Event design Archives : Page 2 of 42 : Conferences That Work

Freeman’s Trends Report Q4 2024 is a must-read

Monday, October 21st, 2024 by Adrian Segar

I’ve not always agreed with Freeman’s Reports, but, if you’re in the meeting industry, Freeman’s Trends Report Q4 2024 is a must-read.

“We’ve calibrated our research and confirmed our hypothesis: many organizers are operating on outdated definitions of attendee and exhibitor value. The good news? We’re here to help you speak the same language as your stakeholders and overcome the obstacles that prevent progress.

This report is your playbook for embracing shifts, equipping you with the insights and strategies to make change now.”
Fall 2024 Freeman Syndicated Survey of Event Organizers. Copyright Freeman 2024

Why you should read this Freeman report

Read this report to discover if you’re doing what’s needed to improve your events for your attendees.

The biggest takeaway? Only a quarter of event organizers are constantly evolving their event designs. Freeman calls them the Innovators and describes how their approach differs from their Conventionalist peers.

“Although most organizers report that they consider market trends and audience needs when developing their most important events, only 27% of organizers report that dramatic audience-centric changes occur from one event to the next.”

Why this matters

Freeman’s Innovators create events that align closely with the true needs of attendees, while Conventionalists often stick to outdated models. The result? Innovator-led events are far more likely to delight attendees—and ultimately, all stakeholders.

As Freeman puts it:

“It makes sense that organizers are more focused on attendee-related outcomes than exhibitor/sponsor outcomes. After all, if your attendees don’t get value from your event, then your event partners won’t get value either.”

Freeman’s conclusions come from comparing the event attendee intent and behavior data from their Q1 2024 Trends Report with this report’s survey data of event organizers.

Here are three examples of how the Innovators set themselves apart:

1. Learning at events

There’s a significant gap between what organizers and attendees think are important factors affecting learning at events:

65% of organizers believe classroom lectures are top learning methods, while only 31% of attendees agree.
Organizers underestimate the importance of hands-on interactions or participatory activations (31%) compared to 56% of attendees who prioritize them.
Informal meetings with SMEs are rated important by 24% of organizers, but 48% of attendees find them crucial.

Innovators are better equipped to meet these important attendee learning modalities than their Conventionalist counterparts.

2. Experiential factors

Next, compare the differences in perception of top experiential factors.
Attendees highly value hands-on interactions and immersive experiences (64%) compared to 46% of organizers. This mismatch suggests that many organizers are missing opportunities to deliver what attendees find most engaging.

3. Resource allocations versus attendee needs

Finally, let’s review where organizers allocate resources, compared to attendees’ event priorities.
Both organizers and attendees rank exhibits as the top priority. But attendees place networking second, while organizers rank it fifth—behind keynotes/general sessions, education sessions, and special events. This misalignment can mean missed opportunities for valuable attendee connections.

Event organizers, are you listening?

Sadly, three-quarters of you are not.

The barrier to becoming an Innovator

I don’t want to be too hard on the majority (56%) of event organizers who want to evolve their meeting designs but continue to hold static events. According to Freeman, nearly half of event organizers don’t feel empowered to make changes:

So, we must ask: Why do most event programs remain the same when market trends and attendees continue to change?”

“Nearly half of event organizers do not feel empowered to evolve their event.
We’ve uncovered a troubling new gap. Although most event organizers want to evolve their program, only some feel empowered to do so.
The data suggests that many event organizers aren’t just faced with attendee and exhibitor misalignments, but misalignments with leadership that limit or prevent event evolution.”

This is a polite way of saying that leadership is often afraid of creating connection at events because they see it as losing control. Even though such control is a myth.

Freeman found that a majority of Innovators felt “extremely empowered” to evolve their event programs and reported greater satisfaction with their event evolution. Interestingly, 49% of Innovators have a single person or a small team dedicated to networking-related activities.

Wait, there’s more!

I’ve only reported some of the conclusions in the report, which is full of useful little tidbits, like this one:

“Innovators plan to focus more on elevating the attendee experience (40%) than increasing the number of attendees (38%). Perhaps because Innovators understand that by enhancing the experience, they’ll attract high-quality attendees.”

So read the whole thing!

Two minor quibbles

1. Generational models: Freeman uses the popular Generation XYZ framework to explain changes in attendee needs. I’ve written about the limitations of the slotting of people into Boomer/Gen X/Millennial/Gen Z categories as it mistakes new behavior for shifts in human nature rather than a change in opportunity. Much of the “difference” between “generations” is caused by a change in that generation’s environment or circumstances. In my experience, attendees have always responded favorably to events with the priorities that Freeman suggests, event designs I’ve been championing for decades. It’s just that these days they are more in tune with what younger generations find normal.

2. The language of connection: The words we use for meetings matter. Reports like Freeman’s often use the term “networking,” but what attendees truly seek is meaningful connections. Let’s talk about creating and supporting connection, rather than just “networking”.

