For a clue, read this AT&T advertisement promoting telephones in the 1900’s!
A 1909 AT&T advertisement that promotes the telephone as broadcast & messaging technology.The_Implement_Of_The_Nation
Here’s Kevin Kelly’s analysis of what AT&T totally missed about how telephones could be used.
“Advertisements at the beginning of the last century tried to sell hesitant consumers, the newfangled telephone by stressing ways it could send messages, such as invitations, store orders, or confirmation of their safe arrival. The advertisers pitched the telephone as if it were a more convenient telegraph. None of them suggested having a conversation.“
Early telephone ads marketed it as a better telegraph. They focused on the value of sending messages rather than fostering conversation.
So, perhaps it’s not surprising that many conference organizers today make a similar mistake by emphasizing broadcast content over attendee interactions.
Just as advertisers missed the phone’s potential to connect people in real-time, many events fail to prioritize the natural value of attendee conversations. When organizers structure conferences as one-way content delivery sessions, they overlook the simple, high-impact power of peer-to-peer dialogue. By designing events that actively support and facilitate attendee conversations, conferences become spaces of meaningful connection, creativity, and insight that go far beyond passive listening.
Event planners must shift their mindset to seeing attendees as active participants, not just an audience. Facilitating genuine exchanges can turn an ordinary event into a transformative experience, helping people connect, share ideas, and solve problems together—things that no amount of broadcast content alone can achieve.
Many meetings still focus on creating audiences rather than community. Yes, there’s a big difference. And not just at meetings. Here’s how Damon Kiesow, Knight Chair for Digital Editing and Producing at the Missouri School of Journalism, compares the concepts of community versus audience from a journalistic perspective.
Kiesow says:
Community does not scale. Audience scales.
Community is decentralized for quality. Audience is centralized for profit.
Community is generative. Audience is extractive. —Damon Kiesow, @[email protected], Mastodon toot on Nov 06, 2022, 10:37
Kiesow concisely sums up why the news business and the meeting industry concentrate on audience rather than community. When media and meeting owners focus on short-term interests—big circulations and audiences, leading to higher status and consequential larger profits at the expense of “consumers”—it’s understandable that building community plays second fiddle to chasing media visibility and large audiences.
“What the internet changes is our relationship with the public we serve…What is the proper relationship for journalists to the public? We tend to think it’s manufacturing a product called content you should honor and buy…That’s a legacy of mass media; treating everybody the same because we had to…So we now see the opportunity to serve people’s individual needs. So that’s what made me think that journalism, properly conceived is a service.” —Interview of Jeff Jarvis by David Weinberger
A new definition of journalism: “…convening communities into civil, informed, and productive conversation, reducing polarization and building trust through helping citizens find common ground in facts and understanding.” —Jeff Jarvis, Facebook’s changes
Jarvis believes that journalism should serve people’s individual needs rather than manufacture content for the masses. In addition, journalism’s service should be about convening communities into civil, informed, and productive conversation.
Community versus audience
I began my first book with the research finding (and common observation) that people go to conferences to network and learn.
My later books (and many posts on this site) have emphasized the superiority of active over passive learning. Active learning occurs almost exclusively in community. Creating community at conferences around participant-driven content, therefore, creates a far more effective learning and connection-rich environment. As Kiesow illustrates for journalism, emphasizing community over audience also pays rich dividends for meeting attendees.
This brings us to a key question that is rarely openly discussed: Whom are conferences for? For decades, I have been championing peer conferences, where participants own their conferences. When the attendees are the owners, meeting designs that build and support community are the obvious way to go.
But, all too often, attendees are not the conference owners. Such owners, whether they be individuals or for-profit or non-profit entities, rarely have the same objectives for the event as the attendees. Making money for themselves or their organizations, increasing their status by running large events, promoting the ideas of a few people, or influencing the direction of a cultural or industry issue are their primary goals. Supporting attendee learning and connection is a secondary consideration.
The largely silent battles being fought about the future of journalism and meeting design are strikingly similar. Both realms can learn from each other.
I’m indebted to Martin Sirk for sharing remarkable information about an 1828 conference designed by the German geographer, naturalist, and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Read what follows to discover that Humboldt was also a meeting designer way ahead of his time!
