Comments on: Conferences are boring by default and design

By: ed bernacki

ed bernacki — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:38:41 +0000

I like your comments about conferences being boring by design. Absolutely right. I started speaking at conferences on themes of innovative thinking. It was easy to notice that many conferences were not particularly innovative in the way they were designed. In fact, there are not designed….they are organized…and here lies the problem.
There is an entire industry of professional organizers and event planners. They are experts at what they do: organize events. They are not experts in the learning or content development side of an event.
At the same time I also notice that a few conferences were excellent and these tended to be designed with people who have formal learning and development backgrounds. They design how they want to mix ideas, speakers and participants. Some government conferences are excellent as they use alternative formats and they do not buy into the model of hiring big dollar speakers to attract fee paying participants
The simple test that I use to evaluate a conference is to ask: does this conference have learning objectives? Only a few do.
All of this led me to apply the concepts from the innovation work to write a short book on the theme of “Seven Rules for Designing More Innovative Conferences”. My key message is that all events need a learning strategy to shape the content and its presentation. I based this on two strategies:
1. Design more engaging conferences.
2. Help your participants become more effective participants.
The second strategy may sound odd but remember that the majority of people I address freely admit that they take notes at conferences and never look at them again.
I now open conferences with a “how to navigate this conferences for more ideas” presentation.
I defined these rules to broaden the planning conversations that are used to design the event:

Rule 1 The experts at your conference are in the audience, not on the stage.
Rule 2 Think Return on Investment…even though it is hard to measure.
Rule 3 Design your conference with Logistics and Learning.
Rule 4 Learning objectives drive the design of your content.
Rule 5 Always use the brainpower of an audience to create something.
Rule 6 Put structure into your networking and mingling opportunities.
Rule 7 Assume that your conference participants have weak skills for participating in a conference.
http://www.InnovativeConferences.com

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:37:56 +0000

That’s why we enlightened marketing types ;O) held Interesting 2007

See here for review

http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2007/06/interesting_rev.html

By: Terry

Terry — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:37:11 +0000

I have recently been introduced to the unconference and OST concepts. I am with the ISC, the trade association for corporate sponsors, and I believe these models can deliver more value than the traditional conference for corporate executives involved in sponsorship. These execs desire true open dialogue towards identifying and addressing common issues. You don’t get conversation at traditional conferences and it promotes a hierarchy that stifles the ability for most to add value. Sponsorship is about engagement and it has been interesting to follow the tech world and its leadership development of consumer engagement, content, emerging social media. Only makes sense they have created the conference industry’s next form of knowledge networking. Let’s see how it evolves and is embraced in other industries.

By: Adriana

Adriana — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:36:26 +0000

Eric, absolutely. Unconference is a format that benefits individuals who want to take the knowledge further rather than do a dog and pony show and I imagine that academic research conferences would fall in that category. I would publish the papers beforehand, and enable comments and commentary. Then the event itself would be a gathering with self-selecting discussions among those who have things to say about the papers.

From organisational point of view, such an event could be viewed as a social event first and foremost, with time and space to focus on the research papers. After all, it is about the people as without their minds, there would be no input. Make it easy for them, the rest will follow.

By: Eric Norman

Eric Norman — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:35:48 +0000

What would you say about “academic research conferences”? Those would be the kind that publish proceedings afterwards, speakers submit papers that will appear in those proceedings, the papers are reviewed by peers, etc?

And there are no vendor booths.

Do you think they would also benefit by moving toward the unconference format?

By: Robin Wilton

Robin Wilton — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:35:09 +0000

Spot on. Especially the bits about sour coffee and stultifiying formality… Why on earth would I ask my boss to pay upwards of £100/hour for this?

I’ve recently helped set up and run a number of privacy workshops, and from the outset I wanted to do them as follows:

- some minimal ground-rules (Chatham House, that sort of thing) but no formal agenda;

- no presentations; this is many-to-many, not one-to-many. There’s no ‘us and them’, only ‘us’.

- no participation fee, but if you turn up, you have to contribute…

- no hierarchy: physically I try to make sure it is set up as a round table;

- not too many people – so far we have capped it at around 17;

- wide range of perspectives. I think I can state that technologists/vendors have been in the minority at every one so far – and that’s how I like it. It keeps the techno-babble in perspective.

I also wanted to organise them as early-evening events, with drinks and comfortable chairs, but that hasn’t always worked out.

So far we’ve been in Berlin, Brussels and Washington. Tokyo is next on the calendar, and there are serious plans to run one in the UK before the end of the year…