“It’s been clear from the beginning of the Web that it gives us access to experts on topics we never even thought of. As the Web has become more social, and as conversations have become scaled up, these crazy-smart experts are no longer nestling at home. They’re showing up like genies summoned by the incantation of particular words. We see this at Twitter, Reddit, and other sites with large populations and open-circle conversations.This is a great thing, especially if the conversational space is engineered to give prominence to the contributions of drive-by experts. We want to take advantage of the fact that if enough people are in a conversation, one of them will be an expert.”
—David Weinberger, Globalization of local experience
This is exactly why the Conferences That Work format works so well. Peer conferences allow participants to discover the conference experts in (what was formerly known as) the “audience” they want to meet, connect with, and learn from. Instead of restricting teachers to the few folks at the front of the room, peer conferences allow us to tap the experience and expertise of anyone that’s present.
In other words, Conferences That Work extend the effectiveness of the online conversations that David describes above to face-to-face meetings.
Another issue of an occasional series—Dear Adrian—in which I answer questions sent to me about event design, elementary particle physics, solar hot water systems, and anything else I might conceivably know something about. If you have a question you’d like me to answer, please write to me (don’t worry, I won’t publish anything without your permission).
Q.Dear Adrian,
Forgive me if this is something you have been asked a million times before (and maybe you could point me to the page on your website which gives the answer, although I couldn’t find it.)
How do you market a new peer conference?
I can see that the peer conference structure can work for groups that have already been meeting for many years, for example, industry association meetings, and people are looking for a better format.
But I think it would be very hard to get people to have enough confidence in a new peer conference without anything to show them about what is going to happen there (except possibly a list of other delegates, if it was possible to get anyone to sign up to a conference where the agenda was a blank sheet of paper).
The standard way to market conferences as you know is to try to attract some relevant interesting sounding speakers, and use the speakers names in the marketing – but that forces the structure into the standard 30 minute powerpoint format.
Do you have any examples of where someone has developed a new peer conference as a commercial business?
Great questions—no need to apologize! People often ask me about how to market peer conferences, and your request has an interesting focus.
Most of my consulting clients want help with conference redesign—making established traditional events more peer-driven and participation- and connection-rich. Actually, it’s often easier to create a new peer conference than to change the format of an existing conventional event. Changing something that already exists is often harder than starting from scratch.
I’m not saying that it’s simple to market a new peer conference. As you point out, people are accustomed to seeing a pre-determined schedule of conference sessions and speakers. This influences their decision on whether to attend. (I cover this “program trap” in Chapter 4 of Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love.) Many wonder a) how you can create a great conference program at the event and b) how good the resulting conference will be. Your marketing has to address these concerns.
In my experience, there’s an essential prerequisite for a new peer conference to get off the ground: a core group of organizers who understand and believe in peer process (ideally, but not necessarily, through experience) and who are committed and prepared to proselytize the envisaged event to their professional circles. My rule of thumb is that this group should contain at least five people.
Once you have your core group in place, your marketing should feature the peer conference format without going into all the details. Intrigue potential attendees, especially those tired of traditional conferences, and talk up the proven nature of the design. Here’s an example of what you might say:
Have you attended a conference about TOPIC recently? Then you probably sat in room after room with scores of other attendees listening to outside experts talk about topics that weren’t quite what you were interested in. You were sure there were some interesting people to talk to, people who had the same questions you did (and maybe even some answers)—but how could you find who they were and meet them among the swirling crowds? Did you come away frustrated, feeling that only a small portion of the time you attended was valuable to you?
If so, you’re not alone.
INNOVCONF is different.
INNOVCONF is an out of the box conference experience that replaces highly scripted events, calls for papers, pre-determined workshops, keynote speakers, networking receptions, etc. We use the proven Conferences That Work design to create a conference that adapts to meet your needs, leverages the combined expertise and experience of all participants, and provides unique opportunities to discover, connect, share, and learn with the peers you want to meet.
