting and event professionals going to wake up and measure the ROI of the content and programming elements that they put into the meeting from the beginning? That means spending more time crafting the right overarching meeting’s experience and education goals. That means allocating additional resources to securing the right speakers that understand the content and good adult learning techniques. That means focusing on the learner objectives of each workshop and session. That means we must also measure the outputs (months after the meeting) to see if the attendees walked away with the right learnings that we intended.
When are we going to take the bull by the horns and help drive the right speakers, programming elements and content for the meeting? Ultimately, that’s what makes or breaks the meeting. Suppliers (including 3rd parties and consultants) attend primarily for networking. Attendees attend primarily for the content, at least that’s how they justify attendance to their boss–by the content. They don’t justify their attendance based on the meeting’s experience, or networking. If you don’t get the attendees there, the suppliers and consultants don’t have anyone to network with.
When was the last time you said, “I’m going to return to that conference? It was so well organized. I didn’t stand in line for registration. The rooms were set perfectly. The closing party was a blast. The food was great. So I’m going to go back again.”
Ha! Not if you are a true attendee. You grade the value of conferences and events on the experience you had, whether the content met your expectations, whether the speakers delivered, whether you had emotional connections or whether you learned anything that can be applied to your business or position.
So when are event professionals going to see themselves as the partner in the attendee’s experience and not just the logistics order taker? When are our meetings industry associations going to step up to the plate and teach meetings professionals how to craft the conference experience appropriately with an emphasis on being attendee-centric and a focus on the education design of the content? [Stop saying that's another department's job. You've just reduced yourself to an administrative assistant to that department!]
I’m tired of watching the meetings and events professionals default to the old way of planning where they distance themselves from the content of the program. If meeting professionals don’t step up to the plate and see themselves as the strategic partner to the program and content, then they will continue to sound like a dripping faucet to the rest of the world.
Just saying…
What say ye?
Have you ever passed a note to another person during a meeting?
I’m not talking about the love notes we used to pass in high school. Nor am I talking about the origami paper fortune teller you used to create in junior high to pass the time and ask questions of your neighbors during boring lectures.
Fess up. Have you ever passed a note during a meeting?
Sure you have.
Have you elbowed the person sitting beside you during a presentation and made a gesture about what was just said? Or have you texted someone while you were in a meeting? Like maybe a family member or friend about when you’ll be done, where to meet or even to bring home the milk.
Let’s be honest. We’ve all done it and it’s been perfectly acceptable to do so. Unless you had a teacher that demanded everyone sit perfectly still, in rows, hands on their desks, eyes forward.
Or maybe you’ve made a beeline for another person as soon as the speaker was finished to discuss an idea shared. You wanted to talk about it with them immediately to apply the concept to your business
Or perhaps you’ve written a question that you’re dying to ask the speaker during their presentation. Or maybe you’ve questioned the credibility of their documentation and wrote yourself a note to disprove their findings.
Guess what, you participated in the old-fashioned form of a backchannel. A backchannel is when attendees communicate with others inside or outside the room. Today, backchannels are usually facilitated by Web-based technologies. They are often spontaneous, self-initiated and limited to the duration of that live event. Backchannels can be constructive when they enhance or extend the event’s content and are destructive when they amplify disagreements and controversy.
The Omnipresent Conference Backchannel
So how pervasive (invasive maybe?) are these backchannels? Can you expect your audience to talk back to the conference organizer and presenters at your next event?
A 2009 Weber Shandwick survey of global conference organizers showed that attendees were blogging and tweeting from conferences 58% more than the previous three years. comScore’s April 2009 data found that the 25- to 54-year-old crowd is actually driving the Twitter trend. 45- to 54-year olds were 36% more likely than average to visit Twitter with 25- to 40-year-olds 30% more likely. This is in direct contrast to conventional wisdom that younger people are driving the social media trends.
A December 2009 Pew Internet and American Life Project Internet research shows that 80% of Americans own a mobile device and 54%-56% connect to the Internet wirelessly. Two-thirds use the cloud.
