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Typical conferences, events and seminars can all too easily become a distribution center, a place where attendees can come and get stuff and the conference organizers can dump stuff.
The attendees receive education, information, new contacts, and swag. The conference organizers secure speakers to dump their presentations, vendors and exhibitors to dump their marketing messages, and sponsors to dump their tchotchkes.
Often everyone leaves satisfied. The attendee feels as if they gained a lot of new knowledge, business cards and free stuff. The exhibitors feel as if they’ve added new prospects to the funnel and advanced some existing relationships. The sponsors feel as if they have gained a lot of new eyeballs and increased mindshare. The conference organizers feel good about the “smile factor” evaluations they’ve collected.
The Tough Questions
Yet, did anyone leave the conference transformed? Was a new radical community formed? Was the existing community nurtured, developed and challenged to change?
The conference experience has been boiled down to a sterile, predictable, transactional encounter, similar to a factory assembly line. Everybody enters into a room, inputs received, everybody exit, outputs expected. And, it’s condensed into short-time frame, often at hyper-speed. The more we can cram into our minds and time, the better we are…or so the belief goes.
Little time is given to people building relationships, to stop, chat and look one another in the eye and listen to each other. Little thought is given to individual’s uniqueness, their preferences, their expectations or their insights. All attendee’s don’t want the same cookie cutter conference experience.
The Consumer’s Expectation Shift
Today, businesses and organizations have seen a shift in society’s expectations of them. People crave social interactions and community. They want to connect on a basic level, hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder, mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul. People yearn and hunger for engagement with others.
They don’t want to talk with a nameless person at a company. They don’t want to call a contact center and speak to a person in another country. They don’t want broadcast, push messages from human-less brands. People want and need radically relational connections. People also want radically relational conferences.
The Radically Relational Conference
A goal of the social conference is not just to set up a new program but to create and develop community where attendees, exhibitors, sponsors and vendors come together in relationships. And these relationships grow and flourish whether new or well-formed.
And this new sense of community spreads like a disease–through touch, breath, proximity, connections and life. It is spread by conference attendees infected with the passion of a radically relational social conference with a renewed vision and outlook. One where meetings and events really can change the world.
What I’ve been thinking about is that when we divorce our conference attendees from building and maintaining relationships, by scheduling too many presenter monologues, too many panel dialogues, too few peer-to-peer discussions, and too few peer collaborative sessions, the natural transformative power of lives connecting has been stripped away. It’s time to start thinking about everything we do when planning, preparing, staging and implementing an event in the context of relationships. All of our logistic and strategic planning must serve as a catalyst for attendees to build transformative radical relationships and social connections.
Whatever else we may do in our conference environment, let it first lead to radically relational social conferences.
What do you think? How could you implement Radically Relational Social Conferences? Share your thoughts with us.
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Read more about the Social Conference.
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?
Have you made some event resolutions for 2010? I suspect it may have included something about integrating social media into your conference format.
Well, it’s time to screw your event resolutions about integrating social media. No, I’m not a heretic that has moved to the dark side banning social media from events and conferences. Calm down.
I’m talking about creating a Social Conference, Living Conference or Conference 2.0, as some are calling it.
So, how social is your annual conference, meeting or event?
In theory, the annual conference is already a social event. Right? You probably provide a conference website and email marketing about the event. That’s social, right?
Your conference is about people gathering in one place for several days attending meetings, education efforts, networking sessions, parties and special events. In that process, people interact and are social with one another. They are social on the bus to the convention center, in the hallways, during meals, at special events. Fairly standard social stuff, wouldn’t you say?
Yet in a Web 2.0 connected world, social has a much deeper meaning and a far reaching impact than just the onsite event. Social is an attitude and way of viewing your entire conference planning and onsite experience. It’s about changing the top-down controlled format and allowing the conference attendee to help create a much more organic experience.
That sounds a little messy, doesn’t it? It also is a little frightening, giving the power back the conference attendee. You’re probably thinking, “But what if…” Or, “I’m not sure I’m ready for an organic conference. I’m not into Birkenstocks, hemp flower dresses, fruits, nuts and flakes yet.” Well, that’s for another post too.
David Armano wrote a fantastic post on Harvard Business Review called Do You Live Social?
“Do you live social? …Many organizations simply skip this question because they assume that they themselves don’t have to be social (open and collaborative) to reap the rewards (cost savings, marketing ROI, effective reputation management, and search engine juice) they think they might get from social media,” he writes.
Here’s a twist on his question. “Do you conference social?”
It’s more than advertising and marketing. It’s a way of thinking and approaching the conference experience that requires event organizers to participate in social spaces honestly. It’s about having an open and collaborative conference planning process. It’s about encouraging conference attendees to “take control” of the meeting, to help guide it so that it meets their needs, to help customize the content for their own learning and digestion. It’s about cheering attendees on to share their thoughts, their input and add to the presenter’s content. It’s about supporting attendee engagement with each other and with the content.
