Our time is valuable.

Many of us see our time as money, a resource that we don’t want to waste.

Asking people to commit 30-, 45- or even 60-minutes of their time to attend your Webinar is asking a lot. It’s critical that your digital event provide tremendous value and ROI or you’ll lose your attendees’ trust.

Establish Expectations And Responsibilities

As digital event presenter, it’s your responsibility to make sure that everyone that participates succeeds. You need to provide enough direction and instruction so that your remote attendees can prepare and participate enthusiastically.

Before the event, make sure that marketing materials clearly articulate what is expected of your audience. You’ll want to help them understand that they have an important role to play in the experience. Encourage them to “own the role” just as a presenter would own the stage or a singer would own the concert hall.

How do you do this? Send the participants a specific email after they have registered that invites them to be more involved than just passive listening. Let them know that the best way to make the digital event a success is summed up in one word: participate.

Participate Is A Verb

Let your remote audience know both before and at the start of the Webinar the importance of their participation.

Participate is a verb. It involves some type of action. The synonyms for participate include contribute, chip in, involve yourself, partake, play a part and share. Let your remote attendees know that the more they participate in the meeting, the more they will get out of it.

How can they participate?

They can be present. Fully engaged. Listen. Think and most importantly, share their comments via the text chat.

Encourage them to use the available tools to communicate comments, feelings, attitudes, thoughts and questions. Entice them to respond to polls, surveys and questions as well as provide feedback.

Invite them to click away from the presentation if the experience is not meeting their needs. If they stay connected, encourage them to give their undivided attention and above all, to participate!

Nudging Participation

If during the Webinar your audience is not using the chat feature or responding to polls, prod them into participating.

Use the attendee feature to call out some names directly and ask them to respond. Tell them you’re going to give them a few moments to get those fingers typing. Then hum the Jeopardy theme song to add some humor.

When using a digital elbow to get people to participate, be careful not to come across as demanding. You don’t want to create more stress or fear. Gently nudge them to do it. This will also keep your audience alert.

As people respond, praise them. Thank them and add some color commentary. Give them the equivalent of a head nod with a “Yes,” or “Me too,” or “Yep, I’ve felt that way.”

Helping your remote participants prepare for your digital event will lead to a higher level of accomplishment and enjoyment. It also results in a lower level of stress and frustration for all of those involved.

What are some other tips you’ve used or seen presenters use to get a remote audience to participate? What communication tools should your digital event platform employ so audiences can participate?

Are you a virus?

Let me rephrase that. Do you see yourself as an innovator, a change agent, one that pushes the envelope?

If you do, you may very well be a virus.

Defining A Virus

A virus is an infectious agent that replicates within the cells of a living host.

Viruses spread in many ways. Insects spread viruses in plants and animals. Coughs and sneezes spread viruses in humans. Contact with food, water or an object where a virus landed can spread viruses.

Extending The Virus Metaphor

Many conferences are in need of a change. They need a virus acting as a change agent to do things differently. They need someone to have the courage to take a stand and foster innovation.

So how can the virus metaphor help us innovate more?

1. We can’t see a virus with naked eye.

Viruses often innovate in the safety of a smaller meeting or as a pilot project within a larger meeting. If you attempt to use event technology in a new way at your meeting, you may be a virus. Unfortunately, we can’t easily see these viruses. It’s only through the sharing of stories that the virus becomes visible.

2. A virus can only replicate within a living host.

As a conference innovator, do you share your thoughts, strategies and experiments with others? Who is your conference colleague that serves as a springboard for ideas and innovations? Viral replication begins with conversation and conversion. Openly sharing your innovative ideas may be the catalyst that ensures that your conference and organization remains vibrant.

3. Viruses often trigger natural defenses.

Just like a virus, it’s common for innovators to be attacked while the followers prosper. Once your superiors or customers identify you as a virus, the change agent, it may trigger their defenses. Organizational immune systems are comprised of those who want to maintain the status quo. It might be the AV vendor who doesn’t want you to livestream the meeting or Skype in a presenter. Or it may be some vocal customers who say they aren’t ready to adapt their conference routine to the realities of a changing world.

