Seven Rules For Designing More Innovative Conferences

By Ed Bernacki

Seven Rules for Designing More Innovative Conferences is a tool kit of ideas, examples and case studies to help you design more innovative and effective conferences.
Each of the seven 'rules' explores a crucial element of conference design. It will help you make decisions such as: is a keynote speaker better than a brainstorming session that generates hundreds of ideas? The answer depends on your learning objectives; and this is why a learning and collaboration strategy is important. This book is for association, public sector or corporate managers who want more value from their conferences. You should read this book before you think about speakers or entertainment. Start your planning by asking these questions:
1. Why do we need to bring people together?
2. What do our participants need to know to be more successful?
3. How can we engage them to find more ideas, and act on them?

Why Seven Rules?
The rules suggest a discipline. Disciplines are something most people dislike but need to get results. Every conference needs a plan to manage the logistics of bringing people and speakers together. It also needs a learning plan to guide decisions on speakers, workshops and ways to engage participants effectively. The rules explore these areas:

Rule 1 The experts at your conference are in the audience, not on the stage.
Rule 2 Think Return on Investment...even though it is hard to measure.
Rule 3 Design your conference with Logistics and Learning.
Rule 4 Learning drives all objectives and design of your content.
Rule 5 Always use the brainpower of an audience to create something.
Rule 6 Put structure into your networking and mingling opportunities.
Rule 7 Assume that your conference participants have weak skills for participating in a conference.

What is an innovative conference?
Everyone wants to think of their events as innovative, but what does this mean? It is not about technology. An innovative conference is designed to:
1. Help people find more and bigger ideas at your conference.
2. Prompt people to act on their ideas after the conference.
3. Raise the profile of your organization in the process.
For an event to be innovative, people must engage in a way that leads to their bottom line results. Something has to be created, learned or changed. It starts with people acting on their ideas as a goal for all conferences. For example:
For sales conferences: use new ideas to sell more or to sell in new ways.
For staff conferences: use new ideas to work together more effectively or use new skills or personal insights that have value to the individual.
For leadership conferences: use new ideas to have organizational leaders act with a stronger sense and conviction in core values.
For management conferences: use new ideas to gain a stronger understanding of the organization or its values that leads to greater staff commitment.
For association conferences: use new ideas to be successful in the coming year and serve members more effectively.

This book provides a road map to prompt (and sometime provoke) new thinking in the design of conferences and it's long overdue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ed Bernacki
• Release date: Nov 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9780973895469

Ed Bernacki

Ed Bernacki helps people and organizations develop a greater capacity to innovate. He provides a number of Idea Factory training programs. He has also created a range of idea journals / guides on innovative thinking. These are designed to help people shift from 'making notes' to 'managing their ideas'. Examples range from publishing a wide range of ideas journals to working with clients to create specialized innovation guides. This includes clients like Public Works and Government Services Canada and the Singapore Prime Ministers Office. Ed is also an expert communicator of innovation. He bring a cliche and jargon free approach to this work. His article website hosts about 80 published articles. Http://www.EdBernacki.com He also pioneered the concept of the Conference Navigator Guides, a tool kit for people who attend conferences. Over 50,000 have been used at conferences in numerous countries. The Navigator Guide combines a high quality idea journal with a guide on innovative thinking. Inc. Magazine was the first organization to invest in this idea for a series of its entrepreneur conferences. George Gendron, former editor in chief of Inc. Magazine said: “In the past 10 years we’ve moved from a period where there were simply too few new original ideas about managing and leading our organizations, to where there are too many. As we’ve said in Inc. magazine many times before, this is the age of execution. From this perspective, the Conference Navigator is an idea whose time has come, helping people bridge the crucial gap between inspiration and execution.” The latest book is "Seven Rules for Designing More Innovative Conferences" written to help people design more engaging conferences. See Hppt://www.innovativeconferences.com

Book preview

Seven Rules for Designing More Innovative Conferences

Why do people go to conferences, take notes and never look at them again?

By Ed Bernacki – The Idea Factory

About two out of every three people who attend conferences say they don’t look at their notes again.

I watch people at conferences to see how they participate. Many admit they put their conference binder on a bookshelf and leave it there. Many collect business cards from people they can’t remember afterwards. Many blame a dull speaker for the fact that they did not listen. (Criticizing a speaker for being dull is only appropriate if he or she is supposed to be motivational.) Many say that a successful conference allows them to go home with one good idea. I question why we set our goal so low.

This book was written to help people who design conferences. This is what we do before we start to organize them. I had two objectives in mind:

1. To provide insights, strategies and case studies to shape more innovative conferences that engage people, and

2. To provide ideas for making conference participants more effective participants.

If we pursue both strategies, then conferences will remain useful and productive to the bottom line of participants and those who pay the bills. This revised book was original published in 2007. In Canada it was placed on a list of the Top Management Books of 2007. The business book editor, Harvey Schachter, wrote this:

"If you think back to the last conference you attended, you probably remember a few dynamite speakers, along with some nifty PowerPoint presentations and intriguing, if rushed, chats over coffee. But do you remember coming back to the office and implementing anything?

