Just how sticky is your conference?

Sticky conferences create experiences that last beyond the two to three days of the conference. They focus on creating real relationships with strong connections. It’s about more than speed networking where people just exchange business cards or speed sessions to see how much info people can cram into their brains.

Sticky conferences focus on interactivity of participants. The more interactive participants are; the more engaged they are. The more engaged they are; the more committed they are. The more committed they are; the more empowered they are.

George Mason University Professor Todd Kashdan, author of Curious, shares more about the importance of curiosity, the unexpected and active interactive experiences to create a sticky conference.

Here’s a rundown of his video if you want to fast forward to a specific area.
00:16 – Fostering Connections At Conferences
01:40 – Plan Interactive Experiences Not Passive
03:11 – Creating Disruptions To Keep Attention
04:20 – Creating A Better Signal To Noise Ratio (Too much info at conferences. How do we get good info that is useful?)
05:08 – For More Information On Curiosity & Sticky Conferences

Video edited from PCMA’s Convening Leaders 2012 Learning Lounge Live Chat Room video clip.

What are some specific things you can do to create more sticky conference experiences? How can conference organizers foster an attitude of curiosity from attendees?

What influences someone to join a nonprofit association?

According to a 2012 association study, recommendations from advisors, colleagues, experts, families and friends has the most influence on a person’s decision to join an association.

32% of association members state that they joined based on the recommendation of another person. 14% received recommendations from families and friends. 14% from colleagues and 6% from advisors and experts.

5 Drivers That Causes Members To Recommend Membership

With nearly one-third of association membership coming from Word Of Mouth marketing from someone they know, what causes someone to recommend an association?

According to Jerry Elprin’s research (requires a login), there are five key drivers that cause a member to recommend membership to others.

1. A perception that the association is a good organization.

The member is confident about the direction the association is heading. He/She also believes that it is being run efficiently.

2. A feeling of strong connection to the association.

The member has a strong sense of belonging to the association. The association is their preferred professional association. He/she also cares about what the association does.

3. A belief that the association enhances credibility.

He/she is proud to be a member. The member believes that belonging to the association enhances his/her credibility. Meeting the membership and educational requirements makes that membership special.

4. Faith that the organization is the leading source of best practices.

The member believes that the association is at the forefront of the profession or industry. He/she believes that the organization offers indispensable learning opportunities.

5. An opinion that the association is proactive.

The member strongly feels that these three words adequately characterize the association: leading edge, stimulating and proactive.

Elprin’s study found that promoting excellence in the profession, keeping up on technical developments, enhancing the public’s image of the profession, networking, discounts and insurance benefits did not drive someone to recommend membership.

Nor did satisfaction with the association lead to a recommendation or much more importantly, loyalty.

How can your organization leverage these drivers to increase your membership? How do you track membership loyalty at your association?

Quickly, name your five senses.

That’s easy! Right?

Sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.

Now, what percentage of information comes though each sense?

That one is not so easy.

Here’s another way to think about this. How much information do we gather from each sense in the same amount of time as compared to the other senses? For the moment, assume that each of your senses works perfectly.

Senses: What The Research Tells Us About Their Abilities

Neuroscience and cognitive psychology research has uncovered the amazing power of our senses. This was unimaginable a few years ago.

According to researchers Dr. L.D. Rosenblum, Dr. Harold Stolovitch and Dr Erica Keeps, here’s how much information each of our senses processes at the same time as compared to our other senses.

83.0% – Sight
11.0% – Hearing
03.5% – Smell
01.5% – Touch
01.0% – Taste

That’s surprising. And it flies in the face of some of our conventional educational theories like VAK (visual, auditory and kinesthetic) and Learning Styles. No matter how you slice the pie, our brains give preference to processing vision as compared to our other senses.

Not convinced?

Dr. Stolovitch and Dr. Keeps use the following examples to help us understand this better.

Imagine you’re in an open field. How far can you see? About 50 miles. How far can you hear? Maybe a mile or two. How about smell? 10-20 yards, assuming that the wind is not blowing. How about touch? Just an arm’s length. Taste? A couple of inches.

Senses As Learning Portals

As learners, each of our senses has different processing capacities.

Sight is the major sense and extremely important to learning. Hearing is also important because we acquire our language skills as young children through our hearing. Language gives us the ability to name and explain our experiences. Together sight and hearing help us perceive much of the world around us.

The more our senses are engaged in meaningful and structured methods, the more easily learning can occur. Ultimately, our senses act as learning portals. All raw information enters our brains through those learning portals. Our challenge is making meaning from that information and connecting it with previous experiences and past knowledge.

Do we perceive all of the information bombarding our senses? Do we have the ability to selectively filter out unnecessary or irrelevant information coming in through our senses?

