I use the phrase “wants and needs” a lot when talking about participant-driven and participation-rich conferences. It even appears in the title of my third book! 
Satisfying wants and what Abraham Maslow called growth needs are core goals of any event.
But whose wants and needs are we talking about?
Whom is your event for?
Conference organizers have, of course, every right to create an event that satisfies their wants and needs. Otherwise, why bother creating the conference in the first place?
Unfortunately, event organizers often fail to meet the wants and needs of attendees. Instead, they focus, often by unconscious default, on their own wants and needs. As far as attendee wants and needs are concerned, organizers usually believe that they know what they are, and they delegate satisfying them to a small group that creates the conference program.
However, it turns out that:
- The best predetermined conference programs include only half the sessions attendees actually want and need; and
- The concept that “conference curators” can create a fantastic conference program is a myth.
Consequently, traditional conferences typically do a poor job of determining and satisfying attendee wants and needs.
Determining wants and needs
It’s quite easy to determine attendee wants and needs. Most folks who try to do this, however, make an understandable mistake. They ask attendees in advance what session topics they would like. Typically, this is done at event registration, or via a survey form sent out a few months before the event.
Sadly, asking attendees in advance what they want to learn and talk about at an event doesn’t work! In my experience, organizers invariably miss the majority of the topics attendees actually want and need.
In contrast, using an opening process at the event that first allows attendees to:
- learn about each other, including the expertise and experience in the room; and
- share what they would like to learn and discuss
and then builds a responsive conference program, leads to a conference that maximally satisfies attendee wants and needs.
If you want to learn good ways to do this—well, I have a book for you to read! (See above.)
Result: conference satisfaction and success!
When done well, satisfying attendee wants and needs at a conference guarantees the conference’s success from the attendees’ point of view.
And, in my experience, when we satisfy attendee wants and needs at the conference, we are extremely likely to satisfy event stakeholders too!