"Ed Bernacki doubts you did. An innovation consultant who speaks at many conferences and is trying to reform them, he says for a conference to be effective it must go beyond entertaining. People must find new ideas at the event and then put them into action afterward.

"That means conference organizers must not be content with simply developing a loose theme and signing up flashy speakers, but develop a learning plan. Since the reality is that few people read their conference notes on their return to the office -- assuming they even took notes -- you need to figure out what can be built into the conference itself to stimulate learning and implementation.

"That doesn't mean getting rid of the big-name keynote speakers. But it does mean clarifying their role, and supplementing them with other program elements, including calling upon experts from within the conference itself to speak, to ensure good ideas come forth and get turned into action.

For people to find insights and ideas that have meaning for them, they need time to work with ideas to create something of value. At a minimum, your program must allow time for this to happen. Most of us take the conventional format of conferences for granted. Mr. Bernacki has offered some challenging questions and alternative routes that will get all of us -- planners and participants alike -- to rethink how to gain the most from those we attend.

I challenge you in reading this book to question everything about the design of your event. I have created some on line resources for this book. I recommend that you download the planning templates that are mentioned in this book. The PDF version of the planning tools and the summary of the rules will be invaluable. See Http://www.EdBernacki.com and link to Conference Design.

Seven Rules for Designing More Innovative Conferences

Bridging the gap between the inspiration of a conference and action back at work

Rule 1 The experts at your conference are in the audience, not on the stage.

Rule 2 Think Return on Investment…even though it is hard to measure.

Rule 3 Design your conference with Logistics and Learning.

Rule 4 Learning objectives drive the design of your content.

Rule 5 Always use the brainpower of an audience to create something.

Rule 6 Put structure into your networking and mingling opportunities.

Rule 7 Assume that your conference participants have weak skills for participating in a conference.

Seven Rules for Designing More Innovative Conferences

Bridge the gap between the inspiration of a conference and action back at work.

Published by Ed Bernacki of the Idea Factory

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012 Ed Bernacki

This book is one of a series written by Ed Bernacki on conference effectiveness. For more information see http://www.EdBernacki.com or http://www.InnovativeConferences.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

You should also download a highly designed version of the worksheets related to this book from Http://www.EdBernacki.com – link to page on Conference Design. This is a sample of the six page overview. It includes several workshop tools that are mentioned later in this book. You can use these pages to prompt your thinking about design elements of your event.

Why will you read this book?

Lots of people buy business books but the research suggests that about 10 percent actually read them cover to cover. For people in the association or corporate sector, this book can help you take a more strategic perspective for developing conferences that inspire and inform people based on creating a learning strategy to shape your event. For people in the meetings industry, you can use this book to advise your clients in more strategic ways. My key message is based on the need to dig deeper when designing conferences to see what people can create when they come together. The question I want readers to keep in their mind is this – how can this apply to your events?

Table of Contents

Bridging the Gap

Linking conference results to the work place. The gap that exists between the excitement of our conferences and results in the workplace must be bridged. Many say that we are not doing enough to bridge this gap.

Why seven rules for designing more innovative conferences?

An overview of the rules and how they can be used to design a conference.

Rule 1: The experts at your conference are in the audience, not on the stage.

This may sound obvious but too few conferences honor the expertise that walks into the conference.

Rule 2: Think Return on Investment…even though it is hard to measure.

The challenge of measuring the financial return of a conference is complex. Here are strategies to help enhance the potential for positive results. Doing nothing is not an option.

Rule 3: Design your conference based on plans for Logistics and Learning.

Too many events start with a detailed management plan when they should start with a detailed learning plan. Here are the basics.

Rule 4: Learning objectives drive the design of your content.

It is easy to talk about learning objectives but tough to design them. Here are three tools to start the process that ask, How do you want people to participate?

Rule 5: Always use the brainpower of an audience to create something.

When people come together, great ideas are possible. Too few conferences actually use the brainpower. Here are case studies to help people create new ideas at your event.

Rule 6: Put structure into your networking and mingling opportunities.

We know conferences are a great place to meet people but why leave it to chance? Here are lots of ideas to improve the quality of networks that begin at your event.

Rule 7: Assume that your conference participants have weak skills for participating in a conference.

Why do people take notes and never look at them again? Most people do not think about their personal effectiveness of listening, making notes or managing their ideas. It’s time to start!

Putting it all together. Creating your learning strategy.

Here is a process and structure to help create a worthwhile learning strategy for a conference.

And a book for your staff, members or any who goes to conferences, takes notes and never looks at them again

Here is a preview to a related book I wrote for those who attend conferences called, ‘How to get the most value from your next conference’.

Bridging the gap: Linking conference results to the workplace

An introduction

Your conference is over. Participants seem happy. They smile and look around to say their goodbyes. They keep an eye on their watches to make connections to get home. A week after the conference, the CEO is looking over the invoices for the events and wants to know if the event delivered value. She asks a research team to contact participants to ask four questions about the conference.

1. Have you looked at your notes from the conference?

2. Did you find some great ideas and act on them yet?

3. How did this conference make a difference to the success of our organization?

4. If you did