Regardless of the antibodies you encounter, know that it’s natural for people to defend the status quo. The most fearless innovators are accustomed to others acting as barriers. They know that it’s about a change management process and sharing lots of information. While the virus may slow, ultimately their viral nature is resistant to the system’s natural defenses.

4. Viruses may be immune to antibiotics and need to be aware of vaccination programs.

Sometimes organizational leaders adopt policies to protect the conference from disruptive change. “Mobile devices and laptops are not allowed at our conference. Doors are shut and locked from the outside once the program begins.” While these policies may seem like good ideas in the short term, often they tend to expire as other conferences evolve.

We Need A Conference Epidemic

Our traditional conference needs an epidemic. We need innovative practices to go viral and infect meeting professionals across the globe. If we are to reimagine the conference, organizers will need the services of continually evolving range of viruses.

Are you ready to join me for a conference pandemic?

What are some other ways the innovative meeting professionals are like viruses? What do conference organizers need to foster innovative and creativity successfully?

Ruts. We all have them.

A rut is a settled or established habit or course of action, especially a boring one. It is usually a boring, predictable, stale routine.

So, is your conference education stuck in a rut? Have you created predictable tracks and paths?

If you’re like most meeting professionals, you start planning for next year’s conference with good intentions and end up with the same format and tracks. Often you have very few new faces at the podium. The end result is a cookie-cutter experience.

Audiences Want An Education Refresh

If you want to retain and grow your audience, breathing new life into your conference education is a must. Here are four quick fixes to consider that will help you design an improved conference experience:

1. Make the Content Current

Results of a survey of 250 association professionals, conducted by Velvet Chainsaw and Tagoras in September, indicated that about 75 percent of respondents use a speaker’s call-for-presentations process that closes nine to 10 months before the annual conference. Attendees often complain that education is too basic and outdated.

The Fix: Re-examine your call-for-presentations deadline and shrink it to six to eight months out from the conference. Program 80 percent of your sessions for the initial marketing push, leaving holes that can be filled with relevant and timely topics. Announcing newly added sessions in the weeks leading up to your meeting is a drip-marketing campaign strategy that helps attract hold-out registrants. Consider an exclusivity clause in your speaker agreements stating that their content will be presented first at your conference and not presented at another event for an extended period of time.

2. Identify Content Gaps

Conferences that rely solely on the call-for-presentations process rarely produce the education that your participants need most.

The Fix: Prior to opening up your call-for-papers, survey or crowdsource your primary audience segments to gain an understanding of their major problems. Make it clear that proposals that map to your primary audience segment needs will be given greater consideration. After plotting the initial program based on the problems, then see which proposals match to the needs. Then seek out presenters that fill any missing gaps.

3. Coach Industry Speakers

Sending speaker communication to manuals or speaker portals isn’t enough. Much of this type of communication is ignored and focuses on logistical needs versus education excellence.

The Fix: Helps speakers prepare content that is current and includes audience participation. On average, it takes about eight hours to prepare a one-hour presentation. Are your presenters putting in this  much time?

A common attendee complaint is “there wasn’t enough time for the session.” Make sure your presenters are focused on the three-to-five things they want the learner to recall. Content reduction and laser focus should be your mantra.

4. Continuous Improvement

According to the survey referenced previously, only 70 percent of conference organizers ask attendees to rate each speaker in their session evaluations. If you want an improvement, you must have better data.

The Fix: Keep a speaker database or Excel workbook with ratings. Session evaluations should evaluate each speaker’s style, delivery and knowledge. Also, survey whether the presentation matched the learning objectives. Top speakers should be invited back and will need less coaching. The intent is to invite back only the cream of the crop. The top 25 percent is a good rule of thumb.

Leadership Participation is a Must

If your organization’s leaders are not actively attending and participating in the conference education, that needs to change. No board or committee meeting is as important as participating fully in the education and networking experience alongside those professionals that organizational leaders serve. Don’t allow these conflicts during official conference education.

Adapted from Dave’s People & Processes column in PCMA’s November 2011 edition of Convene. Reprinted with permission of Convene, the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association. ©2012.

