Audience engagement – part 3

Director of Conference Focus, Max Turpin is sharing his insights on a range of topics with a regular column in BEN. Topics include new generation events and making events effective and valuable.

IN THIS article, I’d like to share what I believe are some of the key ideas and components for the engagement of event attendees.

Event design: I’ve deliberately put this at the top of my list since the thoughtful creation and design of an event has more influence on delegate engagement than anything else. Read that again. Need convincing? Well, hear it from a higher authority than me in the form of Julius Solaris from Event Manager Blog: “Anecdotal evidence and all research available puts emphasis on event design as the key driver for engagement”.

Content crowdsourcing and co-creation: Use pre-event surveys and conduct small focus groups with representatives of your target audience to choose topics and develop content. If attendees have a say in this and what they want to know and learn, they’ll be far more likely to be engaged in the event…. even before it starts.

Room set-up: Theatre style, classroom style, cabaret style… boring! What about shaking things up a bit and have your delegates enter a room with it set anything other than what they’re expecting. Depending upon your numbers, try campfire, fishbowl or world café…or use a combination of anything. Bring in different furniture, like coffee tables or even beanbags. Imagine entering an environment you weren’t expecting. Are you not immediately surprised and interested? Is that not the very essence of engagement?

Content delivery: I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve mentioned this subject in articles over the years but I’ll say it again: Ditch the 45-minute monologue lectures and presentations. Shorten them and include more participation time, more interaction time, more discussion, more Q&A. There are two very good reasons for this, both scientifically validated: 1) human attention spans have reduced to just 10 minutes, and lectures are the least effective means of knowledge transfer and learning. Getting people to talk (discussion) is better. Best of all is getting them to do something (experiential). So if you don’t want your audience to become disengaged, get them doing something, not just sitting and listening. Try TEDx style 20-minute presentations. Try PechaKucha style 7-min presentations. Interview presenters TV-style rather than have them deliver a monologue. Break up 45-minute presentations into smaller chunks with discussion and longer Q&A time.

During a meeting or conference running a full day (9am to 5pm), of these eight hours how long are your delegates just sitting there listening? If it’s over half the time, it’s too long and you won’t create the engagement levels you seek, nor will attendees learn as much.

Read part 1 and 2 in this series here.