The Insiders Event Planning Guide To Beating Conference Fatigue

Ask yourself: Have your audiences experienced conference fatigue and can’t bear to see one more PowerPoint presentation or worse still participate in a dry monthly hour long conference call?

Have they had enough travelling all the way to a venue three hrs away when they feel that they could have learnt more reading a memo and would have preferred the option to watch the presentation on-line?

The 7 commandments to an engaging event…

1. Know Your Audience – Do research and ensure that your event adds value. Why not ask the audience when they register for the top 3 topics they want covered throughout the day or any burning questions? Most events cover this in the feedback post event when it’s already too late!  It is helpful and advantageous to know the mind set of the audience in advance. It is better to face any issues and address this from the opening speech. Issues raised, such as de-motivation amongst staff due to recent redundancies, can be opened up from the outset with a pre-emptive positive response by the chief executive.

 2. Set clear objectives and goals for your event within the wider scope of your communications strategy. Think! What would people miss out on if it never took place? Never have a meeting just for the sake of it – this really is bad publicity. Choose another avenue of conveying the message and break the routine!

 
 

3. What is the best platform to communicate and engage? A plethora exists! Be it an event, video or on-line forum to name but a few.  Read more >>

Where Next? – The Next Generation of Events

With the onset of the current economic and political climate, event agencies are challenged once again, and not unhappily, to re-evaluate the approach we take with our audiences. This shake-up happens every once in a while, and does wonders for encouraging creativity, innovation and creating a whole new approach within the events industry.

The real question is: how do we do it this time?

Those individuals now entering the work marketplace (and thus our audiences) are the same who have not only grown up with but embraced such diverse online presences as Facebook, Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, Spotify and many, many more. These people are the ones we will be talking to when businesses present to their workforces in the future, therefore engagement cannot simply be a well written registration site…

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Puzzles and solutions

We’ve been thinking here at Comshows about how to add value to our clients’ conferencing events, whilst also appreciating that the current climate isn’t exactly bringing the budget for grand gestures to the fore…

We’d love to start a dialogue with clients and fellow event agencies, to talk about what simple ideas would make an event memorable and unique, without costing the earth. We’re happy to share, and hope you are too!

A few ideas include:

– Large-scale messageboards for conferences and exhibitions, in the style of festival boards, to communicate with both the event hosts and other delegates

– Networking opportunities for delegates, both prior to the event and

– Multi-platform events, to drive costs down from hosting several separate events, making each work independently but in an integrated fashion

– Evening events following the day’s conference – re-enforcing themes during introductions etc., and referencing them visually and with content

Now, that’s just a few. We’d love to hear from you – whether your a business that holds events who wants to comment or make suggestions, or an events team who’ve had experience with any of the above and would like to say how it went.