lectures Archives : Conferences That Work

Ask Me Anything—a better alternative to guest lectures

Monday, March 15th, 2021 by Adrian Segar

Recently, I’ve been appearing as a guest at college event planning and hospitality courses to talk about meeting design. (I love to do this. Teachers, please contact me, it’s free!) Rather than lecture for an hour, I’ve been using an Ask Me Anything (aka AMA) meeting format.

Here’s why I think Ask Me Anything is almost always a better session format than a lecture.

I’ve written extensively on this blog (1, 2, 3) and in my books about why the meeting lecture is a terrible way to learn. (A one-sentence distillation: learning is a process not an event.)

But suppose a group gets the opportunity to spend time with a content expert who knows a lot more about their field than anyone else present? Isn’t a lecture the best format to use in these circumstances?

Well…sometimes. First, let’s explore the circumstances when a lecture may be the way to go. Then I’ll make a case for why an Ask Me Anything format is usually a better choice.

When a lecture is appropriate

Lectures have one thing going for them. They are very efficient ways to share a lot of information with a group.

Short talks

The problem with broadcasting information is, of course, that the recipients are passive attendees. And they may well not be attending. Research shows that our ability to absorb and retain broadcast information falls rapidly over time. To avoid significant “tuning out” it’s vital to share content in small chunks, typically not more than ten minutes long.

So one scenario where lectures work is when they are short. I’m a big fan of carefully prepared five-minute lightning talks and Pecha Kucha (6 minutes, 40 seconds) and Ignite (5 minutes) formats. The latter are invariably entertaining, which helps people absorb and retain what’s presented.

Brilliant presenters

Some people — but not as many as you might think — are really good at creating effective learning experiences via a lecture format.

However, these folks are rarely the people who get the big bucks for their inspirational keynote speeches. Highly paid speakers are usually good at creating emotional experiences for their audiences. Now, there’s nothing wrong with creating an emotional experience for an audience. In fact, learning is often enhanced. Unfortunately, a great speaker may well provide a more enjoyable and emotionally satisfying presentation—but the learning that results is not significantly better than that provided by a mediocre lecturer!

Sadly, I can count on the fingers of one hand the presenters who taught me, via lecture, things I still retain to this day:

My mentor Jerry Weinberg (a genius at telling incredible stories that illustrated the learning he wanted to impart);
The molecular biologist John Medina (who always divides his lectures into ten-minute segments, each introduced with a relevant emotional hook); and
A few of my high school science teachers who knew the draw of enthusiastically performing exciting experiments in front of us (“What will happen?” “Can you figure it out?“)

Conclusions

So, unless your presenters speak for a short time or are brilliant (and I’m not including motivational speakers in that class), lectures are a lousy way for audiences to learn. We can do better.

Ask Me Anything — a better format for learning

We know that active learning is a superior modality for learning more, learning more accurately, and retaining learning. So, how can we incorporate active learning into a session where the session leader/presenter has far more expertise and knowledge than everyone else present, and time is limited?

An Ask Me Anything format provides a great way to improve session learning. Why? Two reasons.

First, the attendees are not passively sitting listening or watching but are actually interacting with each other (see below) or the presenter. That means that active learning is taking place, with all the benefits that ensue.

Second, an Ask Me Anything responds to what participants actually want and need. Rather than a presenter guessing exactly what their audience wants to learn, an Ask Me Anything ensures that many topics, issues, and questions that are top-of-mind for the audience will be addressed.

OK, let’s see how this works.

Warming up an Ask Me Anything with preliminary small group work

I suggest priming the audience with a couple of introductory pair- or trio- shares.

If meeting in person, have people move into small groups with others they don’t know. Online, move people into a set of Zoom’s automatically assigned breakout rooms, or another online platform’s equivalent.

Typically, the first trio share is a “take 90 seconds each to”: a) introduce yourself to the others in your group, or b) “share how you got to be in this class/session/event”.

On returning, ask everyone to think of one issue or question they’d like to discuss with or get answered by the presenter. Emphasize that it can be anything they want to know or hear about.

