Here’s the frustrating truth about attendees: they’re terrible at telling you what they want in advance.
You can try to organize a conference based on asking people for suggestions, but you usually hear crickets in return.
That said, people are incredible at sharing their thoughts about an event. (Just look at twitter why don’t you.)
So there’s a challenge for event organizers: how do you more dynamically pivot to create the best experience possible?
Here are two suggestions:
- Instead of asking what people want, give them two options to choose from and snippets of the presentations before they choose. This mitigates the chances of them bashing on a session (after all, they chose it AND had a good understanding of what they were getting themselves into).
- Have a team in place to add situations or elements of the conference that weren’t planned, but are obviously getting requested. This might come to fruition from people saying they want to learn more about “x” or that this event is all well and good but it would be great if they had “y”. The key is to build the resource in to make this happen. They have one job. That’s it.
The strategy here – and the root of why some events are incredible and others fall short – is that the organizer designs an event in such a way that – really – the attendees designed it.
Tangential riff: Consider your favorite coffee shop or restaurant. There’s a greater chance that the owner engaged with and listened to a community and built their ideas than the owner just built what she wanted.
Same strategy works for newsletters and work meetings and friend gatherings, not just coffee shops, conferences and conventions.
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