Expert insights. Personalized for you.
These mental models are deeply embedded in our conference planning and management practices. Savvy conference organizers realize that their mental models have much more influence over their outcomes than their decisions and actions. To be successful in the future, conference organizers must become paradigm busters–examining, challenging and changing their conventional mental models. This is especially true of our conference mental frameworks. MORE
But when it gets to “go time,” does that culture manifest at your conferences and meetings? Her boss apparently thought she should spend all her time out “doing meeting planning” and not hanging out in a hotel conference room. Make colleagues and vendors feel welcome and involved in conference operations. Conference staff are not able to do everything! How can you make your conference culture more open and transparent? MORE
It is much more effective to provide opportunities for conference participants to solve their own problems, then telling them how to solve it. Conference organizers automatically assume that if someone is attending their event, they expect the conference to help them solve their problems. They believe that the conference should provide the answers. Telling attendees the answer is not the key to conference success. MORE
Not every effort was a rousing success but attempting to inject new conference elements made us more nimble, creative and smarter as a team. What should we expect for hybrid or virtual conference attendance? Navigating change during a crisis is not for the faint of heart. MORE
Too often conference and meeting professionals assume that their role is best suited to planning and executing the conference. I get that from the education section or the conference technical teams.”. However, savvy meeting professional know that their conference’s success depends upon moving from customer fragmented touchpoints to designing holistic conference customer experience journeys. They own designing the conference customers experience journey. MORE
The events industry has been behind some of the most innovative tech conferences in the past decade. Opening the doors for new business prospects, these conferences are places where the top professionals meet and showcase their innovative concepts and bold theories for the future. MORE
However, a conference at rest, tends to die. The enemy of most conferences is the way it’s always been. When inertia influences your conference, it’s planned by the way you’ve always done it, programmed full of (past) best practices and destined to become average, slowly suffocating on its own status quo. Cognitive and organizational inertia keeps an association on its current conference course even when facing disruptive or rapid external changes. MORE
Your association, annual conference, and governance are all institutions. One of the sacred cows for associations and their annual conference is attributing notoriety to the office of the president, board chair or annual conference committee chair. Smith’s year” or “Sally’s year” when referring to past annual conferences. If your conference includes a presidential address, reception, or other similarly branded event, you probably need to make some changes. MORE
Applying a story arc to the conference can activate participants’ brains. You can use the story arc concept to carefully craft the messages and issues you want your conference participants to explore, experience and learn. Your conference narrative can serve as a call to action for your participants to play a pivotal role in resolving that challenge personally and professionally. So exactly how do you use a story arc for your conference? MORE
The post conference activities appeared first on Seven Events. Activities Conference Organisation Event Management conference eventprofs Events teambuilding MORE
At conferences and other knowledge-driven events, sessions and presentations are always great conversation starters. Contact Conference Compass to find out more. Live events are all about bringing people together. MORE
One of the strongest intangible attributes of a healthy conference is how much sharing takes place. Professions that deliver conference sessions with a high level of sharing – not diluted or generalized from the stage – are often in fields linked to prevention, healthcare, education and philanthropy. Conversely, conferences that have a higher deal-making quotient tend to hold their cards closer to their chests. MORE
In 2020, attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors were more forgiving of our virtual conferences than they will be in 2021. Use this opportunity to beta test changes that can be carried over to the next in-person conference. MORE
Conference Compass, the Dutch next generation event platform specialist, has produced a telling, timely document ‘How to run the most engaging hybrid events’. MORE
Over the past nine months, many industry experts have proclaimed that meetings and conferences are forever changed and hybrid is here to stay. Conference content product management requires a good deal of business acumen. MORE
To paraphrase Hoffer, you can never get enough of conference fads, gimmicks and trends. Unless your a conference participant and we often have had enough!). They also want access to your conference budget. Evergreen conference practices that have promising results are often obscured by our obsession with fads and trends. To avoid being fad-like in our conference planning process, here are seven emerging evergreen practices to consider and invest in instead. MORE
Over the next year or so, conference organizers will need to define their responsibilities for duty of care, as well as what is expected of those who choose to attend your conference in person. How will they help ensure duty of care throughout the conference? MORE