Conclusion

Freeman’s Trends Report Q4 2024 is a must-read. Ten years ago, Innovators were rare, but today they make up a quarter of event organizers. This is a promising trend, but there’s still a long way to go. I hope our industry embraces these insights and continues evolving in a positive direction.

Tags: Event design, event leadership, Freeman, leadership, trends| Posted in Event design | 1 Comment »

How the Responsibilities of Conferences Mirror Those of Media Platforms

Monday, September 16th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

Rereading a 2012 post by Jeff Jarvis, I was struck by the parallels between his take on news organizations’ responsibilities to their platforms and the responsibilities of conferences. Here’s the post in full:

Let’s compare Jeff’s points about media platforms’ responsibilities with my views on the responsibilities of conferences.

Users come first

“A platform without users is nothing. That is why [it] was wrong for Twitter to put a sponsor ahead of users. That is why Twitter is right to fight efforts to hand over data about users to government. That’s why newspapers built church/state walls to try to protect their integrity against accusations of sponsor influence. That is why Yahoo was wrong to hand over an email user to Chinese authorities; who in China would ever use it again? Screw your users, screw yourself.”
—Jeff Jarvis

At conferences, the “users” are primarily participants. For decades, I’ve championed responsible conference designs that prioritize participants. This approach benefits everyone—participants, sponsors, and organizers—because when attendees’ wants and needs are met, their satisfaction positively impacts all other event stakeholders.

A platform is defined by its users

“In other words: Hand over control to your users. Give them power. Design in flexibility. That’s not easy for companies to do.”
—Jeff Jarvis

Similarly, participant-driven and participation-rich conferences are defined by the participants themselves. They decide the topics and issues to focus on. Participants also learn about their peers in useful ways, enabling them to choose who to connect with from whom to learn.

Platforms collaborate

“Platforms have APIs. They reveal the keys to the kingdom so others can work with them and atop them. Are they open-source? Not necessarily. Though making its underlying platform open is what made WordPress such a success.”
—Jeff Jarvis

In the same way, the processes of participant-driven conferences are open. My books and writing share these processes freely, allowing conference organizers to adapt them to their needs. Often, I adopt new ideas and share them with the broader meeting design community, fostering collaboration and growth.

Platforms need principles

“All this can, of course, be summed up in a single, simple principle: Don’t be evil. That’s why Google has that principle: because it’s good business; because if it is evil, its users — we — can call it out quickly and loudly and desert it.”
—Jeff Jarvis

In my first book, Conferences That Work, I define the primary goal of the conferences I design:

“The primary goal of a peer conference is to create the best possible conference for each individual attendee.”
—Chapter 5, Conferences That Work

All the principles and tools I’ve developed stem from this goal. For instance, I focus on creating safe conference environments, uncovering participants wants and needs, providing structure and support for connection and learning, and maximizing opportunities for reflection and facilitating change.

In contrast, conventional conferences often lack clear guiding principles, as they’re based on outdated broadcast models that cater to whatever principles the event owners prioritize.

A good platform is transparent

Black boxes breed distrust.
—Jeff Jarvis

Similarly, peer conference designs are transparent. There are no hidden agendas, and the program is chosen by the participants. The only surprises are those created by the participants themselves.

A good platform enables portability

Knowing I can take my stuff and leave reduces the risk of staying.
—Jeff Jarvis

The peer conference process is portable to virtually any topic or community. There is no “secret sauce”. Typically, I design and facilitate one peer conference for a client to address their event issues. Afterward, clients rarely need my help again unless their requirements change.

A good platform is reliable

Oh, that.
—Jeff Jarvis

In the 1990s, I began designing and facilitating peer conferences on topics I knew little about. After a decade, I realized that the processes I had developed worked reliably across a broad range of communities. While the tools I use depend on my clients’ specific wants and needs, I’m now confident I can provide a conference that reliably satisfies all stakeholders.

The responsibilities of conferences

I’ve previously written about the parallels between the evolution and missions of journalism and events. It’s not surprising, then, that there are also strong parallels between the responsibilities of conferences and those of journalism platforms.

Image attribution: The graphic includes an image by asier_relampagoestudio on Freepik

Tags: journalism, media, peer conferences, platforms| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

How to use human spectrograms to improve in-house events

Monday, September 2nd, 2024 by Adrian Segar

One of the most valuable tools I use liberally at the start of peer conferences is a variety of human spectrograms, also known as body voting. There’s no quicker and more entertaining way to publicly uncover vital information about who’s in the room. [For a full description of the why, when, how, and tremendous range of this tool, check out Chapter 33 of my book: The Power of Participation.] While I frequently use certain spectrograms, such as experience lines and spectrogram maps, I always tailor them to the specific wants and needs of the participants.

For example, in 2020, I worked with several hundred cardiologists and used two-dimensional body voting to reveal the group’s mix of professional roles (clinical, research, and education) and research types (population, clinical, basic). This allowed the cardiologists to quickly connect with peers who shared similar professional backgrounds. Later, we ran a one-dimensional human spectrogram to explore opinions about the question: “What is the best heart-healthy diet? Plant-based versus omnivore?”. (Fun fact: cardiologists disagree!) We then set up a debate on the topic.

