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Four unquestioned assumptions of a traditional conference

Monday, December 7th, 2009 by Adrian Segar

Photograph of a man in a suit standing at a sales window. A sign on the wall beside him says "NO MISTAKES CAN BE RECTIFIED AFTER LEAVING THE WINDOW". Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/un-sharp/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Four unquestioned assumptions lurk behind the traditional conference format—assumptions so deep-seated that they go unquestioned by most conference organizers. These assumptions embody, and consequently help perpetuate, a distorted and outdated way of thinking about conference purpose and structure, leading to a conference model that, according to a majority of the people I interviewed while writing Conferences That Work, does not well serve conference attendees.

Here are the assumptions:

  • Conference session topics must be chosen and scheduled in advance.
  • Conference sessions should be used primarily for transmitting pre-planned content.
  • Supporting meaningful connections with other attendees is not the conference organizers’ job; it’s something that happens in the breaks between sessions.
  • Conferences are best ended with some event that will hopefully convince attendees to stay to the end.

In my next four posts, I’ll examine these assumptions individually. And I’ll explain why they lead to conferences that don’t work as well as they could.

Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/un-sharp/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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“Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy”–Spider Robinson

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 by Adrian Segar

Shared pain is lessened: a black and white photograph of two people in conversation sitting and looking at each other over a cafe table.“Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy”–Spider Robinson.

Why do you go to conferences? I asked this question in the interviews I conducted while writing Conferences That Work. The most common answer? Eighty percent of my interviewees said they wanted to network/connect with others. That’s slightly more than the seventy-five percent who said they came to learn.

Traditional conference sessions provide mainly one-way connection from the folks at the front of the room to everyone else. Opportunities for person-to-person connection are relegated to times outside the official schedule, like mealtimes and social events.

Peer conferences are different; we design them to facilitate and support meaningful connections in three ways.

First, peer conferences are small, which simplifies the task of getting to know a decent proportion of the people present, and leads to intimate conference sessions where discussion and sharing are more likely to occur.

Second, the opening session—The Three Questions—offers a structured and safe time to learn about every other attendee,  providing valuable ice-breaking information for striking up a conversation with people you want to get to know.

And third, the confidentiality ground rule, agreed to by every attendee, generates a conference environment where sharing—whether it be of information, discovery, or even expression of emotions, of pain or joy—is encouraged and safe.

Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/squonk/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Small is Beautiful: Conferences As If People Mattered

Monday, November 16th, 2009 by Adrian Segar

Small is Beautiful. Photograph of crowded shelves at a convenience store. Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcmaster/ / CC BY-NC 2.0Reading the October issue of The Sun the other day I came across an excerpt from E.F. Schumacher’s classic 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered.

When comparing Buddhist economics with modern economics, Schumacher writes “The former, in short, tries to maximize human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximize consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort.”

Similarly, peer conferences try to maximize satisfaction by providing just the content and format that attendees request, rather than trying to offer everything in the context of a big impersonal event.

Small is Beautiful!

Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcmaster/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

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