When working with students, ask the class teacher to pose this exercise a few days before the class and collect and share responses with the entire class and me. This helps the presenter, the teacher, and the class learn about what’s on students’ minds. Before running the next pair share, tell the students they don’t have to stay with what they submitted if something else has come to mind.

Next, run the second pair share, giving each member 90 seconds to share with their partner what they would most like to learn from the presenter. For students, this gives them a chance to prepare for asking the presenter what they want in front of the class.

The Ask Me Anything

Running the Ask Me Anything is straightforward. Have your presenter ask for questions, and enter a dialog with each questioner in turn. If there are a slew of questions, use a fishbowl (in person) or hand raising (online) to control the flow. Remind your presenter that silence before someone speaks is OK; they don’t need to fill it by speaking themselves. Also, make sure that everyone who wants to participate gets the opportunity before allowing more questions from people who have already spoken.

Closing pair share

I strongly recommend closing such sessions with a final pair share on “lessons learned”. This reinforces learning while it’s fresh, making it more likely to be retained, remembered more accurately, and retained longer. For more details, see my post on the fishbowl sandwich, or read the relevant chapter in my second and third books.

That’s it! What do you think of Ask Me Anything as a replacement for lectures in a session? Do you have comments to add or questions to ask? You can Ask Me Anything! Simply share in the comments below.

Tags: AMA, Ask Me Anything, experts, fishbowl sandwich, lecture, lectures, pair-share, presentations, trio share| Posted in Event design | 4 Comments »

Any questions? Rethinking traditional Q&A

Monday, April 22nd, 2019 by Adrian Segar

How often have you heard “Any questions?” at the end of a conference session?

Hands rise, and the presenter picks an audience member who asks a question. The presenter answers the question and picks another questioner. The process continues for a few minutes.

Simple enough. We’ve been using this Q&A format for centuries.

But can we improve it?

Yes!

Let’s explore, starting with…

Six criticisms of traditional Q&A

Traditional Q&A reinforces the engrained assumption that the presenter is the expert, and audience members are relative novices. This ignores today’s reality that the smartest person in the room is the room.
Traditional Q&A is a one-to-many process. These days, conference attendees come to learn and connect. But the only connection going on (if any) during traditional Q&A is between the presenter and individual audience members.
Have you ever thought, “I could answer that question better than [the person on stage]!”? Traditional Q&A provides no opportunity for obtaining answers from audience members.
Who gets to ask questions? The presenter decides, allowing any implicit (and explicit) bias full reign.
How much time is available for questions? Again, the presenter decides. Too little time scheduled frustrates audience members whose questions remain unanswered. Too much time leads to a premature session close.
During traditional Q&A, the questioner is in the audience while the presenter is up on stage. As a result, questioners remain largely anonymous; audience members can’t even see a questioner behind them without turning around.

Ways to improve Q&A

I can think of two fundamental ways to improve Q&A. Here are…

Five ways to refine the traditional Q&A format

Include multiple Q&A opportunities throughout the session. This helps audience members get answers to questions while they’re top-of-mind, rather than waiting until the end of the session. It also increases interaction with the presenter, which can help maintain attendee attention and improve learning.
Instead of the presenter picking the questioners, have an independent third party (a moderator) choose them.
Or you can have the audience submit questions via an app and then vote on the list. This helps uncover popular questions.
If you’re using a moderator, have the audience submit questions in writing or via an app. This allows the moderator to curate questions to be asked. When appropriate, the moderator can combine similar questions.
Instead of taking questions from the audience, have questioners line up at a front-of-room mike so everyone can see them.

Or, we can…

Further improve Q&A by integrating it into a discussion format

Traditional sessions have two parts, first a lecture, and then Q&A. As mentioned above, presenting multiple short pieces of content interspersed with Q&A increases interaction and consequent learning. But we can do better!

Combined with experiential exercises, here’s the approach I use in my Participate! Labs.

Using a facilitated discussion format like the fishbowl sandwich, I create a session that offers Q&A on an as-needed basis. As I share content, attendees can join me on stage at any time for questions or a discussion that I moderate. (Check the link to see how this works.) The session then becomes more like a live Ask Me Anything (AMA) around my content.

Creating a truly participative Q&A in this way lets the resulting questions and discussions reflect the audience’s just-in-time needs, optimizing the value of the session for participants.