While I primarily work with peer groups, like association members or communities of practice, when the client is a single organization, human spectrograms can be used in a different way.

Using human spectrograms at in-house events

Most organizations have an organizational chart that defines roles and formal relationships:

“The organization chart is a diagram showing graphically the relation of one official to another, or others, of a company. It is also used to show the relation of one department to another, or others, or of one function of an organization to another, or others. This chart is valuable in that it enables one to visualize a complete organization, by means of the picture it presents.”
—Organizational chart, Wikipedia

At the start of an in-house event, a human spectrogram can be a powerful way to reveal the formal structure of the organization. There are a few exceptions:

Large meetings (e.g., 500+ people).
Organizations with flat structures.
Small organizations where participants already know everyone.

Otherwise, an organizational chart human spectrogram provides several immediate benefits:

Allows participants to “put a face” to colleagues they may not have met, or have had little contact with.
Makes visible the size and scope of different departments inside the organization.
Uncovers the “shape” of the organization, such as the depth of hierarchies and the relative distribution of leaders, middle management, and other employees.

To facilitate the organizational chart human spectrogram, define a physical dimension in the room: “Leadership by this wall, subordinates towards the opposite wall.” You can then guide participants to form the spectrogram either top-down (leadership first) or bottom-up. The former is usually more efficient, while the latter allows for a more relaxed pace as people find their place and become aware of other participants.

If some employees will be absent, consider providing signs or cards with their names to install appropriately in the spectrogram.

Once the human spectrogram is complete, a good facilitator can leverage it in various ways, depending on the meeting’s goals and objectives. For example, you could:

Explore potential departmental reorganizations.
Uncover communication gaps within the organization.
Reflect on staffing levels.
Obtain feedback on outstanding issues and brainstorm solutions.

Given the variety of possibilities, such work should be carefully planned before the meeting.

Conclusion

I’ve only scratched the surface of how to apply human spectrograms to in-person meetings. Hopefully, you’re convinced that an organizational chart human spectrogram can be an insightful starting point for exploring an organization’s dynamics and addressing key issues.

Have you ever used an organizational chart human spectrogram? Share your experience in the comments below!

Tags: human spectrogram map, human spectrograms, organizational chart| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

The corporatization of belonging

Monday, August 26th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

I recently attended a conference session that made me uneasy, and not in a constructive way. I won’t name names, but the session was centered around a specific program to increase “belonging” in organizations and included statistics such as:

“Only 13% of organizations are ready to actually implement belonging as a practice.”

“47% of our audiences are lonely.”

When the presenter said increasing belonging would be beneficial, I asked: “To whom, the organization or the employees?” The answer, after a pause, was “Both”.

While I hope this is genuinely the case, my doubts persist.

Why I’m suspicious of programs to increase organizational belonging

First of all, what is belonging? Curiously, Wikipedia lacks a direct entry for the term ‘belonging’! Instead, it includes a long article on “belongingness” that provides a nebulous introduction, including a short section on belonging in the workplace (see below).

Lewis Carroll’s famous quip, “When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean,” comes to mind here.

I worry that some people are corporatizing “belonging” to make a buck.

Here are four reasons I’m suspicious of the presenter’s program to increase organizational belonging.

1. What does successful belonging look like?

A great technique for looking at ideas from a fresh perspective is reverse brainstorming, aka “Let’s make it suck.”

When I applied this approach to “implementing belonging as a practice”, guess what first came to mind?

The most successful example of belonging is a cult!

This is not the kind of belonging that appeals to most people. Except for cult members.

In addition, a short section of the belongingness Wikipedia article covers belonging in the workplace. It includes this slightly ominous sentence:

“Charismatic leaders influence followers by bringing awareness to the collective unit and strengthening the feeling of belonging, and that enhances employees’ compliance.”

Enhancing compliance via “strengthening the feeling of belonging” is advantageous for an organization led by a charismatic leader. But what’s the benefit for the employees?

2. “Belonging” is a binary concept

“Belonging” is a binary concept. You belong or you don’t.

However, except in extreme situations—like cults—our relationships with peers and organizations are much more nuanced. You can be a member of an organization without feeling you belong to it. At times, you may feel strongly or weakly connected to your peers. Over time, your peer groups change. These days, belonging to an organization, if even possible, is unlikely to consist of forty years of devotion with an engraved watch on retirement.

This is why my ikigai is about facilitating connection, rather than attempting to force belonging.

“Implementing belonging” is trying to force an employee’s time-dependent experiences of connection into a yes/no box.

3. We can improve organizations without programs to increase belonging

The session presenter began talking about how they use stories to implement belonging. I asked whether they were familiar with Appreciative Inquiry, (the original AI 😀) a pioneering approach from the 1980s, and how their method was different.

After another pause, the presenter said they did know of Appreciative Inquiry.

They did not answer my second question.

From the Wikipedia article on Appreciative Inquiry:

“AI revolutionized the field of organization development and was a precursor to the rise of positive organization studies and the strengths based movement in American management.”