According to Litmus, reputation and engagement are increasingly important factors when it comes to reaching your audience through email marketing.

After visiting your website, making a purchase, or stumbling across your company’s blog, a customer has signed up to receive email from you. For a marketer, this is the most fragile, difficult relationship to maintain, and one wrong step can end in tragedy with your electronic correspondence in the spam folder. Look below to find out how to avoid this tragic fate when sending your emails to the masses.

by Column Five Media. Browse more infographics.

What surprises you most about email according to this infographic? How finicky are you when it comes to subscribing and unsubscribing to email?

When I was a new teenage driver, I learned not to ask my father for directions. (Remember we did not have Google Maps yet.)

Our discussion would go something like this:

Jeff: Dad, what exit do I take off of the freeway to get to Valley View Mall?

Dad: You get on Peters Creek Road and head north for a few miles until you see Mill Mountain Highway. Take that exit and go east for a couple of miles until you see Valley View Mall on your left hand side. Take that exit. Then turn right onto Valley View Mall Lane. If you go too far, you’ll miss the exit and have to make a U-turn. If you end up at Shoney’s, take the right, then a left, then another right and you should be in the back of the mall parking lot.

Jeff: (head swimming) Where’s Mill Mountain Highway?

Dad: It’s the freeway you take to go downtown.

Jeff: But that’s I-581.

Dad: Yes, that’s Mill Mountain Highway. Ok, here’s another way you could go. Forget what I just told you and take the following route instead…

Jeff: Ar-g-g-g-g-h. (Walking away in frustration.)

The Expert’s World Is Different Than The Novice’s

As you can see in the above exchange, the expert direction giver (my dad) views his world differently from the way the novice direction taker (me) sees it. I clearly was asking the Subject Matter Expert (SME). Yet I was not learning from the SME’s directions.

No one is at fault here. Both my dad and I wanted a successful outcome. Both of us were fully motivated to find a solution. Both of us were fully engaged in the learning process.

We assume that if SMEs know so much, they should have no challenges helping others learn. And yet it doesn’t normally happen because experts and novices do not process information in the same way. In fact, the greater the expertise, the less the expert thinks like a novice learner.

So what’s the result of most SMEs presenting to audiences? Just like in my scenario, learning breakdown.

We’ve all experienced one of these frustrating SME-Novice exchanges from asking for a recipe, to asking a coworker how to access information, to asking how to login to a Webinar, to listening to a conference presenter.

Many of us have a fundamental belief that the best way to learn something is to ask an expert. Yet research continually demonstrates how differently experts and novices view the world. More specifically, how something should be learned.

Unlocking The SME-Novice Learning Mystery

Can you ride a bicycle? If you can, can you explain to me how you maintain your balance on that bicycle?

Most people answer yes to both questions. When people proceed to explain how they keep their body and bike from falling, the responses change dramatically. Why? The majority of what we have learned on how to balance a bike was through trial and error over time. We simply grew our ability to do it.

Our expertise in riding a bicycle is in the form of procedural knowledge. We’ve built up our knowledge and experience on how to do it.

When we ask SMEs to present, we are asking them to use declarative knowledge. They are expected to transmit knowledge by explaining, giving examples, providing context and discussing case studies.

The learners then have to convert that declarative knowledge from the training back into procedural knowledge to meet the expectation of being able to do things in a new way. It’s much easier said (declarative) than done (procedural)!

Education research shows that what we learn declaratively is not easily transformed into procedural knowledge unless we already possess similar procedural knowledge. The reverse is also true. Procedural knowledge does not easily translate into declarative knowledge.

This conversion challenge illustrates why my father and I had problems in the learning process. And it illustrates why SMEs have challenges presenting to novices.

Adjusting Presentations To Align With The Type Of Knowledge Given

If the goal of a presentation is “talk-about” knowledge (the what, why, facts, recall or names) we can provide activities that our learners discuss declaratively. If the goal is for them to acquire and use the knowledge, then the strategy must provide a more hands-on approach. This can be more difficult in conference settings where they can’t immediately apply the information. The work around is to have them visualize the situation and then identify where to apply the new steps of the process and predict outcomes.

Ultimately, asking SMEs to teach novices how to do something is setting both groups up for failure. The best approach is to match what the participants have to learn with the mode of instruction (declarative/procedural). Offering a presentation that includes a combination of both, explanation and practice, is the winning formula for success.

What are some ways we can use SMEs at conferences and events? Why do we place such an emphasis on learning from experts?

Have you ever seen a movie that starts with a fast action scene?

Immediately, you are pulled into the middle of things.

Screenwriters call this media res or in the middle of a plot. They know that they can pull their viewers into the story by placing the action at the beginning. This same principle can be applied to your conference and its space.