“Humboldt was revolutionizing the sciences. In September 1828 he invited hundreds of scientists from across Germany and Europe to attend a conference in Berlin.* Unlike previous such events at which scientists had endlessly presented papers about their own work, Humboldt put together a very different programme. Rather than being talked at, he wanted the scientists to talk with each other. There were convivial meals and social outings such as concerts and excursions to the royal menagerie on the Pfaueninsel in Potsdam. Meetings were held among botanical, zoological and fossil collections as well as at the university and the botanical garden. Humboldt encouraged scientists to gather in small groups and across disciplines. He connected the visiting scientists on a more personal level, ensuring that they forged friendships that would foster close networks. He envisioned an interdisciplinary brotherhood of scientists who would exchange and share knowledge. ‘Without a diversity of opinion, the discovery of truth is impossible; he reminded them in his opening speech.
*Humboldt organized this conference for the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians.”
Humboldt implemented, in 1828, many features of today’s participant-driven, participation-rich conferences.
In one way this is not surprising, as I’ve mentioned in my brief history of the development of conferences in my book Conferences That Work.
“These Conferences are held once in a Month by divers Able Masters making reflexions and observations upon the rarest pieces in the Cabinet of his Most Christian Majesty…” —A Relation of the Conferences Held at Paris in the Academy Royal for the Improvement of the Arts of Painting and Sculpture, as ‘tis Found in the Journal Des Scavans, A. E. H. Love in Philosophical Transactions (1665–1678), Vol. 4, 1669
We don’t know much about the Able Masters of the Academy Royal who began holding their art conferences in 1666, but given that the mid-17th century was the dawn of formal art criticism, I don’t think the Able Masters sat in rows listening to Abler Masters. Instead, I visualize a room of fledgling critics, magnificently gowned, standing around a Leonardo da Vinci drawing while arguing about the role of perspective in painting, creating a witty salon of a conference, full of arguments and opinions shared among peers.
This vision of mine is a fantasy—yet it illustrates an important point. When a new area of human knowledge or interest blossoms, there are no experts—only a vanguard struggling to see clearly, to understand more deeply, to learn. During this period a traditional conference format can only offer an uneasy fit—if there are no experts yet, who will present? Today’s explosion of knowledge and, hence, associated conference topics, implies an increasing need for flexible conference approaches that can adapt to spontaneous, real-time discoveries of directions and themes that attendees want to explore. —From Chapter 1 of Conferences That Work
When people create a community of practice for any new profession, topic, or issue, its initial meeting form is very similar to what Humboldt did. (Or what I and others did when we wanted to meet with peers about implementing administrative computing in small schools in 1992, leading to the formation of edACCESS.)
That’s because when a community of practice forms, there are no “experts” or community members with high relative status because no one knows each other. Unfortunately, it’s common for such communities to stratify over time when they meet, as they revert to the dominant one-teacher-many-learners model we experience throughout our schooling.
Peer conferences/unconferences buck this trend. They provide meeting processes that remain open to the likelihood that every participant has something to offer other participants. They make it as easy as possible to discover peers who are useful resources for each other. Finally, they continue to respect the reality that the smartest person in the room is the room.
So we can reasonably assume that the earliest “conferences” were quite similar to the peer conferences/unconferences of today. Humboldt “envisioned an interdisciplinary brotherhood of scientists who would exchange and share knowledge”. Replace “scientists” with your community description of choice (and find a more gender-neutral word for “brotherhood” if there is one) and you have a decent description of what my work is about.
Humboldt was a privileged, high-status man living two hundred years ago. What is remarkable about his meeting design is that he didn’t simply replicate the status quo. Instead, he created a conference that maximized participant connection, used multiple interesting venues to meet, and emphasized small group conversations. Impressive!
Yes! Just posted: Anca Trifan interviews me on her show Events:demystified. We talk about all kinds of things, with a focus on my work and thinking about participant-driven and participation-rich meetings and event design.
I think this is one of the best interviews I’ve done. Anca gets full credit for asking great questions and also taking the time to edit the interview. Thank you, Anca!
Here’s her video and podcast for your viewing and listening pleasure. I’ve added a timeline below to help you jump to the bits that really interest you. (Though, actually, it’s all terrific!)
Enjoy!