“AI advocates collective inquiry into the best of what is, in order to imagine what could be, followed by collective design of a desired future state that is compelling and thus, does not require the use of incentives, coercion or persuasion for planned change to occur.”
—Gervase Bushe, professor of leadership and organization development at the Beedie School of Business

Although I’m not trained in AI, the approach is simple enough that I’ve often used it with clients to build a positive environment before moving into the “problems” they’ve hired me to solve. It strengthens connections between employees and their organization by uncovering and sharing good experiences and expertise that live in the culture of all but the most dysfunctional organizations.

Tip: (A good and inexpensive introduction to the simplicity of Appreciative Inquiry is The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Annis Hammond.)

4. Let’s add a computer and make money!

The presenter explained that their approach involved recording stories and feeding them into a computer which analyzed the words used and classified the sharer’s type of belonging. They did not go into detail, because the whole process, including opaque computer intermediation, is the secret sauce they’re selling.

Using a computer to quantify “belonging”, in some unknown and likely unscientific way, is a classic example of building an unverified model of a system and then believing in its pronostications. Until this approach has a verifiable scientific basis, from my (50+ years) experience of model building it should be treated with extreme skepticism.

I wouldn’t pay for it.

An alternative

We already have at least one well-established method, Appreciative Inquiry, that uses positive human-mediated processes to meaningfully transform organizations. There may be others I’m unaware of.

Enticing organizations with the promise of quantifying ‘belonging’—a concept that may not lend itself to such reduction—seems, at best, to be overhyped, and at worst, misleading.

Scientology’s “SeaOrg” image attribution: Flickr user anonymous9000 [License]

Tags: belonging, connection| Posted in Connection, Event design | 4 Comments »

Events, Faith Communities, and the Public Square

Monday, August 12th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

Religious meetings are a small, fascinating subset of the meeting industry. I learned about them when I presented at The Religious Conference Management Association annual conference in 2014, and I’ve written about what meeting designers can learn from religious services. However there isn’t much academic research into event management, so I was happy to discover Ruth Dowson and Daniel H. Olsen‘s paper Events, Faith Communities, and the Public Square.

The article explores the evolving role of Christian faith communities in the public sphere, particularly in the context of increasing secularization in Western societies. The authors analyze how religious communities, specifically in the United Kingdom, engage in the public square through various events and activities, contributing to the Eventization of Faith.

2016 photograph of a crowd of around 200 Evanston, Illinois residents and faith community members meeting at Fountain Square. The event was organized to show solidarity with those in the city feeling marginalized after the recent presidential election. Photo attribution: Daniel Tian, Senior Staffer, The Daily Northwestern — Evanston, Illinois leaders and faith community hold post-election unity rally

Key Points

Secularization and Religion’s Role

The article begins by discussing how secularization, particularly in Europe and North America, has led to a diminished public presence of religion. Despite this, global trends and events have intensified the visibility of religion in the public square, especially through the actions of religious communities that engage in public dissent and events.

The Eventization of Faith

The concept of Eventization of Faith is central to the paper. It refers to the process of turning religious activities into events that create a public presence. Such events, sometimes contestational, are seen as a means for faith communities to assert their identity and influence in a secular public space.

“Even in places where religion is believed to be best served as a muted witness in the private realm, Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a long tradition and heritage of political dissent, such as gathering on street corners to express their faith and their views. This political dissent is often guised in the form of events as a method of creating a public presence…”

“…Contributing towards the development of the concept of the Eventization of Faith, this study interprets ‘events’ broadly, through a critical events perspective, acknowledging the contestation of secular spaces for sacred or faith-related purposes, as well as the potential for contestation of sacred spaces used for non-faith events.”
—From the abstract of Events, Christian Faith Communities, and the Public Square, Dowson, Ruth (Rev.) and Olsen, Daniel H. (2023), International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage: Vol. 11: Iss. 4, Article 13.

The Venuefication of Sacred and Non-Sacred Space

Venuefication refers to the transformation of both sacred (e.g., churches, and temples) and non-sacred spaces into venues for events that may or may not align with their original purpose The article provides examples of using secular venues for sacred events, and taking over outdoor public spaces and an entire city for religious events. It highlights potential tensions regarding the appropriate use of these spaces, especially when the events held there contrast with the original religious or cultural significance of the site.

Public Space and Contestation

The article also discusses the broader theoretical framework of public space and contestation, highlighting how different communities, including religious ones, vie for influence and representation in public spaces. The authors emphasize that events organized by religious communities are often not just about religious expression but are also a form of political and social contestation.

Conclusion and Future Perspectives

Overall, the article argues that despite the challenges posed by secularization, faith communities continue to find innovative ways to maintain and even expand their presence in the public square through the strategic use of events. This engagement reflects a broader trend where religious groups use public events as a platform for political and social expression.

Tags: eventization, faith, religion, sacred, venuefication, venues| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Jeopardy Meets Event Innovation: The Fishbowl Sandwich Format

Monday, July 29th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

Ken Jennings: “Welcome to America’s favorite answer and question game, Adrian! The answer is ‘The Fishbowl Sandwich’.”