Attendees Enter On Action

Conference registration areas that are easy to navigate are critical for registrants to feel safe and welcome in a space. Equally important is having them get excited by the buzz and vibe of community as soon as they enter the scene.

So often our welcome and registration areas are uncomfortably quiet and furniture is removed to accommodate large groups of people. Unfortunately, this sends an unconscious and emotional message that the conference is not well attended, lacks energy and that people are kept away from each other, not invited to connect.

Your welcome area needs activity, energy and music rather than a large massive empty space. That helps your registrants understand the culture of your conference. Then they know that they are to be participants and not just mere passive consumers of the experience.

How do you do that? By providing areas for people to lounge, connect and network with each other. By offering some high-energy participatory, hands-on activities. Think about a carnival midway. As soon as you enter the fair, there is an immediate invitation to dive in and participate.

You don’t want to overdo it. Too much activity or crowds of long lines can also be a deterrent.

Transitions are important as well. Let your customers feel the energy of the space immediately and also allow them to enter it on their own terms. Consider offering a visible threshold between themselves and the action through a different type of floor treatment, a clear glass or plastic wall or even a partial partition.

Provide Room To Think

On the flip side, you also want to create some places within your conference that foster and nurture reflection, thinking and relaxation.

Current brain research shows that insights, ideas and epiphanies occur when the brain is most relaxed. It happens in strange places and unusual environments.

You’ll want to create some non-work environments that encourage relaxation amid the high-energy and fast pace of your conference. Choose a metaphor for your relaxation spaces that align with your theme like spa, yoga studio, Zen garden or forest park bench. Identify the properties that make the space relaxing such as natural or soft light from incandescent lamps, comfortable seating and soft music.

These spaces offer a crucial respite from an open collaborative environment. The more extroverted some of your conference sessions or activities, the more you need these spots of passive, comfortable yin amid the paths of high-energy, brightly lit yang. Keep them low-tech with no electrical outlets.

The Point And Counterpoint For Conference Space And Culture

When designing these spaces, you want to provide strong points and counterpoints. Learning lounges are great because they amplify engagement and participation. Their counterpoints are spaces that invite introversion, reflection and introspection.

Large open spaces should always have smaller, closable spaces available nearby to provide small intimate conversations and an escape from the crowd. You need both in your conference experience.

Identifying the point and counterpoint in both types of spaces provide exciting opportunities to amplify details that scream one thing or another. Consistency of intent creates stickiness. Variation in execution creates conference attendee delight.

When you provide spaces and activities for both action and reflection you’ve created a holistically supported environment. You’re intentionally fostering community and relationships. Then you’ve truly created a conference experience that allows your participants to experience a range of emotions, connect with each other and customize their experience.

What types of high-energy things have you experienced in a conference registration area? What are some examples of reflection areas that you’ve seen at conferences?

Lectures are a barrier to the listener’s thinking.

The constant one-way transfer of information is like a dripping faucet. The information keeps coming and coming and coming.

And that constant drip of new data, facts, figures and info keeps the brain overwhelmed with new information. The listener is faced with a choice: listen to the new information or think about what they just heard. You can’t listen to the lecture and think about that information at the same time. You either do one or the other.

Small group and peer discussions foster learning and retention in ways the lecture never could. Adding peer discussion to a lecture is the winning formula that increases learning and thinking.

Creating Horseshoe Groups For Discussion

Professor Donald Bligh talks about using horseshoe groups in his book What’s The Use Of Lectures, first published in 1971. The horseshoe group is a useful method to alternate formal instruction with audience discussion.

A horseshoe group is a merging of two buzz groups. It usually has between four and twelve participants. The optimum size for a horseshoe group is six people. Groups larger than six should divide into two smaller groups for discussions.

Remember, the larger the group, the shorter the time each person will have to talk or discuss. You want to give each person adequate time to contribute to the group as well as articulate their thoughts.

According to education researcher Jane Abercrombie, discussion groups are arranged so that each member may interact face-to-face with every other member. With horseshoe groups, people sit in a horseshoe arrangement around a table. Chairs are arranged in a C or U shape with the opening facing either the center or the front of the room.

Adapted from Donald A. Bligh image of Buzz Groups in What's The Use Of Lectures.

The opening at each table allows for focus to move from small group discussion back to the presenter and vice versa. The opening also allows the presenter to easily join each group to listen and provide feedback as needed. If the presenter does join a group, he or she should crouch or sit in a chair at the opening. The presenter should always try to be at eye level with the group’s members. Standing above them can kill discussion and represents authority or exclusivity. Subconsciously, the group may think, “Oh, the presenter is here now. He/She will have the answers. Time to be quiet. We don’t have to think or discuss anymore.”

Why Use Horseshoe Groups?