This will not be easy for traditional conference organizers. We’re used to top-down, command and control approaches. We decide when you’ll eat, what you’ll hear, what you’ll see, who you’ll meet. Giving up control is hard.
So how do you create a social conference? I suggest starting small. Pilot a collaborative program by allowing potential attendees to crowdsource conference topics (not speakers–that’s a different blog post). Consider a spinoff of Starbucks customer initiative with “My Conference Idea.”
Or encourage your staff to have personalities and use social media to begin communicating with attendees and prospective attendees. Not communicating “at or to” attendees pushing conference tradeshow, registration and sponsorship specials. Rather engaging in conversation with others about the conference. Or start by reaching out to industry bloggers and influential tweeps asking them to blog and micro blog during the event.
Don’t just ignore this stuff, start somewhere.
Need more help wrapping your head around the Social Conference? View this short PowerPoint comparing Traditional, Web 1.0 Conferences to The Web 2.0 Social Conference.
And what social elements would you add to your next conference or event? Share your thoughts, comments and additions with us!
Are you thinking about adding a virtual experience for your customers or members?
Perhaps you are considering adding a virtual component to your next conference or event?
Ian McGonnigal, Executive Director, Program Strategy at George P Johnson defines a virtual event as “… a gathering of individuals who meet through a computer-generated environment at a prearranged time in order to acquire knowledge, share information, interact with each other and engage in activities of common interest.“
Are you considering intergrating a virtual experience in your current offerings?
So whether you’re looking to create a virtual event or integrate a virtual experience into your current offerings, here are eight types of virtual experiences for your consideration:
1. Hybrid Event
A mix of face-to-face and virtual experiences usually running simultaneously which may include overlapping content and interactive elements to two different audiences, those present within the four walls of the face-to-face event and virtual attendees.
2. Internet Radio Show Or Interview
Also known as web radio, net radio, streaming radio and e-radio, Internet Radio is an audio broadcasting service transmitted via the Internet. Some Internet radios providers like blogtalkradio, offer social media platform integration, free recordings and podcasting applications.
3. Live Streaming
A continuous stream of data, usually video or other media, sent in compressed form over the Internet and displayed by the viewer in real time. The receiver uses a player, which is a special program that uncompresses and sends video data to the display and audio data to the speakers. Many Internet browsers have built in streaming players. Some conference organizers are creating hybrid events and live stream aspects of the face-to-face conference to virtual attendees. Livestream, Qik and UStream are examples of free or low-cost live streaming. There are a wealth of high-end live streaming companies as well (like Midori Connolly’s Pulse Staging & Events or Carrie & Mike McAllen’s Grass Shack Events & Media). Livestream, Ustream and Twebevent integrate live streaming with other social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook for real time chat.
4. Online Conference
An online platform that integrates webinars, streaming video and audio, discussion boards with RSS, file libraries and vendor showrooms. Often the online conference follows a similar format as a face-to-face conference, with attendees participating in real time or on-demand recordings. Some conference organizers are offering an online conference in association with their face-to-face event. Some conference organizers offer online conference social communities as an extension of a face-to-face event that may or may not include some of the online conference features like webinars, streaming video and audio. iCohere is an examples of a platform that provides online conferences. CrowdVine, NFi Studios’ MemberFuse, Omnipress’ Conference 2.0, Pathable, and Social Collective are examples of online conference communities.
5. Podcast
An audio broadcast that has been converted to digital, such as an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback in a digital music player and downloaded from the Internet. For some of the best meetings and event podcasts, check out Mike McAllen’s McCallen’s MeetingsPodcast.
6. Teleconferences
A conference of people who are in different locations that is made possible by the use of telecommunications equipment. It can be supported through telephone, computer, telegraph, radio and closed-circuit television. It is sometimes referred to as audio conferencing, telephone conferencing and phone conferencing.
7. Virtual Meeting
A live event or meeting held using a virtual platform, custom built or hosted in a 3D or 2D virtual world. InExpo, InXpo, On24, SecondLife’s Virtualis Convention Center, and Unisfair are a few of the companies providing real-time virtual events and meetings.
8. Webinars
Short for Web-based seminar, a webinar is a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web. The information is streamed, live or on-demand, broadcasting the message usually from one source to multiple users simultaneously. Most Webinars, also called Virtual Seminars, offer interactive features with the ability to give, receive and discuss information. Some differentiate Webcasts from Webinars since Webcasts only offer one way data transmission from the presenter to the attendee.
I know there are others. What other types of virtual experiences would you add to this list?
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