<DING!>

Adrian: “If you had to pick one unique/creative/innovative session format or strategy you successfully implemented or you’ve witnessed that resulted in better interaction and engagement, what would that be and why?”
—Merijn van Buuren question via LinkedIn, July 17, 2024

Ken Jennings: Right!

And, just like that, I was on to the next round!

We can dream

Here’s how I answered Merijn’s question:

“In 2015, I invented the fishbowl sandwich. It’s a session format where hundreds of people can profitably discuss and learn more about a “hot” topic—typically “hot” because it involves difficult challenges for the participants—and crowdsource creative, unexpected solutions by drawing from the ideas and experiences of the entire audience.

A well-designed and facilitated fishbowl sandwich is the best way I know to uncover, share, and develop solutions in a single session. People are often unaware that they know things that could be of immediate value to other group members. The fishbowl sandwich process finds these individuals and helps them share their knowledge and expertise. It encourages active participation and ensures that multiple perspectives are heard.

As a bonus, you can also use a fishbowl sandwich to offer structured consulting to group members grappling with a specific issue or problem.”

You can learn the what, why, and how to run a Fishbowl Sandwich from my book Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need.

But wait, there’s more!

Having only one tool in your tool chest of conference session designs and formats won’t get you far. No problem! I also wrote The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action, which Julius Solaris called “a mandatory read for the modern event professional”.The book comprehensively covers twenty-seven fundamental session formats that transform traditional conference sessions into a powerful learning and connection experience for your attendees. That’s why Jerry Weinberg described The Power of Participation as “a catalog of tools for designing meetings”.

For each format, the book includes:

A descriptive overview.
When to use the format.
Required resources and pre-planning.
Step-by-step implementation guidance.

Thousands of event professionals have purchased Event Crowdsourcing and The Power of Participation. They’ve beefed up their event design toolkits with the tools to tackle the hardest event design jobs.

Join them today!

Tags: fishbowl, fishbowl sandwich, group process, group work, Power of Participation, problem solving| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Are You Out There?

Monday, July 22nd, 2024 by Adrian Segar

In 1997, Dar Williams, inspired by listening late at night to New Hampshire and Vermont’s progressive radio station WRSI The River, wrote the song “Are You Out There”. Her beautiful song about audiences and humans’ desire for connection speaks to today’s events industry.

Why? First, listen!

Hoping that Dar will be OK with this, here are the relevant fragments of her song’s lyrics.

[Verse 1]
“…You always play the madmen poets
Vinyl vision grungy bands
You never know who’s still awake
You never know who understands and

[Chorus]
Are you out there, can you hear this?
Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis
I was out here listening all the time
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there and you found me
I was out here listening all the time

[Verse 2]
Last night we drank in parking lots
And why do we drink? I guess we do it ’cause
And when I turned your station on
You sounded more familiar than that party was…

[Verse 3]
…So tonight I turned your station on
Just so I’d be understood
Instead another voice said
I was just too late and just no good

[Chorus]
Calling Olson, calling Memphis
I am calling, can you hear this?
I was out here listening all the time
And I will write this down and then
I will not be alone again, yeah
I was out here listening
Oh yeah, I was out here listening
Oh yeah, I am out here listening all the time”
—Lyrics [full lyrics here] courtesy of Genius

“I am out here listening all the time.”

Like Dar Williams, a true fan of obscure (at the time) music, people search for experiences that meet their wants and needs. We yearn for connection and look for opportunities to get it. Events are the most powerful opportunities for connection (and learning). While today’s radio is, with few exceptions, a pure broadcast medium, it’s available to anyone with a radio who wants to turn it on and find an interesting program.

Event professionals must remember that their events’ true fans are “out here”. They are the people who will form the nucleus of your events’ success. These days, we have far more powerful tools than broadcast radio to find true fans. Use them!

“I will not be alone again.”

The young Dar Williams learned through her radio that other people like her “got” the music she loved.

While listening late at night, she realized that she was not alone.

Well-designed events transform audiences into a community.

Community meets a fundamental human need, for connection and belonging. Well-designed events create authentic community through interpersonal experiences at the event rather than attempting to manufacture it through entertainment and novel environments. Such events allow attendees to be truly heard and seen.

Tap into the power your events possess to create genuine community. Participants will become faithful attendees because they will not be alone again.

Tags: audience, community, connection, Dar Williams, radio| Posted in Connection, Event design | 2 Comments »

A terrific example of the value of client feedback—Part 2

Monday, July 8th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

In Part 1 of this post, I offered gratitude for client feedback and gave an excellent example from Rachel LaForgia, the Senior Program Director of The Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG).

In this continuation post, I’ll share what I learned from Rachel’s feedback.

I get client feedback!

Right after PSFG’s second peer conference in May 2024, I was delighted to receive detailed feedback from Rachel (in red), which I shared in full in Part 1. Here’s what I learned.

Peer session development process

Rachel made two great additions to the peer session development process we’d designed for her first peer conference.