Timeline
MM:SS Content 02:00 Anca introduces me. 03:30 How Anca and I met. 04:30 What I’ve been doing since the COVID pandemic started. 06:00 On traveling to events, and my passion for what I do. 07:45 Behind the scenes: How I got into designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich meetings. 11:00 What participant-driven and participation-rich meeting design means, and the core components. 13:45 Creating a conference program on the fly at the event. It sounds scary, but it works! 15:00 Why we need to have participant-driven and participation-rich meetings. Lectures are a terrible way to learn anything. 16:30 Online meetings benefit from these designs too. 17:00 Participant-driven and participation-rich meetings help people connect better. 17:30 Online has displaced the value of lectures at in-person meetings. 18:45 Participant-driven and participation-rich designs bring connection around meaningful content into the sessions. 19:00 How Ask me anything (AMA) sessions allow participants to choose what they want to discuss with an expert. 20:00 Are AMA sessions easy to run? 21:00 What motivates me to do this work. 22:45 My early experiences of traditional conferences. 24:30 Sponsor break. 25:30 On Tahira Endean‘s (excellent) book Intentional Event Design and my books’ focus. 28:00 Some of the changes I’ve seen in events in the last dozen years. 30:30 “You never really had control of your event anyway.” 31:00 “Are we moving from content-first events to connection-first events?” 34:00 The value of presenters (and stand-up comedians) who interact with their audience. 35:15 “I’m interested in creating meetings that change people’s lives.” 36:15 A piece of advice for event professionals. 38:15 A piece of advice for association professionals who are responsible for events. 40:00 Following me on social media (and how to say my name correctly 😀).
Software testers do peer conferences right! (They even call them a peer conference, rather than unconference, a term I don’t like.) As evidence of software tester conference awesomeness, I offer three examples below. But first…
…a short history of the peer conference
I first designed and convened what I called a “peer conference” in 1992 for a group of IT managers at small schools that eventually became known as edACCESS.
During my 20+ years as an IT consultant and software developer, I got to know a delightful international crowd of software testers: those all-important people responsible for the impossible task of making sure that software works. After I talked about my meeting design work with pioneer tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, the testing community somehow adopted the term peer conference for their get-togethers.
My code development days are long gone. I miss hanging out with the folks I got to know at these events. (Though I’m still in touch with some of them.) Regardless, peer conferences in the world of software testing are still alive and thriving!
And now…
Three examples of how software testers do peer conferences right
Here are some illustrative extracts from Lisi’s post.
Keeping participants safe
Feeling safe is an important psychological requirement for people in any situation, and conferences are no exception (1, 2, 3). Lisi shares another participant’s experience:
Step 1 before entering #SoCraTes2022 ✅ Organizers really do make everything to make everybody feel safe. Code of conduct, inclusive language, Conference Buddy,photo policy.. pic.twitter.com/9V1S109OaO
Providing a welcoming and supportive environment for first-time participants
SoCraTes 2022 included a Foundation Day “with fewer people and hence a smaller crowd to get used to. A day that covered fundamental topics without them being too basic, so I learned a lot even with topics I knew about. A day where we had a schedule set in advance, which took away the uncertainty of what would happen. A day to get to know people a bit already.”
Notice how this optional first day used more conventional session formats to make it easier for first-time attendees to integrate into the existing community.
“Over dinner, I realized I was not the only one joining this conference for the first time. Later on, we realized lots of people were new joiners indeed, based on recommendations they chose to give this conference a try. Was really great to see.
In the beginning, things were still a bit new, strange and even stiff; as it often is for me these days when suddenly seeing lots of people in real life. Within a short period of time I could loosen up, though. The more people I got to know, the more I relaxed and felt at ease.”
A participation-rich session format — World Café — was introduced at the end of Foundation Day
The World Café supplied an appropriate introduction and transition to the Open Space format used during the rest of the conference.
“To set the scene, a World Café was hosted by the wonderful Juke, getting all of us connected to SoCraTes and each other. How it worked? We had three rounds, a new question each round. For each group, one stays at the same place while all others look for a new group to join. The one who stays welcomes the new people and shares what the previous group had talked about. Usually this is supported by taking notes and drawing on flip charts or similar means.”
Open Space
SoCraTes 2022 used the participant-driven Open Space format to determine what sessions participants wanted to hold. Though Open Space is just one of the formats you can use to create participant-driven and participation-rich meetings, it’s probably the most well-known and is often an appropriate process to use.
“In short: we build the agenda we want to see! And that’s what happened. It’s fascinating how you can really trust in the system. The queues to briefly present the proposed topics were really long, and the emerging schedule looked amazing. So many awesome topics…”
Session leaders used a wide variety of participative formats
Check out Lisi’s post for descriptions of many appropriate innovative session formats, including ask me anything, brainstorming, blind ensemble programming, the pipeline game, exploring feelings while reading code, a Code Retreat, and a retrospective.