Do you have additional suggestions for improving Q&A? Share them in the comments below!

Tags: conversation, discussion, fishbowl, fishbowl sandwich, improvement, lectures, participation, presentation, Q&A, questions, speaker| Posted in Event design | 2 Comments »

Leadership for meetings

Monday, February 18th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

What might leadership for meetings look like?

Let’s turn to Harold Jarche for inspiration:

“Those doing the work are often the only ones who really understand the context. Leadership is helping build the structure and then protecting the space to do meaningful work.“
—Harold Jarche, work in 2018

Build the structure to do meaningful work

Few traditional meetings are built to do meaningful work. Instead, they unconsciously adopt an ancient model: a rote diet of lectures. Conscious meeting design, on the other hand, builds an appropriate structure that supports and leads to defined and desired outcomes, aka meaningful work.

Protect the space to do meaningful work

The old-school status roles baked into traditional meetings minimize useful connection and learning by defining in advance those who have something important to say. This makes it difficult and risky for the audience to share their own expertise and experience for everyone’s benefit.

Asking participants to abide by simple agreements at the start of an event creates a safe environment for learning that makes it easier to risk trying something new. Think of this as protecting the meeting space to do meaningful work.

Conclusion

“Leadership is helping build the structure and then protecting the space to do meaningful work.” When seen through the lens of participant-driven and participation-rich meeting design, I view Harold’s two-part definition as a perfect description of leadership for meetings.

Do your meeting designs truly support participants doing meaningful work? Do you provide leadership for meetings?

Tags: agreements, facilitation, Harold Jarche, leadership, lectures, meetings, old-school, safety, servant leadership, status| Posted in leadership | 1 Comment »

Five Reasons to Change Conferences

Monday, December 24th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Here’s my article “Five Reasons to Change Conferences“, published in the December 2018, NSA Speaker magazine.

OUTSIDE IN

Five Reasons to Change Conferences

Peer sessions provide greater connection around content

The most important reason people go to conferences is to usefully connect with others around relevant content. But our conference programs still focus on lectures, where a few experts broadcast their knowledge to passive listeners. During lectures there’s no connection between audience members and no connection around lecture content. Here are five reasons why.

Lectures are a terrible way to learn. We’ve known for over a hundred years that lectures are a terrible way to learn. Lectures are a seductive meeting format because they provide an efficient way of sharing information. However, lectures are perhaps the least effective way of learning anything.

Why? Over time, we rapidly forget almost everything we’ve been told. But when we engage with content, we remember more of it, remember it more accurately, and remember it longer. Every measure of learning increases drastically when attendees actively participate in sessions.

Professionals learn predominantly socially, not in the classroom. Until about twenty years ago, professionals learned most of what they needed to know to do their jobs in the classroom. Today only about 10% of what we need to know involves formal classroom teaching. The other 90% is informal — a combination of self-directed learning, experiential learning on the job or learning at conferences with our peers.

Unfortunately, we persist in making the bulk of “education” at meetings consist of formal presentations by a few experts.

Today, everyone has expertise and experience to share. Everyone who has worked in a profession for a while is an expert resource in some capacity. Instead of limiting content to a few “experts,” peer conferences uncover and tap the thousands of years of expertise and experience in the room. As author David Weinberger puts it: “The smartest person in the room is the room.”

Most sessions don’t address actual attendee wants and needs. Conferences need to provide just-in-time learning, and you can’t predict most of those topics in advance. My research has found that 50 – 90% of all prescheduled conference sessions are not what attendees actually want and need. In contrast, just about all peer conference sessions, chosen and run by participants during the event, are rated highly because they provide what participants want.

At traditional conferences, connection is relegated to the breaks, meals, and socials. We so often hear “The best part of that conference was the hallway conversations.” It doesn’t have to be that way! Peer conferences provide conference sessions where participants connect around relevant, timely content. How can you adapt what you do to be a catalyst for conference change?

Adrian Segar has designed and facilitated meetings for 37 years. He writes regularly about event design, has authored two classic meeting design books, and is an industry advocate for participation-rich, participant-led meetings. Learn about his next book: The Little Book of Event Crowdsourcing Secrets.

