Conferences 2.0
Seth Godin has a great idea on thanking people at conferences. I know I hate the endless litany (and I’ve seen it from all 3 points of view-conference manager wanting to thank people, committee member being thanked and audience member not knowing who these faceless folks are being thanked) and it would make it easier to find people who can be helpful at conferences as well. I would add a quote from that person about why they are passionate about the subject or their best advice etc. This could also be posted on the conference website ahead of time.
He has another conference idea here. I like how Seth is thinking of free ways to leverage the internet to improve conferences. With all of our tools, there is no reason that we can’t do a better job of knowing attendees needs and interests as well as improve how we prepare them for conferences. We did a commercial for our last conference and had our highest attendance ever. To augment the written preparation guide that goes out with the conference packet, the steering committee could easily create a video that visually goes through rules, dress code (this could bean hilarious “What not to wear” compared to an advisor reading it to the group), what to bring (what would a teen remember-a written reminder to bring a bathing suit or seeing someone from the committee jump in the pool?), what they can sign up for (who wants to tour a technical college?-wait a minute, those guys are playing with cool robots. Sign me up!). This would generate questions, comments etc from both teens and advisers (and would certainly work for adult conferences as well) and the boring preparation guide just became interactive and cool. Even if it can’t be pulled off in a steering committee weekend, each team member could take one aspect of it back to their organization and tape their part of it.
How else can we use the net to improve the conference experience?
Well, I really liked the Meebo feedback loop at the YPulse conf, as you can see by my post on Shaping Youth…They used it for live chat/conference feedback and real time speaker thank yous…
http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=1900
I’m on the fence about some of the safety issues with the youth element for universal platform IM/live chat, as I guess that depends on ages and stages…but either way, it was a cool experience for the conf. itself!
Best, Amy
p.s. I should add, Joe, that your visual representation via ‘commercial’ adapting context into your teen work (what to wear/bring/sign up for, etc.) is freakin’ hilarious and much appreciated…You’re absolutely right that it would be FAR more memorable, personable, usable, and, well…um, laughable for all involved.
As Peter Ustinov said, “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.”
Rock on!
Amy,
Thanks for the feedback. I have read your post and it sounds interesting. I’m going to have to move into the text/Meebo/Twitter world. I only do a little texting, mainly because my staff has dragged me into it. I enjoy technology, but also don’t want it to take over my life. In small does-like at conferences-I think it would be valuable. It is certainly valuable to understand the technology the teens are using. Hopefully, we’ll have cool videos to show you in the future.