free Archives : Conferences That Work

Free online Participate Lab — May 11, 2022

Monday, April 25th, 2022 by Adrian Segar

A rare opportunity! Hosted by CSAE Manitoba, this free one-hour online Participate Lab will introduce you to the design of participation-rich events through the direct experience of participatory meeting techniques and formats. All are welcome to attend this event at no charge (both CSAE members and non-members).

Registration is limited, so register now!

Where & When

Online on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 — 12:00 – 1:00 pm PDT • 1:00 – 2:00 pm MDT • 2:00 – 3:00 pm CDT • 3:00 – 4:00 pm EDT • 8:00 – 9:00 pm BST • 9:00 – 10:00 pm CEST.

What We Will Talk About

We’ve known for a long time that lectures are terrible ways to learn. Today’s attendees are no longer satisfied sitting and listening to people talking at them. If you want to hold meetings where effective learning, connection, and engagement take place, you need to build in authentic and relevant participation.

Our time together at this Participate Lab will cover:

Why creating participation-rich meetings is so important.
Human spectrograms: a simple tool for learning about other participants.
The Conference Arc:
- Building connection while uncovering wants, needs, and resources.
- Creating the right program.
- Consolidating learning.
- Facilitating individual and community growth.
Ask Adrian Anything: using a fishbowl sandwich to facilitate group discussion on meeting design and facilitation.

This workshop is limited to 100 attendees, so register now!

Tags: free, Lab, online, Participate!, workshop| Posted in Event design, Meeting industry, Online event, Promo, Workshop | No Comments »

Ask Adrian Anything — a free online participant-driven workshop on the future of events

Thursday, March 3rd, 2022 by Adrian Segar

Here’s a rare opportunity to ask me anything about meeting design and facilitation at a unique, free, online workshop. Join me next Thursday, March 10th, 2022 at 12:00 pm EST for Ask Adrian Anything (AAA): an online participant-driven workshop on the future of events.

Though the central core is the AAA session, this is an active learning workshop. During it, you’ll experience some of the practices I use to support and build participant learning, connection, engagement, and community.

How long will the workshop last? That’s up to you! I’m willing to keep it going as long as you have questions and concerns to share. When it’s over, you’re welcome to stay and socialize online, and I’ll stick around for informal chats.

If you want to join us, it’s important you’re ready to begin at 12:00 pm EST. We’ll open the workshop platform at 11:45 am EST so you’ll have time to do the usual camera/microphone online setup boogie for a prompt start at noon EST.

We’ll meet online, using Gatherly [1, 2], a platform designed for online social interaction and learning. [Apart from being a fan, I have no affiliation with Gatherly, and am donating my services.] The Gatherly platform will allow us to learn about each other and about top-of-mind issues, concerns, and questions through small group work, human spectrograms, and fishbowl discussion.

Ask Adrian Anything

This is an opportunity for you to experience one of my participant-driven workshops. You’ll learn through doing, both about other participants and how to implement what you experience into your own events.

Experience a participant-driven online event.
Learn by doing participant-driven methods that increase event engagement, connection, and community.
Meet, workshop with, and learn from other event professionals.
Take this opportunity to ask Adrian anything about meeting design and facilitation.
Enjoy time after the session in an online social environment that closely mimics meeting in-person socials. You’ll be able to find folks you’d like to talk with and hang out one-on-one or in small groups for public or private conversations.

Tags: Ask Adrian Anything, Ask Me Anything, free, Gatherly, online, participant-driven and participation-rich, workshop| Posted in eventprofs, Workshop | No Comments »

Two free easy ways to create graphics for blog posts and presentations

Monday, June 10th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

Here are what I think are the two best free easy ways to create graphics for blog posts and presentations if you’re not a graphics wonk. (Note: I am not a graphics wonk.)

I’ve written over five hundred posts on this blog over the last ten years. As they tell you in SEO School, every post has at least one image. I often find an appropriate image on the web, but sometimes I feel inspired to create a graphic that fits better.

In addition, I frequently present at meeting industry events and to clients. Good presentation graphics can really help communicate what I’m trying to say, and strengthen my message.

Are you also “not a graphics wonk”?

I think there are a lot of people like me who have difficulty easily creating even simple graphics. My problem is that I simply don’t use “professional” graphics creation tools enough to be able to reliably memorize the variety of techniques, tools, and processes needed to speedily turn what I visualize into reality.

My graphic designer, whom I happily hire for complicated stuff, can quickly create perspective drawings, remove unwanted photo elements, and tone down someone’s bright clothing. For me, attempting any of these things takes a few hours on the web figuring out how, and making lots of mistakes along the way. The next time (if ever) I want to repeat the process I’ll have likely forgotten how to do it.

