Destination or launch pad?
Some thoughts for conference hosts
In my experience, having worked at conferences and spoken with many delegates, organisers and hosts, it is common for conferences to be seen as the final ‘destination’. Sure, speakers may talk about new trends and technologies, but conferences often look backwards, celebrating the success of the previous year’s work with awards and graduations. They can also incorporate AGMs and other ‘once a year’ business activities. So perhaps it’s not surprising that people start focusing on their conference as the ‘goal’ they’re aiming for.
They’ve become a destination - an expensive one - for everyone who goes there.
Of course, it takes a lot of effort to host a conference (organising, promoting, selling registrations and exhibitor stands, and attracting sponsors, not to mention managing every detail on the day). It’s easy to see why most of your effort goes into getting to your destination (conference) and surviving it. Unfortunately, that’s often where the story ends.
Following a constant stream of promotions, and an intense day or two of in-person events, your attendees pack their bags and head home. Delegates take away good memories, a bag of swag, and 20 slide decks to wade through in their own time. There may be some social posts reminding them of everything they saw and heard… there may even be a follow-up survey and some thank you emails. But that’s usually it. In short, after arriving at the destination you’ve worked so hard to get to, you find yourself dropping off a cliff, into an information desert.
The re-frame
If you stop thinking of your conference as the end of something and start thinking of it as the beginning of something, you can add much more value to your attendees, future customers, sponsors and exhibitors. Most successful conferences generate energy and inspiration, but excellent conferences also focus on the future. They purposefully use the event as a launch pad to build future engagement and learning opportunities and keep key issues top of mind.
The seeds of inspiration and excitement planted at the conference need to be nurtured. If you start thinking of your conference as the foundation for future interactions and education, you’ll have months of material to work with.
As opposed to distant memories of peppermints and pens.
Let’s talk it through
In this presentation I introduce the content flywheel model that you can use to re-purpose your conference sessions. This gives you a continual source of information, education and engagement to share with attendees.