Why You Need to Break Your Event Assumptions. As a professional speaker, I have the opportunity to attend a lot of events and conferences. While they all differ in scale, audience, locations, and cultures, they almost all share certain elements.
For example, the flow is the same at most events. Attendees arrive at a certain hour, register at the welcome desk, get a name badge, and get a coffee before gathering in a large room for the keynote presentation. That’s usually followed by some extra plenary presentations or workshop sessions, then lunch, and then more workshops in the afternoon. At the end of the day, attendees gather again for the closing keynote. The organizer expresses some words of thanks and invites everybody to have a drink and network.
There’s nothing wrong with this flow, but there may be other ways to organize the event that could have a huge impact on the attendee experience.
What other assumptions do we hold about our events? One way to find out what things we accept as true or necessary—but that may not be either—is to look at what events have in common. It’s likely that 90 percent start and end at the same time and feature keynote speakers, for example.
Then see if you can find an event that did that element differently. I have found 21 common event assumptions, and some ways to break them.
Here are a few examples:
by Sue Pelletier in face2face