Why do you think some conference organizers resist change and cling tightly to their traditional call-for-presentation methods?  What are some tips that you would add to this list to improve conference education?

Many people believe that PowerPoint (PPT) presentations are a leading killer of learning. We even call it “Death by PPT.”

Actually, the typical 45-, 60- or 90-minute speech has a higher mortality rate than PPT. And that speech may actually be a fugitive living under an assumed name like keynote, lecture, breakout, plenary, concurrent or education session.

If the goal of the presentation is learning, then the speaker needs to allocate some of their talk time to the audience. The speaker needs to allow the audience to think about and discuss their main points during their lecture. Good presenters facilitate so audiences can participate.

Oh and by the way, it’s not PPT that kills learning. It’s the abuse and misuse of PPT that is the leading cause of death in education. And it’s too many PPT bullets aimed directly at audiences’ heads.

Following A Natural Learning Process

Our ancestors learned that they had a better chance of survival if they worked together instead of against each other. First, they had to learn to communicate. As they refined their communication, they learned to explain, respond, debate, engage, ask, discuss, coach, encourage and share.

We do the same today. We talk so that we can understand. We talk so we can remember. We talk so we can learn.

Sure listening is part of the process. But just listening to a lecture is not enough. The truth is that listening should be the smallest part of the process.

5 Reasons Why Audience Discussions Are Important

Don’t mistake audience Q & A with a speaker as audience discussion. The best audience discussions happen in pairs, triads or small groups. Consider the following through that lens.

1. Talking to another person increases retention.

When people verbally explain new content to another person, they process the information three times. They hear it; they think about it; and they restate it. In order to talk about it, they must process it and connect it to some previous experience. Even a simple two-minute paired discussion about how to apply something they heard increases the fact that they’ll remember it more than just listening.

2. Talking to another person fosters feedback.

During conversation, people have the opportunity to give and receive feedback. It’s part of the normal give and take process of discussion. Often we affirm what someone says. Or we may question it and suggest a different perspective. During this process, we deepen our understanding of the content.

3. Talking to another person nurtures relationships.

Neuroscientist Dr. John Medina says, “Our ability to learn has deep roots in relationships. Relationships matter when attempting to teach humans.”

When people talk to each other, they form relationships during that process. These relationships are just as important as the content. Relationships create a sense of psychological safety. The safer we feel with others, the more likely we are to ask questions, take risks, be open to new ideas and try new skills. In short, we learn better.

4. Talking to another person increases meta learning.

Meta learning is the awareness of and taking control of one’s own learning. It’s the ability to control the habits of assessment, association, inquiry, judgment, perception and reflection.

When an audience is given time to discuss the content, explain their understanding of it and suggest how it applies to their situation, their learning increases. When they are allowed to ask questions, offer suggestions, solicit feedback, share opinions and express what is or isn’t working for them they feel more empowered. This leads to continual self-improvement.

5. Talking to another person increases self-esteem.

Everyone likes to be heard. Everyone likes to share what they know. When audiences have the opportunity to talk with each other in pairs or small groups, they increase their confidence. Each adult benefits, the group benefits and the learning experienced is strengthened.

Flip The Keynote Model If Learning Is The Goal

In short, the person doing the most talking in your session, is doing the most learning. It’s time to flip the keynote model and allow the audience to talk more than the speaker!

What are some tips you can share about fostering audience discussions during presentations? What are some typical questions speakers can ask their audience to spark conversations?

Most nonprofit associations find it difficult to abandon anything.

Everything is a cause or “God’s work.”

Yet performance and results are extremely important and often difficult to measure and control.

Moral Versus Economic Causes

A moral cause is an absolute good.

For example, some religious leaders have been preaching against sex outside of marriage for years. Results have been small, if any at all. In these leaders’ minds, the absence of results proves that they just have to increase their efforts. This is the essence of a moral cause.

An economic cause asks: Is this the best application of our scarce resources. There is much work to be done. Let’s put our resources where we can achieve results. We cannot afford to be honorable and continue this project where we seem to be unable to achieve results.

To believe that whatever we do is a moral cause, and should be pursued whether there are results or not, is a constant temptation for nonprofit executives. It’s also an evasive lure for boards.