Our conference format is participant-driven and participation-rich. The attendees themselves—DESCRIPTION OF TARGET ATTENDEES—will determine the conference’s agenda, presenters, session format, focus, and results during the first afternoon of INNOVCONF. (To learn more, visit conferencesthatwork.com.)
The goals of INNOVCONF are simple. Create the best possible conference for each individual attendee. Maximize participant interaction and connectedness. Strengthen our community. And explore future group initiatives. Sounds good? Then register today to join your peers at this innovative event!
To answer your last question, until I published my 2009 book I was the only person creating peer conferences. So it’s still early to expect many examples of established pure Conferences That Work format peer conferences “as a commercial business”. In addition, many current peer conferences are not commercial meetings-for-profit ventures. Instead, they create effective ways to bring a professional or vocational community together. Fees and budget are set to cover costs and make a modest profit.
What people have started to do is to use the Conferences That Work format in conjunction with traditional general sessions to create what I called in the book a hybrid event. (Unfortunately, since publishing, “hybrid” has come to mean an event that has face-to-face and online components). The marketing of these events often plays up the big names invited. However, the formats themselves contain significant peer conference elements. Three examples are FinCon: A peer conference for the financial blogging community, the Swiss Caux Conferences, and the Renaissance Weekends.
Karl, I hope this is useful. I’d love to hear more about your potential conference. If there’s anything I can do to assist you, please let me know.
I’m happy to announce that a free 9,000-word update to my book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love is 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 the 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 Docs 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.
“There was a frankness you’re not going to get anywhere else.”
“What a unique opportunity!”
“That was eye-opening.”
“We got a one-time look behind the curtain.”
“That was an incredible session.”
“I’m so grateful that session was available.”
Those were some of the comments I heard while waiting outside the door of Room 102 as attendees streamed out after the first peer session at the 21st edACCESS annual conference held at the Peddie School, Hightstown, New Jersey. Sadly, I’ll never know what I missed—and neither will you unless you were there.
The first Conferences That Work peer conference held in Japan began today! Federation EIL, the worldwide network of The Experiment in International Living (EIL), is running the five-day event. Founded in 1932, EIL was one of the first organizations to engage individuals in intercultural living and learning. Originating in the United States, The Experiment introduced the homestay concept to the world. The organization carefully prepares and places “Experimenters” in the homes of host families to study other languages and cultures firsthand.
This is the third year that Federation EIL has used the Conferences That Work format for its annual member meeting. The first meeting, held in Paris, France in April 2010, was disrupted by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull Icelandic volcano which caused 75% of European flights to be canceled and prevented half the registrants from attending. Federation EIL staff told me recently that had they been using a conventional conference design, they would have cancelled the event because of so many absent speakers. But the Conferences That Work design “routed around the damage” and the event was a success!
I’m happy that we’ve held a Conferences That Work event in Japan, and hope that there will be many more in the future.
There are many reasons why you should hold multi-day events.
I have held a number of one-day conferences. One (very full!) day is the minimum time needed to process the essential components of a peer conference: the roundtable, some peer sessions, and a minimal spective. Frankly it’s a rush to complete even these basics in a day. —Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love, Adrian Segar
Occasionally, I’m asked to design one-day peer conferences. When I ask why the event can only be a day long, I hear answers like these:
“Our members are very busy and can’t take more than a day off.”
“Then we’d have to arrange for somewhere for people to stay overnight.”
“Our conference has always been a single day.”
“It’s too expensive to make it longer.”
“Our venue only serves lunch.”
Here are six reasons why you should overcome these objections and make your conferences longer than a single day.
Making connections takes time
Research has shown that people attend conferences for two principal reasons of roughly equal importance: educational opportunities and networking. (Note: I believe networking is becoming more important.) Networking—making connections with people and building relationships with them—takes time. At a one-day event full of traditional presentation sessions, typically, the only opportunities for people to meet each other are during lunch and a couple of short refreshment breaks. That’s very little time to network. Adding the dinner, evening social, and breakfast of a single overnight doubles, at a minimum, the time for connection available at a one-day event.