1 . BRAINSTORM AND REFLECT

I like the ancillary questions she added to the key prompt: “If you could pick a session to hold … using the people and resources around you, what would it be?”

What topic or question would it address?
Who here could you enlist as an ally or speaker or support person?
Why does it matter? (Here and now)

These are excellent ways to help participants think more deeply about a session they might propose.

2. SESSION DESIGN

“…we gave [participants] the option of either working alone or finding someone else to create a session (we wound up having a group of 6 people interested in a specific topic create a two-party session together, which was great). We also had them confirm any facilitators or speakers during this creating time, which made the voting/scheduling piece easier for us.”

Adding time for people to explore buddying up to create a session together is a wonderful way for participants to choose session leaders. In the past, I’ve given this task to a small independent group of subject matter experts. Giving participants time (if available) to do this work themselves is a definite improvement when—as in this case—most if not all participants have significant experience and expertise to share.

Full group share outs

PSFG used my personal retrospective process during their conferences. For the second conference, Rachel added an innovation: participants could optionally share their action items with the whole group.

She reported: “We had 4 participants elect to share their action items to the full group and it turned out in a few cases that participants in other groups had someone to offer that person around their action item. It was useful for us as conference organizers to know some of the things that actually came out of the conference.”

I’d describe this as a novel variation on the “action” version of Plus/Delta included in my second and third books. Scheduling this opportunity during the personal retrospective allows participants to share with the full group what they’ve just uncovered and verbalized. This can make sharing more impactful because the work is fresh. On the other hand, an action Plus/Delta’s sole focus on individual offers of accountability and asking for help is, I think, a more structured and inclusive process to consider when a group wants to move to action on one or more objectives.

Group retrospective process

“We shifted this to a reflection exercise where we asked people to reflect on four things (LEARN, APPRECIATE, PLUS, DELTA), circle 2 of their top items from each category, write them on post-it notes, and then we did a gallery walk. After the gallery walk, we invited share outs on what people noticed. We made this shift because last year, we found that the plus/delta process wound up being mostly focused on logistics and we really missed getting insights into what the group noticed about themselves, so we tried to parse that out a bit. We also heard from the introverts that they did not like having to come up to the mic to share. This process felt more introvert-friendly, while allowing people to still “hear” from one another (via the post-it notes). I copied the questions we asked below in case it’s useful.”

Column 1: LEARN

- What did you learn? About yourself? This community? Your work?

Column 2: APPRECIATE

- Who or what do you want to celebrate or appreciate today?
- Someone in this room? Yourself? One of your pair share partners? Maybe it was someone who facilitated a session or someone you met at the snack table

Column 3: PLUS

What’s something you thought went well? What are the things you wouldn’t change, that you really appreciated about the Annual Meeting?

Column 4: DELTA

Deltas are the things you might change or do differently next time.

This is a creative and excellent alternative to Plus/Delta. I, too, have noticed that Plus/Delta sharing can focus on logistics rather than participants’ learning and connection. Rachel’s process has three great features. It:

Allows participants uncomfortable speaking in public to share their thoughts and feelings in writing.
Emphasizes personal, community, and work-related learning outcomes.
Provides a specific place for appreciations. Although I always encourage participants to give appreciations during a closing Plus/Delta, I think featuring an opportunity to post them is likely to encourage more sharing.

A small improvement: I’d add a prompt to the appreciation column to include the “why?” of the appreciation.

On the other hand, I still like the classic Plus/Delta for three reasons:

With large groups, due to its fast pace, a classic Plus/Delta provides more opportunities to share.
Its fast pace typically leads to an emotionally energetic closing session.
When sharing deltas, alternative points of view can be shared immediately as pluses.

Having received Rachel’s feedback, I will consider using her approach for more introverted groups with enough time to complete her process. And I think I will change my Plus/Delta instructions to encourage sharing and appreciations more than I have in the past.

Unsolicited client feedback is a gift

In conclusion, think about a teacher or mentor who helped you in some important way in the past. Did you ever thank them and tell them why your experience with them was important to you? If you’re like me, the answer to that question is usually “no”.

So please remember that unsolicited feedback is a gift. Thank you Rachel LaForgia ( and my other generous clients) for giving me such excellent client feedback that tells me my work has been noticed and values it enough to suggest how it might be improved.

Image attribution: photograph of a PSFG meeting from the home page of the organization’s website.

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A terrific example of the value of client feedback—Part 1

Monday, July 1st, 2024 by Adrian Segar

I love my clients, but some have a special place in my heart — those who generously give me feedback.

All the conferences I design and facilitate have a time and place for participants to share their experiences. But most clients don’t give me post-event feedback about my work or the event.

And that’s okay. After all, feedback benefits me, and it takes time and effort for a client to articulate clear feedback.

So when a client graciously takes the time to share significant and useful feedback with me, I am very grateful.

One such client is Rachel LaForgia, the Senior Program Director of The Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG).