Some closing insights
About listening and learning…
Today at #SoCraTes2022 I sat in a session and learned Scratch from a 11yo girl. And I was not the only one. Magic can happen people – you just gotta let it.
Also proves that no matter how junior, you can and will learn something from anyone if you only take the time to listen.
Phew, what an amazing time my first on-site edition of #SoCraTes2022 had been! ✨ So much to digest and follow-up on, lots of inspiration and confidence gained, and best of all: a newfound strong connection with this wonderful welcoming community. Thank you everyone! ❤
“The entire conference felt like a version of the world that could exist. Many small and large customs help people to get along better with each other. It starts with the name tags alone: take off the name tag if you’re too introverted to talk to people right now. A red tape means you don’t want to be photographed. The name tags are magnetic and hold the creative badges that people use to announce their pronouns – with a lot of artistic flair if you like.”
—Eric, SoCraTes 2022 — a conference report [translated from German]
Compare the innovation and excitement at SoCraTes 2022 with just about any other conference you’ve attended. Can you see why software testers like Lisi think that peer conferences rock?!
2. The Unexpo Experiment
Here’s another example from a software testing peer conference, TestBash Brighton 2018. The conference designers invented a way to create “highly engaging, interactive, and fun” poster sessions. Check out my post that describes this “excellent example of how to invent, explore, evaluate, and improve new meeting formats”.
3. A free guide to creating peer conferences
Want to create a peer conference, but don’t want to buy any of my excellent books on this topic? (Hey, you can buy all three for just $49.99, but that’s OK 😀.) No problem, the Association for Software Testing published an excellent free introductory guide to creating peer conferences. Learn more about it, and download it here.
Final thoughts
I love and respect the software testing community because its practitioners think carefully and seriously about how to design their conferences. And then they implement and test their innovative designs, discovering what works and what doesn’t while also being open to the joy and excitement of the unexpected. A beautiful mixture of serious exploration, learning, and fun.
That’s the way to improve meetings!
Image attribution: #SoCraTes2022 peer conference photo by Markus Tacker
All too often, clients planning an event don’t spend enough time making hard but important event choices.
What is engagement?
A few months ago I designed and facilitated BizBash’s inaugural two-day leadership summit in Puerto Rico. 24 C-Suite executives discussed some of the event industry’s biggest current issues. One eye-opening takeaway for me was the radically different ways in which participants thought about and measured “engagement” at their events. Production companies focused on meeting micro-statistics. Brands were big on impressions generated. While as a meeting designer, I think about the emotional involvement or commitment of participants.
If folks in our own industry don’t agree (for completely legitimate reasons) on what the common term engagement means, how to measure it, and how to obtain it, is it surprising that our clients are unclear about their goals and objectives for their events?
We need to make event choices
Making event choices is hard but necessary. For one thing, as Seth Godin points out:
“You can’t create an event that’s intimate, open to all comers, proven, resilient for any weather, held outdoors and unique.”
–Seth Godin, Paths Not Taken
In addition, the blurry intersections between cultural, organizational, and participants‘ expectations, wants, and needs require us to understand the specific consequences of making event choices and the tradeoffs that result.
From my blog post: Whom is your event for?
Helping clients make choices
When designing meetings with clients, an important part of my work involves helping them uncover assumptions that impede realizing their goals and objectives. For example:
“Given the deteriorating evaluations for your annual conference, perhaps we should rethink a program comprised of expert presentations?”
“It’s been five years since we reviewed your goals and objectives for this meeting. Let’s revisit your vision to check if anything’s changed.”
Noticing and accepting that choices like these need to be made is a crucial first step. Once we’ve identified them, it’s helpful to document unresolved choices as part of the meeting design process.
We keep these choices in mind while working together to build an event that best attains the meeting’s goals and objectives. We evaluate potential design solutions, decide between the alternatives, and, perhaps after several design iterations, agree on what to do.
One last point. Clients have to remember that you can’t please everyone! Whatever hard choices get made, someone’s going to be upset.
That’s why they’re hard choices. But we need to identify and make them if we’re going to end up with an optimum meeting design.
My work at a pre-con is different from that of a typical meeting planner since I focus on the meeting’s design and facilitation. I’ve been convening meetings for decades, though, so I know a fair amount about meeting planning. As I prepared to review the venue’s meeting spaces, room set options, and traffic patterns, I thought about how, today, competent logistics are the new meeting minimum.
Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know this from looking at meeting planning textbooks. I have a pile on my desk as I write this. With a single exception — Tahira Endean‘s excellent Intentional Event Design: Our Professional Opportunity — they devote minimal space (usually a single chapter) to the importance and the how-to of exploring meeting objectives and outcomes before hundreds of pages on site selection, food and beverage, lodging, decor, entertainment, technical production, transportation, budgeting, trade shows, registration, etc.
The traditional bread and butter of a meeting planner’s job.
Yes, all these logistical considerations are important and need to be done well! But when you’re spending all your time on these issues it’s easy to forget that they are not what meetings are about. Today, competent logistics are the new meeting minimum.
The deficiencies of meeting planning textbooks and education
Such textbooks barely mention the essence of a meeting: what has to happen to achieve clearly defined meeting objectives and outcomes? Why? Because they make assumptions that what has to happen is what happened at just about every meeting their authors ever attended. They assume that meetings will consist of sessions with speakers on a stage. They assume that the core purpose of a meeting session is to transmit content to an audience. And they assume that when attendees are not in sessions, we should ply them with food and drink and entertainment.
When meeting planner textbooks gloss over the key ways that meetings can be made much more effective and useful for all stakeholders, planners remain ignorant, and traditional broadcast-style meetings continue to be the norm. Sadly, few clients know any better. Most assume that a meeting planner is all they need. They aren’t aware that professional meeting designers and facilitators exist and have great value.
Competent logistics are the new meeting minimum
I love to design and facilitate meetings that are great because they use participant-driven and participation-rich human processes. I have little competition. But I feel frustrated that so many opportunities to improve our events are going to waste. In my opinion, meeting planner education is deficient. Planners could be educated so they can help their clients with meeting design. Or they could learn and understand the importance and benefits of including meeting designers in the meeting planning process and encourage clients to use them. Either outcome (both could coexist) would cause a significant upgrade in the quality of meetings.
Steve Jobs said, “Design is how it works”. And good event design is about how a conference works. Combining perfect logistics with a traditional meeting design only leads to a flawless traditional meeting. That’s better than a flawed traditional meeting, of course, but we can do so much better. That’s why competent logistics are the new meeting minimum.
Miles Franklin, the Australian writer and feminist best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, wrote the above words in her autobiography. Like Miles, I believe that all people want and need opportunities to share how they’re thinking and feeling.
Meetings of every kind offer these opportunities. When I walk into our tiny town rural post office, I sometimes see folks for whom a conversation about almost anything with the sole postal worker is clearly important. Perhaps that customer will have little or no other human contact that day. What is talked about is far less important than the act of telling.
Personal meetings like these, whether brief or extended, between good friends or strangers, are fundamental. Many of us are lucky enough to have “someone to tell it to”, though some do not.
Someone to tell it to at conferences
Conferences, whether in-person or online, are also potential arenas for conversations. They are places for participants — who have something in common with each other — to find someone to tell it to. Even if the teller believes that they weren’t fully heard, the act of telling is valuable. (Otherwise, people wouldn’t journal and practice self-affirmations.)
But some conferences offer better opportunities than others. Traditional events relegate conversations to the hallways, to breaks and socials. No conversations occur during lectures. Even post-presentation Q&As rarely evolve into a conversation, which is always between the presenter and a succession of audience members.
Given the fundamental human need to tell, meeting stakeholders owe it to participants to create opportunities and environments for rich conversations in the sessions, rather than just the gaps between them. I have been doing this for 33years, and it’s clear that meeting designs that integrate meaningful conversations into sessions have a transformational effect on almost all participants. (Read any of my books to learn specific techniques and designs that create meaningful and valuable conversations during meeting sessions.)
In 2006, Cory Doctorow wrote: “Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.” Content is everywhere, but conversations require tellers and listeners. While telling something to ourselves is better than nothing, it doesn’t compare to telling it to and being heard by another human.
Let’s give attendees the priceless gift of someone to tell it to at our events.
Children listening to each other image (cropped) by J. Verkuilen, licensed under (CC BY 2.0)
Have you attended in-person meetings where your hallway conversations were the highlight of the event? I’ve certainly experienced my fair share, and I bet you have too. Don’t get me wrong. Hallway learning and the connections made through conversations struck up between sessions are often valuable and important. But I see meetings where hallway learning trumps a majority of, if not all, conference sessions as failures of design, rather than a fact of life.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could improve the quantity and quality of hallway learning, conversations, and connections throughout an event?