In physics, the second law of thermodynamics says all things—bodies, businesses, conferences, energy, organizations, relationships—move toward chaos and disorder. As your conference matures, it experiences entropy. As a conference professional, you know this to be true. It is also the natural law of evolution for any conference. Working to create a great conference experience for your customers is no longer a good baseline for success to paraphrase Conrad. MORE
While things have changed, these tenets will hold true and the principles can be applied to other D&I conferences and events. The six attributes of women’s leadership conferences that have stood out for me: [1] Movement. Women’s conferences are often shorter one or two-day programs. MORE
With the advent of the pandemic, virtual conferences became a popular go-to option for many event organisers. Even while at the time of writing, some parts of the world are returning to normalcy, virtual events , particularly virtual conferences, are here to stay. MORE
In spite of all the bad, there is also much that is positive for the next phase of association conferences. The post Get Conference Inspiration from Trusted Peer Connections appeared first on Velvet Chainsaw. Conference Planning Hybrid & Virtual MORE
The Conference Board has the best we’ve come across so far: May Reboot – quick recovery. In the beginning of this crisis, organizers of major conferences and trade shows were canceling with very little lead time. MORE
Many conferences are stuck in the rut of legacy routines, age-old rituals and cloned programming. Conference organizers and its advisors replicate the past maintaining the traditions and well-established procedures of yesteryear. The event is nothing more than a zombie conference—a conference that appears to be alive yet in reality creates the walking undead. Conference organizers and advisors can breathe new life into their events. MORE
As it becomes more apparent that face-to-face events will return in some form this year, conference organizers have an opportunity to make changes that would have been more difficult to sell up the ladder in the past. Long-term traditions can deter next-generation conference participants. MORE
Webinar description: Monetizing Your Virtual Conference When Competing with Free. Lisa Block, Executive Vice President, Conference Strategy & Design, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting. COVID-19 Uncategorized digital event monetize pivot from live to virtual virtual conference MORE
The first peer conference I convened and designed was held June 3 – 5, 1992 at Marlboro College, Vermont. So, as of today, the community of practice that eventually became edACCESS has enjoyed 27 years of peer conferences. Twenty-three people came to the inaugural conference. 27 years of peer conferences. Read the full article at Conferences That Work The post 27 years of peer conferences appeared first on Conferences That Work. MORE
Who wants to attend a common, ordinary, ho-hum, everyday , I’m-just-like-all-the-others traditional conference? Your conference growth and revenue depends upon repeat paying attendees year after year. And your customer loyalty is built upon making your common conference uncommon. Routine Been-There-Done-That Conferences. When your conference experience is no-frills run-of-the-mill…. And when your conference content can be found on the web for free…. MORE
The dynamics that we’re seeing impact conferences and their business models are very similar to the Freemium movement we experienced way back in 2009. Go ahead and read Seth’s post and then come back for the linkage to conference monetization. MORE
The North Star is the perfect metaphor for your annual conference purpose. When your conference purpose serves as a North Star, it guides all decisions, tasks, behaviors and strategy. Uncovering Your North Star Conviction To Find Conference True Target Market. Before your conference can find its true target market, you as the conference organizer must find your conviction. What’s your conference conviction? What’s your conference North Star? MORE
Why not make your entire conference a braindate? I like the braindate approach , but it doesn’t have to be something that’s grafted onto a conference. Because good event design is about how a conference works. Instead make your entire conference a braindate! MORE
Leading learning firm Tagoras has launched another round of its virtual conferences survey , the results of which will be compared to its last round, conducted near the beginning of the pandemic. The post How Much Has Covid Affected the World of Virtual Conferences? MORE
She is responsible for ensuring that the conference’s objectives are met and that the audience is engaged from beginning to end. The post Does Your Conference Need an Emcee? Having an emcee at your event was a nice-to-have prior to 2020. Now it’s a must-have. MORE
What makes attending conferences worthwhile? As I described in Conferences That Work , the two most common reasons for attending conferences are to learn useful things and make useful connections. But there are numerous other ways that conferences provide value to stakeholders. MORE
A recent Wired article argues that “ Science Conferences Are Stuck in the Dark Ages “ Unsurprisingly, I agree — but there’s some light in the darkness! Read the full article at Conferences That Work The post Are science conferences stuck in the Dark Ages? MORE
With input from some of the best in the business, this edition of the Conference Buyer’s Guide highlights trends and evolution in the market, solutions for different event sizes, fostering interactivity across the dimensions for remote attendees and much more besides. . MORE
