The National Conference Center Blog

As planners, we all wish we had what it takes to rock our attendees’ socks off. In fact, we all have the potential – it’s only a matter of knowing and having the tools and elements to make it happen! Often, it can become easy to focus on hosting the event without a hitch. While it is important to know how to execute the details, it’s even more significant to add modern meeting elements to activate and move your attendees.

There is a need for face to face interaction, so if you have the right conference tools and elements, your event can be the one attendees want and need to travel to each year. Here are five elements outlining how you can create a conference that engages the audience and creates word of mouth marketing from their  mind-opening experience:

The Secret of designing engaged learning environments

Do you have a deeper understanding for what supports an active learning en­vironment? Dr. Lennie Scott-Webber, who researches design in the academic community, spends her time overseeing research for the development of Steelcase design products in education facilities. She defines active learning as a huge paradigm shift from passive learning in the past 15 years. Scott-Webber is an advocate of peer conferences and active learning environments, where she says each “student” is able to develop the content by working in groups and migrate with their feet to what’s of interest to them. At conferences, Scott- Webber explains, “People want to be engaged in learning and to be able to tell their ‘boss’ what they learned. Millennial and Genera­tion Y aren’t willing to come into a [school or conference] classroom where it’s ‘chalk and talk’…” As a result, this is forcing the academic and confer­ence community to do something different.

The Secret of having longer conference breaks and ample space

Tom Condon, who specializes in designing meeting experiences for Steelcase, the world’s largest office environments manufacturer, explains, “People want to connect to speakers or other colleagues at a conference. Conference organizers are listening and reacting by creating more opportunities for engagement.” For example, conference innovators are creating longer lunch breaks, building space where individuals can hang out and a designated lounge area with time-slots for attendees to have conversations with presenters, all of which promote face time and one-on-one interaction.

The Secret of pairing Gen Y with Baby Boomers

According to Jeff Hurt, Vice President of Education and Engagement at Velvet Chainsaw, there are significant differences in training experiences between Generation Y and Baby Boomers late to adopt technology. He explains, “Technology is a part of the training experience and Baby Boomers that refuse to adapt technology are not utilizing training tools at their disposal. However, the perfect mix for train­ing is to pair Generation Y with Baby Boomers.” Studies re­veal that Generation Y enjoys being in the company of Baby Boomers to ask questions and learn about their past experiences, while Baby Boomers love coaching and men­toring. To build upon the ideal pair, Jeff adds, “Generation Y can offer Baby Boomers technology insight; this becomes peer-knowledge sharing, which is highly rated.

The Secret of ending mediocre hybrid events by catering to your virtual audience

Hybrid technol­ogy is the ability for users to watch and receive content from a confer­ence without physically attending. Typically, an emcee will moderate the virtual experience. For example, at Event Camp Europe 2011 in London, the organizers established remote pods in Poland, Sweden and Amsterdam and had up to ten participants at each pod; plus, there were Google+ Hangouts where 20 additional people participated in the conference. For the remote au­dience, the organizers had a mod­erator to emcee, provide specific content and field their questions. Since the virtual audience couldn’t partake in the evening social, the organizers closed the session with a virtual wine tasting for the three remote pods; they shipped wine to these different locations and had a sponsor describing each pour. Corbin Ball, an international technology speaker and a huge fan of the Event Camp conference series explains, “[The virtual attendees] saw it, smelled it, felt it, tasted it, they blogged or interacted and chatted about it. You can engage remote audiences with all five senses. It’s a clever, in­teresting idea and shows creativity using these tools.” At Event Camp, these tools gave attendees the ability to engage with the audience and have a unique experience that would occur at the real event.

The Secret all attendees want to voice their opinion

Instead of talking at your attendees, give them tools so they can contrib­ute. Attendees can help you share your strategy by participating. How do you get them to participate? Simon Bryan with IML Worldwide recommends polling or text messaging as meeting tools for everyone to share their insight; then it becomes a meeting with actionable intelli­gence. You can also find out what all your audience is thinking. Employees can leave the meeting knowing goals were set and they can do their job better in the office, therefore increasing productivity and profitability for the company.

What are the secret elements you use to knock your attendees’ socks off? What are your future plans to add new elements?