Conferences that Work

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Use spectives to unlock the full potential of conferences

Conferences that Work

During a 1992 conference, I created the first of what I now call spectives. A spective is a plenary closing session that combines a retrospective (looking back at what just happened) with a prospective (looking forward into the future). My visual metaphor for a spective is the two-faced Roman god Janus, who was “the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings” [Fun fact: The month of January is named for Janus.

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Don’t keep me a secret!

Conferences that Work

Don’t keep me a secret! For over thirty years I’ve been making clients’ conferences significantly better, for about the cost of a conference coffee break. How? I make conferences better by dramatically increasing attendee satisfaction. Increasing attendee satisfaction increases the effectiveness of the event for all stakeholders: attendees, sponsors, and event owners.

2024 198
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Community versus audience in journalism and meetings

Conferences that Work

Many meetings still focus on creating audiences rather than community. Yes, there’s a big difference. And not just at meetings. Here’s how Damon Kiesow , Knight Chair for Digital Editing and Producing at the Missouri School of Journalism , compares the concepts of community versus audience from a journalistic perspective. Kiesow says: Community does not scale.

Meetings 203
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Concerns about using facial analysis at events: part two

Conferences that Work

My January 15, 2024 article “ Concerns about using facial analysis at events ” generated much discussion. (See, e.g., this thread on LinkedIn which has, at the time of writing, four thousand impressions.) Five days later, Panos Moutafis , co-founder & CEO of Zenus , the “ethical facial analysis” company, responded. I find his response inadequate, and this post explains why.

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Concerns about using facial analysis at events

Conferences that Work

Should the event industry embrace facial analysis — a technology that promises to offer new analytic data to event stakeholders? In this post, I’ll explain why I’m concerned. I’ve included: An introduction to facial recognition and facial analysis; A timeline of recent public experiences and responses to the use of facial analysis at events; Why I think the use of this technology is misguided, ethically and legally dubious; and My conclusions.

2023 344
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Case Study: Adrian Segar – “Conferences that work”

Conferences that Work

Here’s an independent review of my conference design work, published as a case study in Chapter 25—Designing and Developing Content for Collaborative Business Events—of the book The Routledge Handbook of Business Events. (Tip: The hardback version is expensive, the ebook is a quarter of the hardback cost.) The chapter was written by Ruth Dowson , Chantal Dickson , and Simon Bell.

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Fake women event speakers? We need to think bigger!

Conferences that Work

For heaven’s sake! Fake women event speakers? Fake articles by fake writers in Sports Illustrated? Meeting professionals: this is a golden opportunity! We need to think bigger! Yes, friends, it’s now obvious that what our industry needs is… fake events! Think about it for a moment. Fake speakers Creating fake women speakers is just one tiny step in the right direction.

Speakers 352