Here’s my article “ Five Reasons to Change Conferences “ , published in the December 2018, NSA Speaker magazine. OUTSIDE IN Five Reasons to Change Conferences Peer sessions provide greater connection around content The most important reason people go to conferences is to usefully connect with others around relevant content. But our conference programs still focus on lectures, where a few experts broadcast their knowledge to passive listeners. MORE
Traditionally teams from organizations attend a conference with a divide-and-conquer game plan, as they split up and attend as many different sessions as they can. What if you flipped that model and designed conferences that offered learning aimed at improving team collaboration and changes back in the workplace? Yet conferences are lagging in meeting the needs of team learning. The post Leveraging Team Learning at Conferences appeared first on Velvet Chainsaw. MORE
Most conference and meeting professionals want the coolest, hippest, latest ideas and trends for their events. We want to know what unique things other conferences are doing so we can borrow their ideas. We pursue fads, gimmicks and trends as the silver bullets of our conference woes. We expend resources searching for the mysterious conference trend panacea. Conference trend and fad bandwagons. What was the last conference trend bandwagon that you jumped on? MORE
So for many event planners looking for the right tool to host a virtual conference, Zoom is the first thing that comes to mind. This means planners can easily connect their Zoom account with EventMobi to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience to their virtual conference attendees. MORE
The Association for Software Testing (AST) has just issued a free guide to creating peer conferences. I believe the software testing community adopted my term “peer conference” for their get-togethers after a conversation I had with pioneer software tester James Bach in 2004. MORE
Conference Related Topics 
Velvet Chainsaw
MAY 20, 2021
As it becomes more apparent that face-to-face events will return in some form this year, conference organizers have an opportunity to make changes that would have been more difficult to sell up the ladder in the past. Long-term traditions can deter next-generation conference participants.
Velvet Chainsaw
AUGUST 31, 2021
Over the next year or so, conference organizers will need to define their responsibilities for duty of care, as well as what is expected of those who choose to attend your conference in person. How will they help ensure duty of care throughout the conference?
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Velvet Chainsaw
DECEMBER 3, 2020
In 2020, attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors were more forgiving of our virtual conferences than they will be in 2021. Use this opportunity to beta test changes that can be carried over to the next in-person conference.
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 23, 2020
Not every effort was a rousing success but attempting to inject new conference elements made us more nimble, creative and smarter as a team. What should we expect for hybrid or virtual conference attendance? Navigating change during a crisis is not for the faint of heart.
Speaker: Mike Damphousse, Managing Partner of Category Design Advisors and Founder of Green Leads
Business as we know it is never going to be the same. Working from home has become the norm, conferences and meetings are going online, marketing budgets are being shifted, reduced or put on hold – it's time to adapt. Join this insightful and informative webinar with Mike Damphousse, Managing Partner of Category Design Advisors and Founder of Green Leads, who will discuss how businesses can be resilient during these challenging times.
Velvet Chainsaw
MARCH 30, 2021
She is responsible for ensuring that the conference’s objectives are met and that the audience is engaged from beginning to end. The post Does Your Conference Need an Emcee? Having an emcee at your event was a nice-to-have prior to 2020. Now it’s a must-have.
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 21, 2019
In physics, the second law of thermodynamics says all things—bodies, businesses, conferences, energy, organizations, relationships—move toward chaos and disorder. As your conference matures, it experiences entropy. As a conference professional, you know this to be true. It is also the natural law of evolution for any conference. Working to create a great conference experience for your customers is no longer a good baseline for success to paraphrase Conrad.
Velvet Chainsaw
FEBRUARY 8, 2021
Over the past nine months, many industry experts have proclaimed that meetings and conferences are forever changed and hybrid is here to stay. Conference content product management requires a good deal of business acumen.
Velvet Chainsaw
DECEMBER 23, 2020
In spite of all the bad, there is also much that is positive for the next phase of association conferences. The post Get Conference Inspiration from Trusted Peer Connections appeared first on Velvet Chainsaw. Conference Planning Hybrid & Virtual
Velvet Chainsaw
AUGUST 18, 2021
Leading learning firm Tagoras has launched another round of its virtual conferences survey , the results of which will be compared to its last round, conducted near the beginning of the pandemic. The post How Much Has Covid Affected the World of Virtual Conferences?
Conferences that Work
JANUARY 11, 2021
What makes attending conferences worthwhile? As I described in Conferences That Work , the two most common reasons for attending conferences are to learn useful things and make useful connections. But there are numerous other ways that conferences provide value to stakeholders.
|
Attendease
JANUARY 22, 2020
The events industry has been behind some of the most innovative tech conferences in the past decade. Opening the doors for new business prospects, these conferences are places where the top professionals meet and showcase their innovative concepts and bold theories for the future.
