Interactive meeting tool

There is a real trend toward adding interactivity to conferences…from encouraging Q&A to whiteboarding, breaking out into table-sized discussion groups, or giving the attendees a specific problem to solve.

But for some meetings, the interactivity is not simply a learning tool. Or an opportunity to contribute to the industry.

Sometimes it is the whole point of a meeting.

Like when a company is rolling out a new strategy or vision, and needs immediate employee feedback–both to improve the vision and to ensure full buy-in.

The June issue of Convene includes the article Faster Feedback, highlighting the abilities CoVision’s meeting software.  The idea is that after the presentation, each table group discusses the ideas presented, while a table moderator captures the key points on a networked PC.  A “theme team” 3-4 people who are skilled at seeing trends in responses, synthesize the collected ideas into a usable summary that quickly goes back to the presenter.  After a break the full group is already discussing how to modify or act on the original ideas.

Interesting that CoVision takes the automation only as far as it logically goes, but no farther.  Some day you can imagine pattern-recognition software replacing the 3-4 people in the theme team.  But I  would worry about whether that was an advantage.

It can be daunting to manage the process of really getting feedback from a large group.  In this case, Q&A would not get you there…and how many companies have decided that a lack of Q&A when they rolled out a new strategy meant that everyone was on board…to disastrous results.

This reminds us…there is no excuse not to get the group feedback.  There are tools to help.

 

Making the world a better place

Most people attend events to learn at the conference and compare products at the trade show.  And network.

We do not generally expect to receive a transformative experience. But isn’t that the goal? To set the bar a little bit higher and help our community achieve something they could not have done without this event?

Some events, like GreenBuild, have a tradition of leaving a lasting mark on each city their conference is in…encouraging attendees to participate in building a home, for example.

Some find other ways to give back to the community, like the Installfest held at LinuxWorld 2008, where old PCs were rescued from recycling to be refurbished with open source software and donated to California schools.

Another, perhaps simpler and more direct, way to let attendees get directly involved in helping their world is in brainstorming sessions as part of the conference.  First off, anything to help sessions become more interactive! But even more importantly, picking a challenge to let the regular people in the industry solve together is inspiring and uplifting.

I posted about AIHA (Industrial Hygiene) taking this approach recently.  Now I see how the PCMA (Professional Convention Management Association) put together a Think Tank of 3 dozen event industry professionals to figure out how to “convince the outside world of the value of face-to-face events”.  Unfortunately, this is a one-off event, not part of the annual PCMA meeting (perhaps in the future).  But on the plus side, the results were published in the May 2009 issue of Convene, making them available to all.

Even better, Convene published quotes from the participants, highlighting the value of the session in terms of a real opportunity to connect with peers, encouraging a different way of thinking, and contributing back to the community.

“When you stop for a day and put industry veterans in a room to work together and share ideas on how to improve our profession and/or specific meeting tactics, it is an amazing experience!”

“Learning from your equals through the exchange of ideas, large and small, is the best, in my opinion.”

“It was very helpful in encouraging me to think differently and focus more on the industry rather than the specific events that I normally work on every year.”

 

Memorable, engaging content

I attended AIHce last week in Toronto (American Industrial Hygiene Association), and was very impressed with their content.

Why?  In addition to the expected set of technical sessions and panels that are the core of an industry event, they experimented with Theming and Interactivity.

The keynote featured Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation.  (While I find speakers about selling and motivating off-putting, listening to a true salesman speak about his passion is totally motivating.)  You remember, the first X Prize, won by Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites in 2004, was a $10 million competition to build a privately funded craft that reaches a sub-orbit of 100 km twice in two weeks.  Maybe you didn’t know that the Foundation continues to fund X Prizes to solve many challenges in multiple fields, including healthcare, space, automotive, green…

Totally inspired by Dr. Diamandis’s speach, attendees were then challenged to similarly attack specific issues in their own industry, in sessions held later that day and the next.  In the session, a well-prepared and organized moderator introduce an expert panel to speak briefly on the challenge, and presented the attendees with a clear format to follow to make real progress over the two hours of the session.  Nine table groups of about 8 people each worked on the problem as a team…then a spokeperson for each table presented to the other groups and the expert panel, with opportunity for questions and discussion.  And then the panel chose a winner, whose solution was to be presented back to the AIHA board for potential implementation.  Of course, all ideas were captured for publication and further discussion.

You have never seen a more engaged group of people, totally engrossed in the transformative event by being allowed to contribute back to their industry in a meaningful way.

The other terrifically interactive session I attended was called “Unsolved IH Mysteries Workshop”, and, due to the limited size of each session, had to be held at least twice.  Here is their description:

Expanded and back by popular demand! This interactive program will prompt you to put on your thinking cap. Actual case studies involving IH field work will be presented. You will have all the data. You will know all the players. You will understand all the circumstances. But, you will not know the outcome. Working with groups of colleagues, you will discuss cases and potential remedies and each group will present its results. In the end, the facilitator will explain what actually occurred.

I am an event chick without any understanding of the complexities of Industrial Hygiene, but was mesmerized.  Who doesn’t want to play forensic detective? And the real attendees were engrossed.  By the end of the first case study absolutely every person in the room was contributing questions and comments.

I posted a week ago about conference sessions as hell.  These sessions were not…they were fascinating, involving and memorable.

[Kudos to AIHA Executive Director Peter O'Neil and his team.]

 

Case Study: Twitter at a Conference

Time Magazine just published the best description I’ve seen for the power of using Twitter at a conference.  (Scroll down to the heading: The Open Conversation.)

At first, all these tweets came from inside the room and were created exclusively by conference participants tapping away on their laptops or BlackBerrys. But within half an hour or so, word began to seep out into the Twittersphere that an interesting conversation about the future of schools was happening at #hackedu.

Making the point that not only does the Twitter feed capture the thinking in the room, but also:

1. enhances the discussion by creating the second outlet that bubbles that into the verbal conversation

2. allows people outside the conference to join into the discussion, and have their thoughts blended into the conference itself

3. continues the discussion online among those who attended and those who didn’t long after the physical event is over

4. retains a written record of the discussion, including, essentially, running commentary, footnotes, and bibliography, with tinyurl links

What a powerful set of impacts, for the cost of one large plasma screen!

If the conference director or education lead does not feel inspired to extend the conversation online (really?!) then the attendee marketing side of the business needs to push this.  Because it is clear in this example that the online discussion made the physical meeting MORE of a must-attend, I can’t believe I missed it event!

 

Rock concerts are events too

Great post by Keith Johnston on his Meeting and Event Thoughts blog on what event professionals can learn from the Dead.  (Previously known as the Grateful Dead.)

The best ideas come from Intersectional Innovation: combining ideas and practices across disciplines to come up with ideas that are truly new…not just the next incremental step.

Keith lists several things he learned by attending a Dead concert recently.  Among them are creating an experience rather than a concert, love your audience, change it up, choose best of breed suppliers.  My favorite, though, and the most counter-intuitive is:

Give it away and don’t care, it will only make people want more. Since the bands founding, the Grateful Dead have always encouraged concert goers to record, reproduce and share the material with anyone and everyone (as long as you do it with an open heart and for free). This is an important thing to note in this time of copy write laws and lawyers….you should give away all of your conference materials to anyone who wants them, even those who did not attend. It is good to reinforce the message for those that were there, and it makes those who were not there wish they were. Don’t be scared, try it, you will find that you are not hurting anything, you are only encouraging people to spread the word for you. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

I couldn’t agree more.