There are always more moral causes to be served than the nonprofit has resources. The nonprofit has a duty towards its members, donors and staff to allocate scarce resources for results rather than being morally upright.

Measuring Nonprofit Results

Nonprofits institutions exist to change attitudes, behaviors and actions. Ultimately, a nonprofit has to judge itself by its performance in creating vision, values, standards, commitment and human competence.

Yet measuring that change can be difficult.

Businesses usually define performance very narrowly as the financial bottom line. It’s specific and concrete. It’s obvious if you are meeting the goal. You can look at results in terms of profitability, market standing, innovation and cash flow. All easily quantifiable and hard to ignore.

Nonprofits don’t have it as easy as business when defining performance. There is the temptation to say, “We are serving a good cause. We are doing something that makes life better for people and that’s results in itself.”

To the nonprofits that fall into that temptation I say, “That is not enough!”

If a business wastes its resources on non-results, by and large it loses its own money. In the nonprofit world, it’s someone else’s money–the donor and members’ money. Nonprofits are accountable to their donors and members. They are accountable for putting their money where the results are and for performance.

Results Are Achieved By Concentration Not Splintering

Results for nonprofit are difficult to define. They are achieved by concentration on their primary mission.

The statement, “This is why we exist,” must eventually become “This is how we do it. This is the time it will take to do it. This is who is accountable. This is the work for which we are responsible. This is where we will focus.”

Organizations that try to provide something for everyone will eventually fracture. They have a savior mentality trying to be all things to all people. It doesn’t work. It just wastes valuable resources.

Shrinking Pies And The Fairness Issue

Yet nonprofit members and donors often get upset when pet projects and programs get dropped. They become a minor vocal group screaming that it’s not fair.

Is it a fairness issue?

When the pie is shrinking, people get nervous that their share is too small. When the pie grows, the aspiration comes back again to invest in niche groups.

In tough economic times, leaders have to make touch economic decisions. It’s especially challenging in a global economy when organizations must make tough choices about well-liked programs as budgets, sponsorships and memberships decline.

Yet if a piece of the pie is abandoned in light of the mission, is it the wrong thing to do?

What should an association provide to its donors and members to show how they are holding themselves accountable for results? How can an organization help its members and donors understand the bigger picture instead of their own agenda and pressing needs?

Laptop, netbook or tablet? How do you choose which device to buy and use? Take a look at this infographic which shows the rise of tablet adoption at work.

Want more information? Visit Tablet At Work Blog.

If you had to buy a new device today, would you buy a PC, laptop, netbook or device and why?

Unless your conference is growing, you are on the road to decline.

All conference attendance plateaus eventually erode.

Unless you are taking conference attendee market share from others, you are not growing significantly.

Stealing And Trespassing Are Legal When Attracting Conference Registrants

There is a closed market for conference registrants. Yes, that’s right. There is not an infinite market.

Typically, most people travel to only one major conference a year and focus on attending more local events. Their professional development, conference registration and travel budgets are limited.

Every conference has a target market. There is a limited market share available to each conference. During tough economies, the amount of conference growth can be finite. So the ability to grow the conference is often dependent on acquiring attendees that registered for competing conferences in a previous year.

If your conference has saturated a market, then how do you grow attendance by increasing that share at the inevitable expense of others? The reason so many conferences plateau with attendance and get caught in the plateau success trap is that they never engage in a strategy to enlarge their market share. They don’t master the skills of attracting new attendees from competitors as well as first time buyers.

Why Conferences Decline

Conference attendance decline results from a variety of factors:

1. Revenues cease growing because the conference’s existing market is saturated.
2. The conference market evaporates due to retirement of loyal attendees, disruptive technology, new competition, declining profession and travel and education budget cuts.
3. Attendee’s work and life demands increase so much that leaving the office or home results in a major loss of productivity.
4. The conference organization’s infrastructure, business expenses and conference costs grow faster than revenues.
5. The conference organization needs to increase staff which grows faster than revenue.
6. As conference organizers concentrate marketing in highly successful areas, secondary and tertiary target markets are ignored thus causing the conference’s brand to become lesser know in those areas.
7. Conference hosts try to offer programming for a variety of market segments offering something for everyone. Results are achieved by concentration, not splintering.
8. The conference experience has become status quo, predictable and stale. Loyal attendees are now going to competitor’s conference because of their buzz and better quality.

