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peer session sign-up

Three perspectives on crowdsourcing events

Saturday, September 18th, 2010 by Adrian Segar

onsite crowdsourcing events: a photograph of an attendee signing up for sessions lusted on an outdoor tableThis week has seen three articles published on crowdsourcing in the events industry. Crowdsourcing events is hot! Here are comments from someone <shameless brag> who has been crowdsourcing conferences since 1992.

Are We Thinking What I’m Thinking?

The longest and most detailed article is Are We Thinking What I’m Thinking? by Barbara Palmer. It appears in the September issue of PCMA Convene magazine. I, of course, love this article because I feature extensively in it. (And, all the photos are mine!) Massive kudos to Barbara for quoting me accurately and clearly conveying my crowdsourcing philosophy, perhaps the most radical approach described, that of using crowdsourcing to determine sessions at the event.

Barbara also interviewed Sam Smith, who, together with Ray Hansen, organized last week’s Event Camp Twin Cities (at which I ran a couple of sessions). ECTC used crowdsourcing very successfully at the session design level by reaching out to the #eventprofs community, asking for suggestions for novel session formats and content, and then creating a conference program that incorporated many cutting-edge ideas. One of the refreshing strengths of Event Camp Twin Cities was its overt philosophy. “We are trying new stuff here, and probably some of it won’t work.” The result was a truly innovative conference, full of enlightening experiments (with very few failures, as it turned out).

The 2011 GMIC conference

Next, Barbara asked Elizabeth Henderson about her ongoing work on the design of the 2011 Green Meeting Industry Council Sustainable Meetings Conference. Elizabeth is concentrating on creating crowdsourced event design teams with members drawn from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints. This is another way to use crowdsourcing at the pre-event level that helps to avoid a groupthink mentality.

What meeting professionals think

Finally, Barbara quotes various meeting professionals’ views on crowdsourcing, around the theme of the role of the expert compared to the role of the crowd. In this section, the viewpoints expressed downplay the value of the crowd’s input. This is the crowdsourcing as a minor fad point of view. The possibility of influencing session topics and content is mentioned. But the description of crowdsourcing’s value for “entry and exit music, entertainment options, ways to green an event, reception themes, and party-venue options” implies relegating its importance to the relatively superficial.

And the final two comments—”I suggest that event professionals crowdsource topics, content ideas, and suggestions – and steer clear of crowdsourcing speakers and actual sessions” and “Crowds can tell you what they want…But an expert can say, ‘You are going to need to know this'”—revert to the old worldview of novice attendees being guided by wise non-attendee experts. Such a worldview ignores the reality that conference audiences invariably contain a healthy mixture of novices and veterans.

 The Good and the Evil of Crowdsourcing Conference Content

The second article is Michelle Bruno’s The Good and the Evil of Crowdsourcing Conference Content from the Trade Show News Network. Michelle starts by saying “Event organizations that crowdsource conference content are learning there is a right way and a wrong way to solicit community feedback.” This formulation is unfortunate for two reasons. First, as we’ve seen above, there are a number of ways to approach crowdsourcing an event, and it’s simplistic to say that any of them are right or wrong. Second, the article offers no evidence that any particular approach is better or worse, except for the gut instincts or opinions of the people Michelle quotes.

The 2010 PCMA Education Conference

First, Michelle describes Mike McCurry’s work on developing peer networking sessions for the 2010 PCMA Education Conference held in June. Since the event is over, it’s a shame that there are no follow-up comments as to the effectiveness of Mike’s pre-event crowdsourced topic selection. Perhaps this information exists but is unpublished.

South By Southwest

Next up is South By Southwest’s crowdsourcing of 30% of their conference sessions. I tend to agree with Jeff Hurt (quoted in the Convene article) that for a conference of this size, the process SXSW uses becomes a popularity contest rather than participatory crowdsourcing. This is because there’s no significant pre-selection communication between attendees and/or the folks offering the sessions. So we end up with what is basically online voting on thousands of suggestions.

NTEN

According to Michelle’s article, the same kind of process is used by the Nonprofit Technology Network, which points out that it takes about 90 minutes to vote on every one of the 400+ sessions suggested for their 2011 conference. It’s unreasonable to expect more than a small fraction of attendees to expend this kind of effort, so the question then arises: How representative of all attendees are the responses NTEN gets?