Tags: 2018, connection, December, ff0000, just-in-time, Learning, lectures, NSA Speaker magazine, peer conferences, social learning| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Six reasons to change conferences

Monday, October 23rd, 2017 by Adrian Segar

In my keynote at Blend Abu Dhabi, the inaugural meeting industry conference at the new Yas Conference Centre, I shared six reasons to change conferences for them to remain relevant to today’s attendees.

Although I’ve written about these issues before, this is the first time I’ve summarized them in one place. Together they make a strong business case for the participant-driven and participation-rich meetings I’ve been advocating since 1992.

Enjoy!

Sessions provide no connection around content

Today, the most important reason why people go to conferences is to usefully connect with others around relevant content. But our conference programs still focus on lectures, where a few experts broadcast their knowledge to passive listeners: the audience. During lectures, there’s no connection between audience members and no connection around lecture content.

At traditional conferences, connection is relegated to breaks, meals, and socials! That’s why you so often hear, “The best part of that conference was the conversations in the hallways.” It doesn’t have to be that way! Peer conferences provide conference sessions where participants connect around relevant, timely content.

Lectures are a terrible way to learn

We’ve known for over a hundred years that lectures are a terrible way to learn something. Lectures are a seductive meeting format because they are very efficient ways of sharing information. Unfortunately, lectures are perhaps the least effective way of learning anything.

Why? Over time, we rapidly forget almost everything someone tells us. But when we engage with content, we remember more of it, remember it more accurately, and remember it longer. Every measure of learning increases drastically when attendees actively participate while learning in sessions.

The rise of online

Most broadcast content is now readily available online. An internet connection provides expert content anywhere, just in time when it’s needed. You don’t need to go to conferences for broadcast content (which you’ll probably have forgotten by the time you need it) anymore!

Professionals learn predominantly socially, not in the classroom

Until about twenty years ago, professionals learned most of what they needed to know to do their jobs in the classroom. Today we know that only about 10% of what we need to know to do our jobs involves formal classroom teaching. The other 90% is informal, provided by a combination of self-directed learning and social, active, experiential learning with our peers on the job or (what an opportunity!) at conferences with our peers.

Though ~90% of the learning modalities adult workers need these days are informal social learning from our peers, we persist in making the bulk of “education” at meetings formal presentations by a few experts! Instead, we need to concentrate on and provide maximum opportunities for the just-in-time peer learning our attendees need and want.

Today, everyone has expertise and experience to share

Everyone who has worked in a profession for a while is an expert resource for some of her or his peers. Instead of limiting content to broadcast by a few “experts”, peer conferences provide process and support to uncover and tap the thousands of years of expertise and experience in the room. Remember how David Weinberger puts it: “The smartest person in the room is the room.” We need conference process that uncovers and taps everyone’s experience and expertise while people are together at the conference!

Most pre-scheduled sessions don’t address actual attendee wants and needs

Because we’ll forget learning that isn’t currently needed and reinforced, conferences need to provide just-in-time learning. And you can’t predict most of the just-in-time learning by asking a program committee, or attendees for that matter, in advance. My research has found that 50 – 90% of all pre-scheduled conference sessions are not what attendees actually want and need! In contrast, just about all peer conference sessions, chosen and run by participants during the event, are rated highly because they provide the just-in-time learning and connection that participants want from the event.

Conclusion

My books explore these six reasons to change conferences in detail. To get the full story, buy ’em!

Tags: Abu Dhabi, active learning, Blend, change, connection, informal learning, just-in-time, Learning, lectures, rise of online, social learning, Yas Conference Center| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

How well do 4-hour lectures work?

Monday, October 2nd, 2017 by Adrian Segar

How well do 4-hour lectures work? Here’s Anonymous Insider, a medical school student writing about his classroom experience:

“Three marathon 4-hour lecture sessions with infectious disease (ID) specialists. Some would cover over 10 different diseases caused by a specific bacterial strain in a mere hour time. Most of the information went in one ear and out the other, especially with the PhD microbiologists. About two-thirds of students stopped attending lecture after the first session. ‘I have to study this material on my own over several days to not suffer from information overload. I do not find getting bombarded at lecture is efficient use of my time.‘”
—Anonymous Insider, Medical School 2020, Year 2, Week 2 [emphasis added]

Luckily, not every medical school is still subjecting students to interminable lectures (and to be fair, Anonymous Insider also describes some more enlightened and effective ways to learn in his fascinating and entertaining week-by-week journal of his progress through medical school).