Go For The Low Hanging Fruit

Low hanging fruit refers to an attractive market that is easiest to reach.

Why take the risks of climbing a tree when there is high quality fruit within reach at the ground level? You don’t need a ladder. Don’t need additional help. No risk of falling. And you probably won’t bruise the fruit.

Attempting to steal a rival’s market share actually has advantages. For example, you don’t have to convince a former conference registrant about the value of attending a conference.

Pursuing buyers who are already inclined to register for a conference and are accustomed to travel, lodging and other expenses is a rational and intelligent strategy.

The challenge is for the conference hosts to spot the right target buyers. Then they have to position their conference as one with a better experience, quality programming and qualified registrants.

Why do conference organizers try to offer something for everyone instead of concentrating on the top two or three target markets? How do you feel about trespassing on conference competitors for new registrants?

If you play cards you know the importance of a trump. No, not the Donald with the bad red hair.

A trump is a card which ranks higher than the played cards. A trump suit outranks all cards of plain suits.

Literally, a trump refers to any sort of action, authority or policy that automatically prevails over others.

The Brain’s Natural Learning Trumps

The fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience study how the brain takes in, stores, retrieves and applies information. Cognitive scientists and educators are learning new ways to apply this information. It’s that application that has lead to these learning trumps.

A learning trump card is one that reigns over more traditional and established education practices. When one strategy trumps another, it means that it is a better and more influential way of learning.

Hat tips go to author and trainer Sharon Bowman as she originally published six trumps of learning. I’ve modified some of Bowman’s trumps and added new ones.

10 Brain-Based Learning Laws That Trump Tradition

How can speakers expect their audience to remember what they say if they don’t know how people learn? These learning laws are powerful strategies that align with how our brains naturally operate and learn.

1. Brain science trumps traditional education.

Knowing how the brain naturally operates is similar to knowing the laws of driving. Could you drive without knowing the rules of the road? Sure you could! Yet, you would probably create a lot of traffic problems. And eventually cause a wreck.

The same applies to presenting to others without knowing how the human brain learns. If you do it, you increase the chance that it won’t work well. Unfortunately, the learner is the one that deals with the disaster.

2. Emotions trump facts.

For years we’ve assumed that dumping data, information and stats on audiences is in their best interest. We believe that we should separate feelings from facts and leave emotions at home.

Wrong! Neuroscience has proven that everything the brain learns is filtered through emotions. There are no exceptions. How we use emotion to aide learning determines learning’s success.

3. Talking trumps listening.

Here’s the law: the person doing the most talking during an education session is the one doing the most learning. So that’s actually the speaker.

We need to create more learning opportunities where the speaker talks for about 10 minutes and then the audience talks to each other. We talk in pairs or small groups so we can understand. We talk so we can remember. We talk so we can process.

No, not Q & A time with the presenter. Then only one person is talking and learning. Peer to peer or small group talking trumps one person asking a question any day!

4. White space trumps information dumps.

Many presenters try to cram as much information and data into their presentation as the time permits. We’ve assumed that content covered means content learned. We’ve also assumed that if we cover more content, the listener learns more.

Wrong! The amount of learning directly aligns to the amount of thinking and reflection. We need to create more white space (time for the learner to think) and less pushing of content. The more the learner is allowed to reflect, the more they learn.

5. Images trump words.

We remember images. We forget words. Why? 50%-80% of our brain’s natural processing power is devoted to processing sight. That’s more than all of our other senses. We actually see with our brains, not our eyes. Likewise, when we hear a word, our brain translates it into an image.

6. Writing trumps reading (and listening).

Most audiences have been conditioned to sit and listen and not do anything else.

We write to remember. We remember because we write. (Now insert type or text for the word write in those sentences.)

When we write or type, we are processing information. We are thinking about it and thinking increases the likelihood or retention.

7. Movement trumps sitting.

The longer an audience sits, the less they learn.

