Welcome : Conferences That Work

Are your events suffering from falling attendance, evaluations, or profits? Do you want to make your current face-to-face conference "can't miss" better, even as more and more content becomes available online? Are you wondering how to successfully start a new conference? I can help!

I'll help you create engaging conferences around the learning your attendees really want and need. Conferences designed to build meaningful, mutually beneficial connections between participants. Conferences that help people work smarter and generate the right personal and organizational action outcomes.

For over 25 years I've been designing and facilitating Conferences That Work: innovative, highly interactive, attendee-driven events that leverage attendees' expertise and experience to create just the conference that participants want and need. You can also include traditional plenary sessions for an event experience that will delight your attendees and stakeholders.

I consult on conference design, facilitate entire conferences, individual sessions, and session crowdsourcing, present regularly about participant-led and participation-rich events, and lead interactive labs on participation techniques that will fundamentally improve your meetings and conference sessions.

I facilitate three popular sessions—The Solution Room, The Personal Introspective, and The Group Spective—that provide powerful opportunities for participants to learn, connect, engage, and reflect at your event.

I also specialize in designing and facilitating large group discussions on hot topics, using my unique Fishbowl Sandwich format.

I've written three books on meeting design.

— 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.

— The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action is a comprehensive guide to participation techniques that increase learning, connection, engagement, and outcomes at any conference session or event.

— Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need explains why event crowdsourcing is an essential strategy and practice for creating for successful meetings, and teaches you in detail how to create meetings where attendees want, need, and love every session.

Contact me today to set up a consultation.

Recent Peer Conference Calendar Additions

17 Jun 2020 - 20 Jun 2020: Best Friends National Conference, The Rosen Shingle Creek, Orlando, Florida.
At the Best Friends National Conference, you’ll get the chance to learn, share and connect with like-minded animal lovers from around the country. With workshops and speakers on nearly every aspect of the no-kill movement, the conference has something for everyone. You’ll be joined by more than a thousand fellow animal lovers, united by a passion for saving the lives of homeless pets and getting the country to no-kill by 2025.This event features multiple simultaneous opening sessions of The Three Questions, allowing all participants to learn about other animal lovers' challenges and activities in their region. In addition, Adrian will be advising presenters on ways to make their sessions interactive and real-time relevant.
30 Sep 2020 - 03 Oct 2020: FinCon 2020, Long Beach, California.
FinCon is a peer conference for personal finance media that connects more than 2,500 of the best bloggers and financial minds around today. Across 4-days attendees connect with others in the financial community and learn to craft compelling online content and discover new trends in money. FinCon participants hear success stories and tips from industry experts and walk away with the knowledge and tools needed to earn money by freelancing.

More upcoming events >>

From The Blog:

March 23, 2020

Eventprofs Happy Hour — Feelings Edition

Because we are struggling in a covid-19 world, I’m hosting a special Feelings Edition of the Eventprofs Happy Hour this coming Friday, March 27, 12:00 – 14:00 EDT.

From 2011 – 2017 I hosted a weekly online Eventprofs Happy Hour, first on Twitter and then Google Plus. We used the #ephh hashtag, and announced meetings via the @epchat Twitter account. It was an opportunity for meeting professionals from all over the world to meet and connect. To share what was going on in their lives and the issues of the day.

Right now, you may not be feeling happy. However you’re feeling, I am offering this special online meeting as an opportunity to meet, connect, and share with other event professionals. This will be a place to talk about how you are feeling and be heard by others, to share your circumstances, to meet new people and reconnect with old friends.

Try to join at the start (Friday, noon EDT). But feel free to arrive later if that fits better for you. I will facilitate and guide what develops.

Complete instructions for joining this online Zoom meeting can be found here.

I hope to hear and see you there.

With best wishes,

Adrian Segar