Graphic design software like Photoshop and Illustrator — kitchen-sink tools that can do almost anything — are overwhelming for me. What I need is software that:

Allows me to easily work with and position images and vector graphics.
Has easy to use, intuitive methods for duplicating, manipulating, aligning, and spacing graphic elements.
Provides a text tool and a simple palette of basic graphic shapes.
Includes object grouping to speed up repetitive graphic element duplication.
Can easily add drop shadows to objects.
Includes a gallery of my existing work, allowing me to create a new graphic from an old one.
Can export anything I create as a jpeg.
Doesn’t include a ton of extra capabilities I’ll never master and therefore never use.

If these sound like your needs too, read on! (Also, I’ve included two great additional resources at the end of this post.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Canva, easy, free, graphics, keynote, Noun Project, OmniGraffle| Posted in Technology, Tip | No Comments »

How to enable Verizon free call filtering

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

Want to learn how to enable Verizon free call filtering? Read on!

Verizon is now offering free call filtering, but enabling it can be incredibly frustrating! Many reviews complain that, after downloading the Verizon Call Filter app, no option for the free version appears. Instead, you are only offered a free 10-day trial or the option to purchase a monthly subscription.

Here’s how to activate the free version of Verizon Call Filter

I found these instructions buried in a comment on the wonderful TidBITS website, posted by Paul7. I have cleaned up Paul’s explanation and added a couple of screen shots, but Paul deserves full credit for this solution.

The crucial step omitted from Verizon’s incredibly brief explanation of how to activate free call filtering is that if simply enrolling via the Call Filter App doesn’t work, you need to log in to My Verizon. Here’s what to do.

Sign in to your Verizon account.
Go to My Plans & Services and select Manage Products & Apps.
Or your menu might look like the image below, in which case go to Plan and select Add-ons and apps.
Click on the Get Products tab and the Premium Products option.
Scroll down till you find the Call Filter app and select the Call Filter Free option.
You’ll see a Checkout box where you can add Call Filter Free to the lines in your plan. Select the checkboxes next to the lines you want, and click Confirm Purchase.
On your phone, close the Verizon Call Filter app if it’s currently open. Now, when you reopen it you’ll see that free call filtering has been turned on!
Paul notes that if you have more than two lines, you may have to go through this process multiple times since it only shows two lines at a time. Alternately, your My Verizon may offer this process for each device/line separately. If that’s the case, select each device in turn and repeat the above process.
Finally, follow the steps in Josh Center‘s helpful TidBITS article to enable Verizon Call Filter’s spam filtering.

That’s it! Did this work for you? Do you have comments/additions/corrections? Please share them in the comments below.

Tags: activate, activation, app, call filter, enable, free, robocalls, spam, spam calls, telemarketing, verizon, wireless| Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Published—free update of Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love!

Monday, July 29th, 2013 by Adrian Segar

I’m happy to announce that a free 9,000 word update to my book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love is now available!

Many improvements and refinements are included—the outcome of four years of feedback and experience since the book was published in 2009. Highlights include a long-awaited chapter on extending Conferences That Work to larger events, and important additions that make the established format (now tried and true for over twenty years!) even better.

Here’s a list of the contents:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Why did I write this supplement?
CHAPTER 2 What’s included?
CHAPTER 3 Acknowledgements

GENERAL CHAPTERS

CHAPTER 4 Avoid one-day peer conferences
CHAPTER 5 Running Conferences That Work with more than 100 participants

IMPORTANT IMPROVEMENTS

CHAPTER 6 Give people permission and opportunity to take a break!
CHAPTER 7 Break up roundtables approximately every twenty minutes
CHAPTER 8 Make peer session determination more efficient
CHAPTER 9 Improve personal introspectives by running them in small groups
CHAPTER 10 How to choose what to do at a group spective

OPTIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

CHAPTER 11 Include a first-timers session for repeat events
CHAPTER 12 Consider implementing a buddy system
CHAPTER 13 Use shared Google Doc for roundtable themes and plus/delta sharing
CHAPTER 14 Have people stand while speaking during the roundtable
CHAPTER 15 Use alternate colors when recording on flip charts
CHAPTER 16 Focused discussion = fishbowl — and an alternative format

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES

CHAPTER 17 Consider using a conference app instead of a face book
CHAPTER 18 Consider running plus/delta with tape columns on the floor
CHAPTER 19 Use plus/delta as a tool for action
CHAPTER 20 Consider adding “Curious about?” column to plus/delta

MISCELLANEOUS TIPS

CHAPTER 21 Where to buy stiff 5 x 8 index cards
CHAPTER 22 A closing note about appreciations

The supplement, provided as a free ebook <pdf>, will be updated from time to time and the latest version will always be available for free on this website. Comments and corrections are always welcome.

Download it now!

Happy reading and best wishes!

-Adrian Segar-

Tags: Conferences That Work, ebook, free, pdf, peer conference| Posted in Event design, Peer conference | No Comments »