The article continues with comments by Chris Bucchere about using (what he calls) crowdsourcing in a very different way from the above examples. He says “Using your community to ‘spec’ work for you is an ‘evil’ way to crowdsource.” This declaration ignores the common thread in all the above uses of the term: namely that crowdsourcing is also a win for participants because they get the sessions & formats they want. Chris’s idea of using crowdsourcing seems to be about building community/brands via contests with incentives for the winners. Perhaps this is an effective strategy for “anyone who wants to leverage the power of the social web to build a brand”, but it’s hardly new; advertising contests go back to at least the 1920s (e.g. Ivory Soap) and it’s a stretch to relabel them crowdsourcing, even if we’re using a social media platform for them now.

In closing

In closing, Michelle says “On the other hand, there is such a thing as giving the community so much power that they begin to make specific demands that may or may not be in keeping with the goals of the conference or the organization.” This brings up the issue of control at events, something that I’ve written about before. In 20 years of using crowdsourcing at events, I’ve never experienced an instance where a majority of participants made unreasonable demands. On the contrary, on every occasion when something unexpected (to me) has emerged from good group process, it’s turned out to be an accurate and useful way to improve the conference.

How web video powers global communication

The final article isn’t, in fact, an article, it’s a just-released video of a 19-minute TED talk by Chris Anderson entitled How web video powers global communication. In it, Chris describes what he terms Crowd Accelerated Innovation: “a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print”. Chris argues that the rapidly increasing availability of web video is drastically speeding up the ability of people all over the world to focus on and improve the best-of-breed sharing they discover on their screens.

In a sense, web video becomes a tool for effectively crowdsourcing experience and experiments. Chris believes that this new medium has the potential to revolutionize learning and the development of new ideas and their implementation. But he cautions “…to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness.” I think there’s a certain degree of hype in his presentation, but it’s well worth watching.

So, there you have a variety of ways in which crowdsourcing is entering and affecting the world of events. Which ways, if any, speak to you?

Tags: Convene, crowdsourcing, eventcamp, eventprofs, PCMA, peer session sign-up, TED| Posted in Event design | 7 Comments »

Comparing pre-conference and at-conference crowdsourcing

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 by Adrian Segar

I’ve written about my skepticism of attempts to crowdsource session topics before a conference. After running edACCESS 2010 last month, I realized I could analyze the success of our pre-conference crowdsourcing. So here is a real-life comparison of pre-conference and at-conference crowdsourcing.

pre-conference crowdsourcing: list of a few of the topic suggestions at edACCESS 2010
A few of the topic suggestions at edACCESS 2010

Conference details

edACCESS is a four-day conference for information technology staff at small independent schools that has been held every year since 1992. In 2010 there were 47 attendees, 9 of whom had not attended before. The conference uses the Conferences That Work event design.

Before the conference, we solicited suggestions for session topics via messages to the edACCESS listserv and email to registrants. Ideas could be posted on the edACCESS wiki, which requires registration. Some of the new attendees did not register on the wiki before the conference, but all returning attendees were registered (since most of each year’s conference content and discussion is posted there.)

Seven attendees (15%) posted a total of fourteen topic suggestions to the wiki before the conference.

In contrast, during the conference roundtable, 147 topics were suggested, an average of over three per participant.

The schedule for edACCESS 2010 included a vendor exhibit, two predetermined sessions (an attendee-created Demo Showcase and a Web 2.0 Demo Tools Workshop), and nine one-hour time slots for peer sessions with topics crowdsourced through the Conferences That Work peer session sign-up process, for which 78 topics were suggested.

We had space to run four simultaneous sessions in each of the nine time slots and ended up scheduling the 33 most popular (and feasible) of the 78 suggestions.

Findings

Of the 14 topics suggested prior to the conference, only 5 ended up being chosen for sessions by attendees at the event. So only 15% of the 33 actual conference sessions were predicted by attendees in advance of the event.