SevenEvents
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
The post conference activities appeared first on Seven Events. Activities Conference Organisation Event Management conference eventprofs Events teambuilding
Velvet Chainsaw
OCTOBER 20, 2020
While things have changed, these tenets will hold true and the principles can be applied to other D&I conferences and events. The six attributes of women’s leadership conferences that have stood out for me: [1] Movement. Women’s conferences are often shorter one or two-day programs.
Conferences that Work
JANUARY 20, 2020
The Association for Software Testing (AST) has just issued a free guide to creating peer conferences. I believe the software testing community adopted my term “peer conference” for their get-togethers after a conversation I had with pioneer software tester James Bach in 2004.
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 27, 2018
Who wants to attend a common, ordinary, ho-hum, everyday , I’m-just-like-all-the-others traditional conference? Your conference growth and revenue depends upon repeat paying attendees year after year. And your customer loyalty is built upon making your common conference uncommon. Routine Been-There-Done-That Conferences. When your conference experience is no-frills run-of-the-mill…. And when your conference content can be found on the web for free….
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 31, 2019
However, a conference at rest, tends to die. The enemy of most conferences is the way it’s always been. When inertia influences your conference, it’s planned by the way you’ve always done it, programmed full of (past) best practices and destined to become average, slowly suffocating on its own status quo. Cognitive and organizational inertia keeps an association on its current conference course even when facing disruptive or rapid external changes.
Event Industry News
OCTOBER 21, 2021
With input from some of the best in the business, this edition of the Conference Buyer’s Guide highlights trends and evolution in the market, solutions for different event sizes, fostering interactivity across the dimensions for remote attendees and much more besides. .
Velvet Chainsaw
APRIL 9, 2020
The Conference Board has the best we’ve come across so far: May Reboot – quick recovery. In the beginning of this crisis, organizers of major conferences and trade shows were canceling with very little lead time.
Velvet Chainsaw
APRIL 30, 2020
The dynamics that we’re seeing impact conferences and their business models are very similar to the Freemium movement we experienced way back in 2009. Go ahead and read Seth’s post and then come back for the linkage to conference monetization.
Conferences that Work
NOVEMBER 25, 2019
Why not make your entire conference a braindate? I like the braindate approach , but it doesn’t have to be something that’s grafted onto a conference. Because good event design is about how a conference works. Instead make your entire conference a braindate!
GEVME
JULY 28, 2021
With the advent of the pandemic, virtual conferences became a popular go-to option for many event organisers. Even while at the time of writing, some parts of the world are returning to normalcy, virtual events , particularly virtual conferences, are here to stay.
Eventmobi
NOVEMBER 26, 2020
So for many event planners looking for the right tool to host a virtual conference, Zoom is the first thing that comes to mind. This means planners can easily connect their Zoom account with EventMobi to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience to their virtual conference attendees.
Velvet Chainsaw
JUNE 21, 2018
The North Star is the perfect metaphor for your annual conference purpose. When your conference purpose serves as a North Star, it guides all decisions, tasks, behaviors and strategy. Uncovering Your North Star Conviction To Find Conference True Target Market. Before your conference can find its true target market, you as the conference organizer must find your conviction. What’s your conference conviction? What’s your conference North Star?
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 12, 2018
These mental models are deeply embedded in our conference planning and management practices. Savvy conference organizers realize that their mental models have much more influence over their outcomes than their decisions and actions. To be successful in the future, conference organizers must become paradigm busters–examining, challenging and changing their conventional mental models. This is especially true of our conference mental frameworks.
Event Industry News
OCTOBER 7, 2021
Conference Compass, the Dutch next generation event platform specialist, has produced a telling, timely document ‘How to run the most engaging hybrid events’.
Velvet Chainsaw
SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
To paraphrase Hoffer, you can never get enough of conference fads, gimmicks and trends. Unless your a conference participant and we often have had enough!). They also want access to your conference budget. Evergreen conference practices that have promising results are often obscured by our obsession with fads and trends. To avoid being fad-like in our conference planning process, here are seven emerging evergreen practices to consider and invest in instead.
Event Industry News
JULY 15, 2020
At conferences and other knowledge-driven events, sessions and presentations are always great conversation starters. Contact Conference Compass to find out more. Live events are all about bringing people together.