Well, we can. Here are two ways.
1—How to improve conventional hallway conversations
We can increase the quality of conventional hallway conversations by designing a physical meeting environment that encourages and supports them. Create an architecture of assembly: spaces outside the session rooms where people can talk comfortably. Provide a range of spaces. For example, chair pairings, small group furniture arrangements, standing areas with places to park food and beverage, covered outdoor spaces, etc.
“…people, even very smart people, are unable to anticipate the benefits of in-depth interaction with colleagues until they have experienced it for themselves” —Nancy Dixon, The Hallways of Learning
Read Nancy’s article to learn how an office redesign strengthened connections amongst a group of formerly loosely connected peers. [And she gets a hat tip for inspiring this post!] Similarly, your design layout will affect the likelihood and value of hallway learning conversations. And participants most likely won’t even be aware of it!
In addition, be sure to schedule enough time for hallway learning to occur. Give your attendees plenty of breaks. Then they can rest and recuperate, consolidate what they have learned, and have time to engage in conversations that matter.
2—How to significantly improve hallway learning and connection throughout events
“Typically, a presenter offers what happened in his or her own situation, but that is not what learners need to hear. Learners are interested in knowing how to adapt the lessons to their situation and for that they need to have a conversation so that the other person can understand their context, and they also can understand the context of the other.”
The trick is to use session designs that blend short useful pieces of content with conversations among participants. In effect, you’re providing structured hallway conversations about the content that’s just been delivered. There are many different formats you can use for such conversations (described in detail in my books): pair and trio share, facilitated small group breakouts, fishbowls, etc. You can create conversational groupings at random (“pair up with someone you haven’t met yet”) or use human spectrograms to assign attendees to like-minded folks.
Building hallway learning opportunities into our meeting sessions has additional advantages. Once a session is over, and traditional hallway conversations are about to begin, attendees are ready to continue or start new conversations with the people who were in their session. They are primed to continue to explore and deepen their hallway learning.
Conclusion
I’ll close with a final Nancy Dixon quote from a different post:
“Before people can learn from each other or collaborate on issues, they need to build connections – that is, gain some understanding of who the other person is, including their skills, depth of knowledge, experience, and attitude toward others. People are unlikely to ask each other questions or ask for assistance, until they have built a connection that allows them to learn that the other person is knowledgeable enough and respectful enough to engage.” —Nancy Dixon, Connection before Content
To maximize useful connection and learning at our meetings, optimizing hallway learning throughout the event is the way to go!
Most of the event industry and our clients continue to assume that if you can make the meeting bigger it’s a good thing.
It ain’t necessarily so.
How we got here
The massive disruption of in-person events since March 2020 has shaken our industry to the core. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person events that weren’t canceled have seen drastically reduced attendance compared to prior years. Online and hybrid meetings have seen less drastic reductions.
One bright spot has been the normalization of online meetings for routine connection and collaboration. We have also seen the emergence of new forms of online events, supported by solid business models.
So as I predicted in 2020, we haven’t seen the old normal since the pandemic started, and it’s likely we’ll never see it again.
What we shouldn’t do
The event industry unduly focuses on large meetings. Our trade magazines mainly report on big events, the ones with big-name speakers and eye candy razzle-dazzle. Pandemic-induced smaller audiences engender hand-wringing. What to do? How can we get our old, big events back?
Some respond by increasing their event marketing. Often, however, that’s not a smart move, as Seth Godin illustrates:
Make the announcement louder. Make the logo bigger. Yell. Call more people on the phone to sell them an extended warranty. Send more emails. Hustle harder. None of it works. The problem with the fountain isn’t that they didn’t make a big enough sign. The problem is that the fountain itself is poorly designed… …If you get the design right, you can whisper instead. —Seth Godin, “Make the sign bigger!”
What we should do
For too long, we’ve equated a meeting’s “success” with its size. “Bigger is better.” But if we concentrate on increasing attendance, we overlook getting the meeting design right. Improving an event’s design makes the meeting better for all the stakeholders: meeting owners, sponsors, and participants. In contrast, large meetings are usually less effective at satisfying stakeholders’ desired goals and objectives.
Do yourself a favor, and rid yourself of the “bigger is better” meeting mindset. It may help to remember that in reality, most meetings are small meetings. And that’s OK.
So don’t try to make the meeting bigger. Instead, make the meeting design right. (Get in touch if you’d like some help.)