A counterexample

Here’s a counterexample of effective medical teaching, an excerpt from my chapter on active learning in The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action.

I was talking late one night with my sister at her home in Burlington, Vermont, when her roommate came in. André, a first-year medical student, had just returned from celebrating his birthday and he was tired.

ANDRÉ: “I have a couple of hours of reading tonight before classes tomorrow.”

ALISON: “Why don’t you skip the reading tonight?”

ANDRÉ: “I can’t. We have team discussion groups on the reading first thing, and I won’t be able to participate if I haven’t done the reading. That’s how they teach us; we read and watch videos for homework and in class we learn together in teams. There’s a name for it.”

ME: “Flipped classroom?”

ANDRÉ: “Yes! How did you know?”

I told André about my interest in active learning, and how pleased I was to hear how his college education was going to be so much different from mine—three years of interminable lectures, plus two weeklong sets of exams that determined the “class” of my degree.

André’s medical school has adopted active learning because it’s a better way to educate doctors. As we’ll see, it’s actually a better way to learn just about anything, and many schools are increasingly incorporating active learning into their everyday teaching practices.

Changing the system

So, how well do 4-hour lectures work? It’s perhaps alarming to see such a wide disparity between teaching modalities used to educate our next generation of medical practitioners: from Anonymous Insider’s institution offering 4-hour lectures to schools like André’s that are phasing out lectures completely by 2019. And yet that’s how system change typically happens, slowly, one organization at a time, each institution at its own rate. What’s encouraging is that the overall trend is positive, as increasing numbers of teachers, presenters, companies, and institutions realize that lectures are one of the worst ways to learn.

Creative Commons image courtesy of pixnio

Tags: active learning, flipped classroom, lecture, lectures, medical school| Posted in Learning | 2 Comments »

How to convert a traditional conference into a connection-rich conference

Monday, March 23rd, 2015 by Adrian Segar

When people are asked why they go to meetings, the top two reasons they consistently give are to learn and to connect with others. Both reasons are rated of similar importance (although there’s recent evidence that connection is becoming more important than learning.) So why don’t we strive to create a connection-rich conference?

Why do we structure traditional conferences like this?

Conference lectures only focus on learning (that is, of course, assuming people are learning from the lecture, which is by no means certain.) No connection between attendees occurs during a lecture. Connection at a traditional conference is, therefore, supposed to happen somehow outside the sessions, in the breaks and socials. Unfortunately, breaks and socials aren’t great ways to connect with people at conferences.

So traditional conferences are heavy on lecture-style learning and light on the connection that attendees desire!

Luckily, there’s a simple way to redress the balance between connection and learning at meetings.

Replace lectures with participation-rich sessions!

Doing this greatly improves the meeting because:

Attendees have opportunities to connect during the conference sessions, redressing the balance between connection and learning.
Session participants learn socially from each other, drawing on the hundreds of years of experience and expertise in the room, rather than relying on the knowledge of a single expert.

How do you create participation-rich sessions that foster connection? That’s what my book The Power of Participation is all about! The book:

Explains why the health and survival of any conference increasingly require that we integrate participation into meeting sessions;
Provides comprehensive practical information on how to create an event environment where connection thrives; and
Supplies an extensive organized collection of powerful participation techniques you can use to construct meetings that attendees will love and return to over and over again.

A connection-rich conference

When I began organizing meetings in the early 1980’s, I filled my programs with expert speakers. It wasn’t until 1992 that I unexpectedly discovered the power of incorporating participation to create a connection-rich conference. It took ten years for me to realize that this fundamental change improved the experience at every kind of meeting and for every meeting audience with whom I worked. My book includes everything I currently know about making this improvement possible for you.

Tags: lecture, lectures, participation, participation-rich, The Power of Participation| Posted in Event design | No Comments »