If your conference audience demographic includes 25-54 year olds, and there is a wireless or mobile phone connection in the room, it’s safe to say that some people in the audience with be texting, tweeting or using some other similar service to create a backchannel.
Why The Increase In Backchannels?
So why have attendees turned to talking to one another during a presentation?
- Boring, one-way monologues and lectures
- Lack of presenter-attendee engagement during presentation
- Need to connect with others and share information as they are hearing it
- Need to be active during presentations as the brain is bored with passive listening for 45- to 90-minutes
- Attendees want to have a say and belong
- As a way to engage with the content
- To express their opinions about the presentation
- To build community
- To ask questions and clarify
Your Two Options
So conference organizers have two options.
A. Ignore the possibility that a backchannel will be used at their event and not monitor that conversation or provide customer service.
Risk: The lack of awareness of what conference attendees are saying in a voluntary backchannel could lead to disastrous consequences. For example, a speaker is blantantly selling their services during the session and attendees are tweeting about it. You could find out during the presentation and interrupt the speaker (by calling them into the hall.) Or you could find out after the event.
B. Facilitate the positive value of a backchannel and proactively help attendees use these alternative communication methods during an event.
Risk: Attendees could talk back about poor presentations, irrelevant content and bad speakers…but you’ll have honest, real time feedback on the areas needing the most improvement.
The choice is yours. The audience wants to talk back to you and the speaker. Can you hear them now?
What are some other reasons attendees use backchannels? How can event organizers help facilitate the attendee discussion during a presentation? What’s your experience, good or bad?
Social Conference Strategy Without Human Engagement = Fail or Why Conference Organizers Need To Think Like Community Managers
Canned speeches and passive audiences are out! Conference attendees have reached keynote fatigue.
Conferences without attendee engagement are a major fail.
Attendees want conferences that implement more social strategies. Not sure what a “Social Conference” is? Read Do You Conference Social? and 6 Steps For The Social Conference.
If you plan a conference:
- Where the presenters read their presentations, you can expect a major audience revolt.
- Where the keynote presenter talks non-stop for 60 minutes with no audience engagement, you can expect an audience snooze-fest.
- Where an attendee can learn as much by studying the handout, you can expect death by PowerPoint.
- Where speakers are selected based strictly on their proposals without confirming that they have good presentation skills, you can expect attendee boredom and ho-hum reactions.
- Where attendees are forced into “track boxes” based on their demographics, you can expect a an angry crowd.
- With eight hours of butts in chairs and talking heads, you’re exacerbating AAD (attendee attention deficit).
- With the same old speakers, presenting the same old topics from last years’ conference, you’re encouraging attendees to check out and visit the host city’s attractions.
- Where speakers present outdated research and information with no relevancy to the attendees, you can expect a negative Twitter storm or blog post.
- That’s like a widget-making-machine expecting each attendee to walk in, receive inputs and leave with same outputs, everyone with the same answers, and no thought to each individual’s uniqueness, expectations and learning preferences, you can expect a train wreck.
It’s time for conference organizers to start thinking about their event strategy like a community manager. They should view their attendees as a community, a living, breathing organism that craves human connections, engagement, belonging and acceptance. Attendees are the conference’s tribe. It’s time to go back to relationship building where customers are known by name and more than a credit card number.
So what is a community manager? In the business world, a community manager represents the company and has the most consistent, deep relationships with the clients. Community managers create an environment that encourage an intended outcome. Chris Brogan says community managers are similar to good party hosts mixed with restaurant hosts. (Parties more personal and restaurants require them to think with a business mind.)
Why Conference Organizers Need To Think Like Community Managers
1. Community managers focus on helping their customers build better relationships with the business.
Conference organizers should focus on helping their attendees build better relationships with each other, the sponsors, the exhibitors, the subject matter experts and the conference organizers.
2. Community managers strive to engineer a new bedrock of the human shaped business, one built on relationships and engagement.
Conference organizers should strive to engineer a social conference built on fostering human connections, relationships and attendee engagement–not passive audiences listening to one-way monologues. (What percentage of your conference schedule do attendees sit in chairs passively listening versus actively engaged in discussions or activity?)