Alternating a formal lecture or presentation with horseshoe groups gives the audience time to digest, think, reflect and process the information they just heard. It also gives individuals an opportunity for feedback from their peers regarding their thinking.

Horseshoe groups promote analytical thinking, creativity, evaluation, assessment and application of the information to specific challenges or situations. Presenters should intentionally and carefully consider what questions to ask to cultivate thinking in a specific direction. The more the participants can talk about the practical application of the information, the more likely they are to consider using it in their work.

How can you use horseshoe groups for your next conference? What are some ways to encourage people to participate in small group discussions?

Networking: there’s more to it than business professionals speed handshaking while exchanging business cards.

It’s an opportunity to connect and link with others as you share information, services and ideas with each other.

Attendee Networking Expectations Increase

There is no doubt about it. Conference attendee networking expectations are on the rise!

Your conference is often your stakeholders’ best opportunity to connect in person with thought leaders and colleagues.

While we intuitively know this, networking at most conferences continues to be a random, luck-of-the-draw encounter.

There’s a better way.

Facilitating Planned Networking Serendipity

By definition, serendipity is a happy accident or surprising discovery that comes when we least expect it.

Planned serendipity, on the other hand, is an effort to increase the likelihood and frequency of these discoveries. And it’s happening all around us.

Retail stores collect volumes of your product-purchase data. Suddenly, you’re getting discount offers that mirror the products and services you purchase most.

Have you noticed any changes in your Google-search results? Data from social-media profiles now factor into search results.

When planned serendipity is executed well, customers notice and appreciate far better experiences. When planned serendipity efforts are more obvious or cross privacy lines, customers feel manipulated, even deceived, and relationships deteriorate.

For years, your customers (attendees) have been sharing valuable data with you that can help create the kind of planned-serendipity moments they will prize at your conferences. Have you been paying attention?

Using Data To Foster Planned Serendipity

If you’ve been capturing and analyzing attendee data, you already know what drives people to register for your conference, which sessions they enjoy most, what products and services interest them, and what critical issues are top of mind at any given point. This is precisely the information you need to help identify others they should meet at your conference.

Here are three ways to make those connections more likely:

1. House conference guests on the same floors.

When like-minded attendees are in closer proximity, the chances for them to meet and engage in meaningful conversations increase. Because they’re enrolled in the same learning track, they’ll recognize each other when waiting for the elevator. In social psychology circles, there’s a phenomenon known as the “mere-exposure effect” — people develop preferences for things (or people) simply because they are more familiar with them. The more a person is seen by someone, the more likeable that person becomes.

2. Create small-group seating clusters to spark impromptu conversations.

In meeting rooms, create pod-seating clusters where four to six people can easily gather and chat. Create similar cluster-seating arrangements at restaurants, in lobbies and surrounding all networking receptions. You’ll be amazed at how connections and conversations accelerate.

3. Train staff and volunteers to be connectors.

As participants arrive at sessions and receptions, staff and volunteers need to be on their toes, circulating and engaging in conversations. Show staff and volunteers how to ask participants the kinds of questions (e.g., What session did you enjoy most today?) that can guide them in making valuable introductions to others. This is particularly important for new and introverted members who may not know many people and who would appreciate the extra-mile effort from your team. Create an army of connectors and networking conversations multiply.

Want more information? Download a sample chapter of the new book Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business.

What are some sample questions your army of connectors can ask attendees to connect them with others? What are some other ways you can create planned serendipity at your conference?

Adapted from Dave’s Forward Thinking column in PCMA’s Convene. Reprinted with permission of Convene, the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association. ©2012.

Joe Pulizzi shares how he uses content marketing to grow attendance at the Content Marketing World Conference.

Here’s a rundown of his video if you want to fast forward to a specific area.

00:10 – Who Is Joe Pulizzi & What Is The Content Marketing World Conference
01:00 – What Is Content Marketing?
02:07 – How To Use Content Marketing To Grow Conference Attendance
03:39 – Tips For Creating Content For Your Conference Marketing
06:59 – For More Information On Content Marketing

Video edited from PCMA’s Convening Leaders 2012 Learning Lounge Live Chat Room video clip.

How does your organization use content marketing to grow conference attendance? What’s the most challenging part of content marketing for your conferences?

According to PC Housing stats, smartphones and tablets are slowly placing themselves in between water and food as top necessities for business travelers.

It makes sense.

Being on the road is simply made easier and more manageable by these tools that allow us to stay connected. Yet are these mobile devices taking up too much of our time?

Check out PC Housing’s infographic below to see how dependent you are in comparison to other road warriors!

Business Traveler’s Mobile Dependence Infographic created by PC Housing

What’s the most unusual place you use your mobile device? How frequently do you use your mobile device?