Of the 147 topics suggested during the conference roundtable, 26 were subsequently chosen for sessions. That’s 80% of the final sessions. Interestingly, seven of the final session topics were not mentioned in the roundtable notes. It’s quite common for participants to think of new topics after the roundtable is over. Once seen by other attendees, some of these ideas turn into desirable sessions.

Conclusions

It’s hard to know how to improve on our process of soliciting session ideas before the conference, short of forcing attendees to make suggestions during registration—something that would not go over well with the typical edACCESS attendee. In my experience, the above analysis is pretty typical for peer conferences I run. Having session topics and formats that fit participants’ needs is vital for the success of any conference. Given the poor showing for pre-conference topic crowdsourcing, (and, by extension, efforts of a conference’s program committee) I feel that having attendees brainstorm and then propose topics at the start of the event, as is done at Conferences That Work, is well worth the work involved.

I hope this comparison of pre-conference and at-conference crowdsourcing is informative. Do you think we should even be trying to crowdsource topics for a conference? Are you still skeptical of the utility of crowdsourcing topics at the beginning of a conference? What would you do to improve the success of crowdsourcing sessions before an event?

Tags: crowdsourcing, edACCESS, Event design, event-planning, peer session sign-up, session topic| Posted in Event design | 4 Comments »

Giving conference participants just what they want

Sunday, April 25th, 2010 by Adrian Segar

just what they want: a photograph of a sign above a restaurant that says "EVERY MONDAY ALL U CAN EAT BACON!"When I was an IT consultant I used to build custom database management systems—complicated, company-specific software that handled the unique way an organization did things. The normal way to do this is the Microsoft Word or kitchen-sink approach. Add every feature and ability you can think of (or that any important customer asks for) into the application. Then, let the user work with the entire glory of what you’ve created.

Over the years I found I could make a good living creating integrated systems that did things a little differently. Instead of company staff facing a complete set of menus, choices, and features, most of which they never used, I built interfaces where users only saw the functionality they required. Once logged on to the system, it appeared to contain only the functions and information needed to do their work. Yet, because the software spanned the entire company, any departmental changes were immediately available elsewhere in the organization.

Employees loved these systems because they gave them just what they wanted and no more. Without unneeded menus, options, and reports, employees worked with minimal distraction, leading to less stress and higher productivity.

Large traditional conferences exemplify the kitchen-sink approach I described above. The thinking goes: “If we have a program that includes sessions on anything that attendees might want, then they’ll come and be happy”. And perhaps this seems like the only answer, given that traditional conferences, at best, do a poor job of predicting and then offering what attendees really want.

Give attendees just what they want

Well, we can do better. When we ask attendees what they want to have happen, it turns out they are remarkably good at telling us. Especially if you’ve just presented them with a smorgasbord of possible topics gleaned from the entire group. That’s what the Conferences That Work roundtable and peer session sign-up sessions do. First, they uncover participants’ needs, experience, and expertise. Next, within a couple of hours, they turn these discoveries into a conference program that optimally matches just what attendees want, and no more.

Attendees love these conference programs because they contain just what they want and no more. Wouldn’t you?

What do you think about the feasibility of determining your conference program at the start of the event?

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

Tags: attendee-driven, event-planning, eventcamp, events, leadership, marketing, participant-driven, peer session sign-up, program, roundtable, Seth Godin| Posted in Event design, Uncategorized | 14 Comments »

Ride that – you must be joking!

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 by Adrian Segar

build an optimum program: photograph of a woman having a hard time riding a bike. Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/ / CC BY-SA 2.0Still skeptical that a peer conference can build an optimum program for your meeting? A program that’s better than anything your program committee could come up with?

Imagine you’d never seen a bicycle or any other two-wheel conveyance. Someone gives you one and says, “You can ride that thing without falling off.”

Wouldn’t you be skeptical of them too?

Sometimes you just have to experience things in this world to find out that life is not always what it seems. So, talk to anyone who’s been to a peer conference and see what they say. Or, best of all, organize or attend a peer conference yourself. I’m confident you’ll find you can build an optimum program for your event. You’ll discover what thousands have already experienced: that the Three Questions and session crowdsourcing used at the start of every peer conference lead to just the content that attendees really want — every time.

Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Tags: content, event-planning, peer session sign-up, program| Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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