My work with The Peace and Security Funders Group

The PSFG is a community of practice headquartered in Washington, DC, that “connects and supports the global community of funders advancing peace and security efforts in order to build a more peaceful, just, and equitable world.” Its members include over fifty well-known international foundations, non-profits, and collectives.

PSFG has a deep appreciation for the importance of meeting design. Here’s what Cath Thompson, Managing Director at PSFG shared about this topic in a 2024 interview:

“…One thing that we have learned over the past several years is that we need to be designing our events with such deep intention to bring folks together to have the conversations that they cannot get elsewhere, to not be reinventing the wheel, and to create spaces where people know they belong, they can find their people, and they can also have these challenging and expansive conversations that lead to social change. So that, we see as the core of our work, is not just to design a whole bunch of programs, but to design them well, to bring the right people around the table together.
…In networks, the strength is in the collective wisdom of the participants. One of my colleagues said to me recently, “If PSFG members can just watch the recording after an event and get out of it as much as they would have if they had participated in real time, then we’ve done them a disservice.” So we try to design things so that we are both addressing the power dynamics that are inherent in the field of philanthropy and trying to dismantle some of that and also making it very valuable to people where they walk away knowing at least one new person, for example, or knowing something new, or engaging in self-reflection that helps them improve their own work. We do a lot of that and focus on that.”
—Extract from an interview with Cath Thompson of Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG) by Alec Saelens on January 25, 2024

Rachel contracted me in 2022 for design consultation on PSFG’s first online peer conference.

One of the first things we did was a short exercise that helped us explore the essence of her desired meeting. I asked her to visualize and draw what PSFG wanted and needed the conference to achieve.

Over several meetings in 2022 and 2023, we spent ten hours reviewing and refining her excellent draft design. PSFG held their first online conference in May 2023 [“We just finished our first peer conference—people loved it! “], and a second in May 2024.

I get feedback!

Right after the second peer conference, I was delighted to receive detailed feedback from Rachel. I share it here [in red] because it’s a terrific example of the value of client feedback.

“Reporting back from another fantastic peer conference! Our second peer conference was even better than our first. We had great feedback from participants and even had one participant interested in learning how to bring peer conferences to her own work (I recommended your book and blog!).

We made three tweaks this year that worked really well for us:

1. Peer session development process.

We added more scaffolding/support to the peer session design process and got noticeably better (clearer, more well-defined) peer sessions. We added some guided reflection around possible topics (including asking people to think about why their session mattered to this group). Then, we had them workshop their idea with a partner in a quick pair-share (this was intended to just have them speak their idea aloud, which in of itself can help them get more clarity, but also to get some feedback from a colleague).

After that, we gave them the option of either working alone or finding someone else to create a session (we wound up having a group of 6 people interested in a specific topic create a two-party session together, which was great). We also had them confirm any facilitators or speakers during this creating time, which made the voting/scheduling piece easier for us. I copied the details below.

2. Full group share outs.

We asked for share outs at various points in our agenda, but found that asking for share outs after the individual retrospectives was really helpful both for us as organizers and for the participants. We had 4 participants elect to share their action items to the full group and it turned out in a few cases that participants in other groups had someone to offer that person around their action item. It was useful for us as conference organizers to know some of the things that actually came out of the conference.

3. Group retrospective.

We shifted this to a reflection exercise where we asked people to reflect on four things (LEARN, APPRECIATE, PLUS, DELTA), circle 2 of their top items from each category, write them on post-it notes, and then we did a gallery walk. After the gallery walk, we invited share outs on what people noticed. We made this shift because last year, we found that the plus/delta process wound up being mostly focused on logistics and we really missed getting insights into what the group noticed about themselves, so we tried to parse that out a bit. We also heard from the introverts that they did not like having to come up to the mic to share. This process felt more introvert-friendly, while allowing people to still “hear” from one another (via the post-it notes). I copied the questions we asked below in case it’s useful.

Here’s a quick run down of the peer session process and the group retrospective:

PEER SESSION PROCESS (Total time: ~45 minutes, probably could have used an hour)

ENROLLMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS (5 minutes)

- We gave examples (from last year) of the conference agenda, explained how long the sessions were, etc.
- (About 70% of the attendees had done the peer conference the prior year, but we did have a lot of new people this year–interestingly many new people wound up leading sessions)

BRAINSTORM AND REFLECT (5 minutes total)

- If you could pick a session to hold at this Annual Meeting, using the people and resources around you, what would it be?
  - What topic or question would it address?
  - Who here could you enlist as an ally or speaker or support person?
  - Why does it matter? (Here and now)

PAIR SHARE (6 minutes)

- Turn to a person next to you.
- Person 1 shares the what/who/why of your session in 1 minute
- Person 2 has 2 minutes to offer tips/feedback/ideas/ask clarifying questions.
- Switch!

