How to maximise the value of your events by boosting the number of interactions

At this point I’m sure that you are well aware of one of the main reasons why attendees come to your events: to interact face-to-face with other like-minded people. However, I’ve been to too many conferences where the organisers assumed that delegates would naturally talk to each other, or underestimated all the opportunities available.

What I still see happening is that the main occasions for people to connect are during a brief Q&A session within a presentation, or during the breaks. Just two weeks ago I was working in a congress of engineers where it happened exactly like this. I saw many people, during the lunch, scattered around dozens of tables on their own, sometimes because of shyness, other times because of language barriers.

For some delegates I guess that it was fine like this.

However, some of them kept telling me how they had travelled thousands of miles just for the richness that bring face-to-face interactions. In a congress where all the speakers were presenting works that are published in academic journals, in theory you could learn the same at home by reading the research papers. But, as Lucy Goodchild writes in the Imperial College Reporter, ‘Interaction with people from around the world is key to many researchers’ inspiration’.

Yet I saw so many missed opportunities because of the design of the conference!

This is by no means a new issue, but are you contributing to make the most of each event?

Here go some ideas that you could think about:

- Introduce an Open Space session, which implies that participants will choose and moderate topics of their interest. By splitting them up in different groups and letting people pick what they want to talk about, you truly engage them and trigger brainstorming. I find it an excellent way to increase the learning and, of course, a fun an easy way to meet like-minded people.

- Design a speed networking event. For example, set up numbered tables and give people a pre-assigned ‘route’ with the numbers they have to follow. Make sure that the tables are not too crowded, that the groups keep changing and that you control the times.

- Use interactive technologies to boost the chances to find and meet people. I’ve tried a few ones but personally I really like one called Spot me, to the point where I miss it when a conference doesn’t provide one (which now is still in most of the cases!). To put it in a few words, Spot me is a device that has a database of all the delegates attending a conference (apart from other information).

Each delegate carries one and can look for people by name or company, and because it has a radar, it vibrates when that person you want to meet is around you. Delegates can also exchange digital business cards and all the information is sent by e-mail afterwards.

- Enlarge the life of your event by helping delegates meet online before and after the event. You can set an application in the event’s website where registrants post their profile and start discussions, or invite people to participate in social media sites (you can set up a Twitter hashtag or start a Facebook group).

As you can see, nowadays there’s no excuse for not being able to increase the number of interactions in a conference.

And I reckon that in the next few years striking new tools will be developed.

I have experienced myself the power of serendipity many times and it’s amazing how it works, but in a conference that gathers at least 200 attendees, you can’t afford to just cross your fingers hoping that people will connect.

By Rosa Garriga – EIN Contributor

Tags: brainstorming, conferences, events, meeting design, networking, new technologies, Rosa Garriga, social media, trends

Category: Advice for Event Management