Getting there
A non-local attendee incurs fixed time and travel costs to get to and return from an event, irrespective of its duration. If your conference’s value to participants increases with its duration—if not, why are you making it longer? —amortizing these fixed costs over a longer event reduces the hourly expense of attending.
Attendees who eat together bond together
Academics may argue as to whether the reasons are biological, cultural, or both, but few would disagree that people bond over communal meals. A one-day conference provides a single lunch plus, usually, two refreshment breaks. Add just an extra half day and we get three refreshment breaks, perhaps an evening social with munchies, dinner, breakfast, and lunch. That’s a big difference!
Something magical happens overnight
In my experience, overnights during a conference facilitate the processing of experiences from the previous day’s events. This is especially important at the start of a peer conference, where the first half day exposes attendees to a large variety of ideas and resources. But the effect is useful at any event. Although we all appreciate the time to consciously process our experience, there’s growing evidence that short-term memories are turned into lasting long-term memories during sleep. I find that the rapid torrent of information shared during the first day of a conference seems to acquire shape and form in my mind overnight—the next morning brings clarity to the dominant themes and interests shared by the participants.
The above multi-day rationales apply to any conference. The following apply to peer conferences.
Reserving enough time for content
The standard Conferences That Work design employs four sessions that wrap around its content heart. For a fifty-person one-day event, a roundtable, peer session sign-up, personal introspective, and group spective consume more than four hours of traditional session time, leaving little time for the peer sessions. This has two consequences. The first is that a one-day peer conference has to drop the personal introspective. The second is that I won’t run a one-day peer conference anymore, and recommend that you don’t either.
The minimum time I now recommend for a peer conference is a day and a half. Even at this length, there really isn’t sufficient time to add a traditional session like a keynote. But participants consistently report that it’s long enough to provide excellent connection and community-building time, as well as four sets of peer sessions tuned to their needs.
Peer session preparation
Many first-time participants are surprised by how well the vast majority of peer sessions are led and/or facilitated when there’s such a short time between the choice of a peer conference session topic and the resulting session. And the volunteer leaders/facilitators themselves are surprised and empowered by how well they fulfill their role, despite sometimes worrying beforehand whether they will do a good job knowing the limited time available to prepare. Even so, a longer conference gives leaders more time to think about their sessions, consult with other peers, and prepare.
What other roadblocks have you experienced when promoting longer events? What other reasons do you suggest for holding them?
How can we minimize vendor pitches during conference sessions?
Traci Browne of Trade Show Institute has been reading my book Conferences That Work and recently wrote:
One of my biggest questions is around vendor pitching at peer-to-peer sessions and not letting them dominate. You know who these people are, they are everywhere and it’s hard to avoid them.
If you’ve read my book you’ll know that unwanted vendor pitches are not a problem at Conferences That Work. Why? Because attendees know that they determine what happens at peer sessions. Not conference organizers, and certainly not vendors.
The conference staff gives vendor representatives who wish to attend peer sessions a set of clear expectations. They ask representatives to sit quietly and observe, and only provide contributions if they ask for and receive an OK from the people present. They warn vendors that it’s possible the session attendees may not want them to be present, though this is rarely a problem in my experience.
At some sessions, attendees may share sensitive personal experiences or want frank discussion of commercial products and services. At these, the session facilitator asks at the start for attendees’ permission to allow vendor representatives to sit in. If someone objects, vendors are not allowed to attend.
When I ran traditional conferences with vendor exhibits, unwanted vendor pitches were a sometimes distasteful and seemingly unavoidable component of the conference experience. Since moving to the peer conference format I have not had one problem allowing vendor representatives to attend conference sessions.
That’s how I minimize vendor pitches during conference sessions.