SESSION DESIGN (30 minutes)

- Now that you have shared and gotten feedback, you have the next 15-20 minutes to further develop your idea.
- Again, by the end of this time, the goal is for you to create a topic for one conference session that you feel like you could make some headway on in 60 minutes tomorrow, with the people in this room.
- You have two options:
  - Work independently. You can draft your dream session by yourself.
  - Find friends. You just spent an hour listening to what other people want to do and what expertise they have. Is there anyone here you want to buddy up with to propose a session?
- By 5:10, here is what we need from you:
  - A Title for your session
  - A 7-10 word description of your session
  - Who can lead it/speak on it (yourself or others–go find them and confirm they are on board before submitting)

GROUP RETROSPECTIVE (30 minutes)

Column 1: LEARN

- What did you learn? About yourself? This community? Your work?

Column 2: APPRECIATE

- Who or what do you want to celebrate or appreciate today?
- Someone in this room? Yourself? One of your pair share partners? Maybe it was someone who facilitated a session or someone you met at the snack table

Column 3: PLUS:

What’s something you thought went well? What are the things you wouldn’t change, that you really appreciated about the Annual Meeting?

Column 4: DELTA:

Deltas are the things you might change or do differently next time.

Hope this is useful info–happy to hop on a call to debrief this further or answer any questions you might have.”

I love Rachel’s feedback! In Part 2 of this post, I’ll explain why, and what I’ve learned.

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Concerns about using facial analysis at events: part three

Monday, June 3rd, 2024 by Adrian Segar

In early 2024, I wrote two long, detailed posts (1, 2) that explained why using “facial analysis” technology at events is ethically and legally dubious. Now I’ve learned of strong evidence that the core claim of such technology — that it can reliably measure attendee emotions at events — is seriously flawed.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a neuroscientist, psychologist, and the Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Psychology. In her May 16, 2024 article in the Wall Street Journal “Think AI Can Perceive Emotion? Think Again. Training algorithms on stereotypical facial expressions is bound to mislead.” she writes [emphasis added]:

“The best available scientific evidence indicates that there are no universal expressions of emotion.

In 2019, the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest engaged five senior scientists, including me, to examine the scientific evidence for the idea that people express anger, sadness, fear, happiness, disgust and surprise in universal ways. We came from different fields—psychology, neuroscience, engineering and computer science—and began with opposing views. Yet, after reviewing more than a thousand papers during almost a hundred videoconferences, we reached a consensus: In the real world, an emotion like anger or sadness is a broad category full of variety. People express different emotions with the same facial movements and the same emotion with different facial movements. The variation is meaningfully tied to a person’s situation.

In real life, angry people don’t commonly scowl. Studies show that in Western cultures, they scowl about 35% of the time, which is more than chance but not enough to be a universal expression of anger. The other 65% of the time, they move their faces in other meaningful ways. They might pout or frown. They might cry. They might laugh. They might sit quietly and plot their enemy’s demise. Even when Westerners do scowl, half the time it isn’t in anger. They scowl when they concentrate, when they enjoy a bad pun or when they have gas.

Similar findings hold true for every so-called universal facial expression of emotion. Frowning in sadness, smiling in happiness, widening your eyes in fear, wrinkling your nose in disgust and yes, scowling in anger, are stereotypes—common but oversimplified notions about emotional expressions.

Where did these stereotypes come from? You may be surprised to learn that they were not discovered by observing how people move their faces during episodes of emotion in real life. They originated in a book by Charles Darwin, “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” which proposed that humans evolved certain facial movements from ancient animals. But Darwin didn’t conduct careful observations for these ideas as he had for his masterwork, “On the Origin of Species.” Instead, he came up with them by studying photographs of people whose faces were stimulated with electricity, then asked his colleagues if they agreed.”

“…In short, we can’t train AI on stereotypes and expect the results to work in real life, no matter how big the data set or sophisticated the algorithm. Shortly after the paper was published, Microsoft retired the emotion AI features of their facial recognition software.”
–Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Think AI Can Perceive Emotion? Think Again.”, Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2024

Facial analysis is a poor indicator of emotional states

Here is the detailed 2019 research article “Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements“ by Dr. Barrett et al.

barrett-et-al-2019-emotional-expressions-reconsidered-challenges-to-inferring-emotion-from-human-facial-movements

Dr. Barrett concludes:

“In real life, when you perceive someone else as emotional, your brain combines signals from your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, and the internal systems of your body and draws on a lifetime of experience. An AI model would need much more of this information to make reasonable guesses about a person’s emotional state.”

One of the research paper’s general recommendations is to “Direct healthy skepticism to tests, measures, and interventions that rely on assumptions about “reading facial expressions of emotion” that seem to ignore published evidence and/or ignore integration of contextual information along with facial cues.”

Based on the presented research, that sounds like good advice to anyone considering acquiring facial analysis technology.

Postscript

My sharing of the above information upset at least one technology vendor that claims to provide useful facial analysis at events. He characterized it as a publicity stunt, and asked two attorneys to “please keep this for our file and action, as needed.”

I stand by my opinions and assert my right to share other’s research on this ethically dubious and scientifically suspect technology.

Image attribution: Illustration by Peter Arkle; Associated Press (Mona Lisa)

Tags: emotion, emotional states, facial analysis, facial expressions, facial recognition, Zenus| Posted in Event design, Technology | No Comments »