| Conferences That Work

Welcome To
Conferences That Work
a compelling critique of the limitations of traditional conferences
and a complete road map to creating more effective alternatives.

"Simply the most productive conference I've been to."

Do you want to make your face-to-face conferences "can't miss" for your attendees, even as more and more content becomes available online? Is your event suffering from falling attendance, evaluations, or profits? I can help!

I'll help you design conferences around the content that your attendees really want and need—conferences designed to build meaningful, mutually beneficial connections between participants.

I design and facilitate Conferences That Work: innovative, highly interactive, attendee-driven events that leverage attendees' expertise and experience to create just the conference that participants want.

I'm available for consultation on your conference design, present regularly about participant-driven and participation-rich events, and lead interactive workshops on participation techniques anyone can use to improve their conference sessions. I also offer two popular sessions—The Solution Room and A Personal Introspective—that provide powerful opportunities for participants to connect, engage, and learn at your event.

My book, Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love condenses 30 years experience designing, organizing, and facilitating conferences into an information-packed step-by-step guide to a proven design for creating productive conferences that people love.

My next book, working title The Power of Connection, will be a compendium of and guide to participation techniques you can use to increase engagement and learning at any conference session.

Quick Links

An introduction to participant-driven events: Demystifying The Unconference.

Named one of the 68 most innovative people in events by BizBash magazine.

Included in Top 10 Event Professionals Worth Knowing on Social Media.

Author of one of CVENT's 5 Favorite Event Industry Blog Posts of 2011.

Author of one of 5 Favorite Event Industry Blog Posts of 2010.

Planning the Unconference article about my work in Meetings & Conventions Magazine.

23 blog posts and videos about EventCamp EastCoast, a peer conference for event professionals that Adrian organized and facilitated in November 2010.

20 slides x 20 seconds Pecha Kucha talk "Face Your Fear—Change Your Event Design" given at EventCamp Twin Cities, September 2010

Howard Givner's review of EventCamp East Coast.

Listen to Adrian being interviewed on WGDR or read transcript.

Peer Conference In Action

Recent Peer Conference Calendar Additions

To report conferences for inclusion in the events calendar >>>>

For more information on learning to hold Conferences That Work>>>>

May 22 2012 - May 22 2012: MPI New England 2012 Northeast Education Conference, Rhode Island Convention Center.
Designing Participation Into Your Meetings
In this interactive session Adrian will explain why it's vital that our future events incorporate participant-driven and participation-rich designs, and he'll introduce a variety of participative formats and techniques.
Jun 07 2012 - : New England Society of Association Executives 2012 Annual Meeting—The Solution Room, Stowe Mountain Lodge, Stowe, VT.
The Solution Room at the NE/SAE 2012 annual meeting, facilitated by Adrian Segar, will engage and connect attendees, as well as providing peer-supported advice on their most pressing problems.
Jun 18 2012 - Jun 21 2012: edACCESS 2012, The Peddie School, Hightstown, NJ.
Annual edACCESS conference for IT staff at small schools.
Aug 19 2012 - : The Garden Center Group Fall Event, Embassy Suites Chicago – Downtown Lakefront.
World Café session to provide an introduction and continuity from the Open Space work at the 2011 Copper Mountain annual conference.
Sep 27 2012 - Sep 29 2012: MPI Chapter Business Summit 2012, .
The MPI Chapter Business Summit provides an opportunity for Meeting Professionals International Chapter leaders to build on previous success through membership engagement and education. I will be facilitating opening (The Solution Room) and closing (A Personal Introspective) sessio

For more upcoming events >>>>

From The Blog:

May 15, 2012

Designing Participation Into Your Meetings

No, that’s not me up on the stage, and that’s not the kind of session I’ll be leading next Tuesday, May 22, at the MPI New England 2012 Northeast Education Conference, Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence.

My session Designing Participation Into Your Meetings will, unsurprisingly, include a fair number of interactive exercises: human spectrograms, pair share, The Three Questions, a mild experience of chaos, and others. My goal is to motivate participants to incorporate participant-driven and participation-rich design elements into their meetings.

I’d love to see you there!

Thirty minutes of conference consulting included!

Planning a conference? Thirty minutes of consulting advice is included with your purchase!

I have been reading your book, and if I were Oprah, it would be my featured book of the month! —Elizabeth Luna, Manager of Live Events, Meeting Professionals International (MPI)