Velvet Chainsaw
SEPTEMBER 17, 2018
Most conference and meeting professionals want the coolest, hippest, latest ideas and trends for their events. We want to know what unique things other conferences are doing so we can borrow their ideas. We pursue fads, gimmicks and trends as the silver bullets of our conference woes. We expend resources searching for the mysterious conference trend panacea. Conference trend and fad bandwagons. What was the last conference trend bandwagon that you jumped on?
Velvet Chainsaw
MAY 22, 2019
Traditionally teams from organizations attend a conference with a divide-and-conquer game plan, as they split up and attend as many different sessions as they can. What if you flipped that model and designed conferences that offered learning aimed at improving team collaboration and changes back in the workplace? Yet conferences are lagging in meeting the needs of team learning. The post Leveraging Team Learning at Conferences appeared first on Velvet Chainsaw.
Velvet Chainsaw
OCTOBER 17, 2018
Your association, annual conference, and governance are all institutions. One of the sacred cows for associations and their annual conference is attributing notoriety to the office of the president, board chair or annual conference committee chair. Smith’s year” or “Sally’s year” when referring to past annual conferences. If your conference includes a presidential address, reception, or other similarly branded event, you probably need to make some changes.
Velvet Chainsaw
NOVEMBER 8, 2018
Applying a story arc to the conference can activate participants’ brains. You can use the story arc concept to carefully craft the messages and issues you want your conference participants to explore, experience and learn. Your conference narrative can serve as a call to action for your participants to play a pivotal role in resolving that challenge personally and professionally. So exactly how do you use a story arc for your conference?
Velvet Chainsaw
APRIL 26, 2018
One of the strongest intangible attributes of a healthy conference is how much sharing takes place. Professions that deliver conference sessions with a high level of sharing – not diluted or generalized from the stage – are often in fields linked to prevention, healthcare, education and philanthropy. Conversely, conferences that have a higher deal-making quotient tend to hold their cards closer to their chests.
Conferences that Work
DECEMBER 24, 2018
Here’s my article “ Five Reasons to Change Conferences “ , published in the December 2018, NSA Speaker magazine. OUTSIDE IN Five Reasons to Change Conferences Peer sessions provide greater connection around content The most important reason people go to conferences is to usefully connect with others around relevant content. But our conference programs still focus on lectures, where a few experts broadcast their knowledge to passive listeners.
Velvet Chainsaw
MAY 8, 2020
Webinar description: Monetizing Your Virtual Conference When Competing with Free. Lisa Block, Executive Vice President, Conference Strategy & Design, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting. COVID-19 Uncategorized digital event monetize pivot from live to virtual virtual conference
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 25, 2018
Too often conference and meeting professionals assume that their role is best suited to planning and executing the conference. I get that from the education section or the conference technical teams.”. However, savvy meeting professional know that their conference’s success depends upon moving from customer fragmented touchpoints to designing holistic conference customer experience journeys. They own designing the conference customers experience journey.
Conferences that Work
JUNE 3, 2019
The first peer conference I convened and designed was held June 3 – 5, 1992 at Marlboro College, Vermont. So, as of today, the community of practice that eventually became edACCESS has enjoyed 27 years of peer conferences. Twenty-three people came to the inaugural conference. 27 years of peer conferences. Read the full article at Conferences That Work The post 27 years of peer conferences appeared first on Conferences That Work.
Velvet Chainsaw
SEPTEMBER 15, 2016
It is much more effective to provide opportunities for conference participants to solve their own problems, then telling them how to solve it. Conference organizers automatically assume that if someone is attending their event, they expect the conference to help them solve their problems. They believe that the conference should provide the answers. Telling attendees the answer is not the key to conference success.
Conferences that Work
JANUARY 6, 2020
A recent Wired article argues that “ Science Conferences Are Stuck in the Dark Ages “ Unsurprisingly, I agree — but there’s some light in the darkness! Read the full article at Conferences That Work The post Are science conferences stuck in the Dark Ages?
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 7, 2019
Many conferences are stuck in the rut of legacy routines, age-old rituals and cloned programming. Conference organizers and its advisors replicate the past maintaining the traditions and well-established procedures of yesteryear. The event is nothing more than a zombie conference—a conference that appears to be alive yet in reality creates the walking undead. Conference organizers and advisors can breathe new life into their events.
150 
Let's personalize your content