3. Community managers see their role as customer service blended with internal and external communication and sometimes sales.
Conference organizers should see their role as attendee service blended with internal and external communication, education and information sharing, and sometimes a conduit to sales.
4. Community managers enable members to have a voice, share their opinions, discuss their insights, ask their questions, and showcase their expertise.
Conference organizers should enable and encourage attendees to speak, talk, discuss, share, ask and showcase their opinions, insights, questions, voices, expertise.
5. Community managers use online tools that provide a structure and framework for member conversations.
Conference organizers should structure schedules with sessions like peer-to-peer roundtables and open source meetings that allow members to engage in conversations.
Final Thoughts
Conference organizers, it’s your job to see yourselves as more than logistic coordinators, room layout managers, food and beverage planners, coffee cup counters, signage placers, lodging directors, decor designers, foot traffic controllers, and speaker schedulers. See yourselves as relationship builders, connectors, communicators, conduits with your responsibility to immerse the attendees into a world of engagement and interactivity…the real reason attendees choose to come…and choose to return.
If this scares you. If you’re reading this and thinking of all the reasons it won’t work. Stop now. Find an easier battle to engage. Focus on guaranteed wins, the status quo, the safe path, what you’ve always done at your past conferences. It will continue to give you job security as long as your attendees are willing to pay for mediocrity.
But for the rest, why not us? Why not now? Why not here?
What other ways should conference organizers be like community managers? What do you think? Share them with us.
Traditional conferences versus social conferences. Which will you plan this year?
Not sure about the “Social Conference?” Read this post on “Screw Your Event Resolutions. Do You Conference Social?”
Here are six things to consider when planning the Social Conference so you don’t get caught with your social pants down.
1. In this new information landscape, your conference is not for a passive audience but an engaged community.
No conference attendees in history have been more thoroughly prepared for the industrial revolution than today’s participants. This is a major fail whale. They need to be prepared for the service and creative revolution. (Read more about the creative and service sectors.)
2. Your conference community is hyper-connected.
Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Mobile Applications. Your conference attendees are going to talk about your event in person and online whether you want them to or not. Be social and engage with them before, during and after the event. Don’t control them, join them.
3. Each of your conference attendees has a voice, a platform to amplify that voice and followers that listen.
They can find each other, share, collaborate and connect. They will write a review of how your group rates are higher than what they found online, your sessions, your AV, your food, your content, your venue, your parties, your speakers, your registration process. Good or bad, expect it. And they will be brutally honest with their reviews. Encourage it. Use it to improve the future event. Incentivize it. Be transparent and respond to it. Make real-time changes because of it. Don’t ignore it.
4. The conference interaction has moved from a monologue to dialogue to polylogue (many voices speaking at the same time.)
Stop trying to control the conversation. You can’t. But you can help steer it and ask invaluable questions to guide it. As Samuel J. Smith says, “The gap between the experts on stage and the attendees in the audience has never been smaller.” Include questions and opportunities for experienced attendees to share what they know as well.
5. Potential and registered conference attendees expect conference organizers to find them, in the social media platforms they use.
It used to be that conference organizers expected attendees to find the conference on the Web. That’s shifted. Potential and registered attendees want to connect with you on their terms in the social media platform of their choice. Let your attendees self-identify their own favorites by giving them all the choices. Consider customizing the message for each platform. Don’t just duplicate the same message and post in multiple places. (Don’t think this is for you? Think again. See how younger people expect news to come to them (not on CNN or daily papers) and how they are conduits for info-sharing.)
6. Create an atmosphere of belonging and acceptance while encouraging attendees to share their experiences with others.
Think about your recent gathering of family or friends. You had a great time. Lots of pictures were taken and you woke up to realize you hade been tagged in Facebook. Your whole network knows about it. Capture that type of experience and encourage it at your meetings and events.
Final Thoughts
This is sneaking up on most association, event and conference professionals. Don’t be caught with your social pants down, high jacked by your conference audience. Plan now for the new social conference revolution.
What tips do you have to help plan for and embrace this revolution?
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