From the beginning of time, our bodies and brains were made to move. It’s in our genes. We think better when we move. For education, this means getting up and moving across the room to a new table. Finding someone you don’t know, introducing yourself and then sharing some new learning.

8. Shorter trumps longer.

Neuroscience has proven that our attention span is 10 minutes. After that, our attention starts to wane. Chunking content into ten minute segments and then allowing learners 10 minutes to digest is the best way to learn. Does this mean the three hour session is dead? Absolutely not. It’s just designed differently with lots of breaks to allow time for discussion, reflection and application.

9. Different trumps same.

We notice things that have changed. We ignore things that stay the same. Difference, novelty, uniqueness, contrast and the unexpected juice our brains. Boring is the nemesis of learning.

Example: mandating a conference branded PowerPoint template for all speakers creates an image of sameness in our audience’s minds from session to session and shuts down learning!

10. Insight trumps knowledge.

Knowing 2+2=4 is one thing. Knowing how to apply that fact is more important.

Our brains learn information by applying new knowledge to past experience. Gaining insight into how to apply a fact or research is more important to our brain than the fact. Our brains crave meaning!

Which of these learning trumps surprise you and why? Which ones could easily be applied in your next education program?

Social. It’s a word that strikes fear in some and excites others.

Today it seems that everything is social. From social media to social networking to social technology to social business, the trend is all things social. It’s the new black.

Defining The Social Conference

So what is the social conference?

Does it mean adding more social media efforts to our event marketing? Is it allowing people to use social networks to communicate with speakers during the event? Is it integrating face-to-face audiences with live streaming remote audiences?

For me, one of the most critical things a conference organizer can do to appeal to our increasingly sophisticated audience is to design experiences that are more engaging, participatory and social.

People are not coming to your conference for the content. (They can get that online.) They are coming for the conference experience. So make it social and less independent!

We Are Social Beings

Humans are essentially social beings. Our meetings and events are complex social experiences. And our conference experiences have the power to alter our attendees’ minds.

When we require our attendees to sit passively and quietly in rows with little or no social interaction, we work against the brain’s natural social systems. We rob attendees of the chance to engage, interact and learn. We create social isolation in the midst of a crowd.

Read more at Connect Meetings Intelligence Blog starting with the fourth paragraph.

What’s one thing conference organizers can do to create more onsite social experiences? Why are we stuck in an outdated model of the sage on stage talking head that stands and delivers?

As an adult, what drives you to learn?

Enjoyment? Fun? Growth? Developing new skills? Seeking a new career? Job promotion? Professional certification requirements? New experiences? Supervisor mandates?

All of the above? None of the above?

The Motivations To Learn

ASAE’s research, The Decision To Learn, states that the top two reasons people join nonprofit associations are:

1. Education and Professional Development
2. Receiving Cutting Edge Information

According to ASAE’s The Decision To Learn, the driving extrinsic motivation for adults to learn is to increase their job status which then increases their income and social standing in their chosen profession.

Knowing the latest research and how to apply it opens up new opportunities for career advancement. Learning, not information, is important to a better life. Information by itself does not improve one’s life. Knowing information does not improve one’s life. It’s the application of that information and what it means to the learner that’s important.

The driving intrinsic motivation for adults to learn is a general sense of accomplishment.

In order to feed their personal passions about subjects that they have limited knowledge or experience, adults want solutions to their real-world problems and issues. They desire solutions that improve their companies or their professional condition. And they want those solutions provided in provocative learning formats, not the standard boring talking head lectures.

Research Rants Or Relevant Solutions

When you plan education programming, do you remember these two driving motivations? Do you program annual meeting content that helps your customers advance their careers? Does you conference content provide solutions to real-world problems and issues?

Or are you education sessions nothing more than data dumps that force the listener to sift through the junk to find something meaningful to them? Is your conference content just research rants with all the facts, figures, numbers, stats and kitchen sink that learners never get to the root of results?

The learner does not need to hear speakers that recite all the data details. They can read that in a report if they want. What matters to them are the results and how it solves their problems or advances their careers.

During a paid education session, what matters more to you, the relevant results or the data details? Why do so many associations push content that is nothing more than a talking head research rant with very little takeaways?