Conferences that Work

NOVEMBER 20, 2023

I’m indebted to Martin Sirk for sharing remarkable information about an 1828 conference designed by the German geographer, naturalist, and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Read what follows to discover that Humboldt was also a meeting designer way ahead of his time! Martin Sirk Modern meeting design!

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Meeting Design Meetings Conference Conference Design 208

Conferences that Work

AUGUST 29, 2016

The first time I met him—at the premier EventCamp in 2010 —he immediately purchased my just-published book, sight unseen. The following year, David was kind enough to honor me in his flagship publication BizBash as one of the most innovative event professionals. Whenever I’ve had the pleasure of meeting David (not often enough!)

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Event Design 2010 2016 2009 136

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

The solution to this is to design your unconference before choosing the venue. When this doesn’t happen (sadly, most of the time in my experience) the conference design, no matter how good it is, suffers. I’ve written about this in my books; here’s a short critique of Open Space.

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Conference Venues 2023 Consulting 266

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

After I talked about my meeting design work with pioneer tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, the testing community somehow adopted the term peer conference for their get-togethers. Can you see why software testers like Lisi think that peer conferences rock?!

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Conference 2022 2004 Meeting Design 156

Conferences that Work

JANUARY 11, 2021

For more information on how to do this, see my book Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need.). These events made a profound impression on pretty much everyone who participated. A rotating crew of two or three volunteers organize these wonderful events. Complex problems.

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Conference 2010 2011 2014 342