Create Conference Conversations
Jeff Hurt, Social Animal
Social. It’s a word that strikes fear in some and excites others. Today it seems that everything is social. From social media to social networking to social technology to social business, the trend is all things social. It’s the new black. So what is the social conference? Does it mean adding more social media efforts to our event marketing? Is it allowing people to use social networks to communicate with speakers during the event? Is it integrating face-to-face audiences with live streaming remote audiences?
For me, one of the most critical things a conference organizer can do to appeal to our increasingly sophisticated audience is to design experiences that are more engaging, participatory and social. People are not coming to your conference for the content. (They can get that online.) They are coming for the conference experience. So make it social and less independent.
Humans are essentially social beings. Our meetings and events are complex social experiences. And our conference experiences have the power to alter our attendees’ minds.
When we require our attendees to sit passively and quietly in rows with little or no social interaction, we work against the brain’s natural social systems. We rob attendees of the chance to engage, interact and learn. We create social isolation in the midst of a crowd. In short, we are treating our attendees like robots trying to download data from the speaker into their hard drives: the brain. We think that if our attendees hear the information, they automatically learn it.
In traditional conferences, an expert stands at the front of the room and lectures to an audience that sits passively listening. It’s a one-way monologue. Research is clear that this conventional conference design is directly opposed to how our brains learn.
Conference organizers need to work hard at making a shift from long-established one-way, vertical presentations to more multi-directional education experiences. We need to create horizontal experiences where attendees are invited to talk to each other, talk about the content, talk with the speaker and engage in active learning with one other. This means fewer speaker monologues and more attendee dialogues.
In short, we need more structured and facilitated conversations to create a compelling, irresistible social conference experience that continues to attract today’s sophisticated audiences.
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Jeff, I agree wholeheartedly with this! I’ve experimented with using modified Open Space techniques in previous conferences with some decent results. I’m also exploring how to use other models, like World Cafe and Art of Hosting ideas.
One thing I’ve found is that changing people’s expectations for what happens at a more conversational/participative conference can be challenging. We are really wedded to the idea of conferences as a place where “experts” are sharing knowledge, even though people will often complain that they don’t like “talking heads.” I think there needs to be pre-conference conversation to help people get into a different mindset. But when we do this kind of thing, I think it’s far better than our old paradigms!
Michele makes an excellent point. We would do our members as well as the conference creators and producers a favor by promoting ahead of time this is a different experience and not your momma’s event. Attendees expect the same thing and when we shake it up sometimes they are not only surprised but not as receptive as we had hoped.