More Lessons for Conference Organizers
I’ve attended over a dozen conferences in this past year, some great, some sucky. It looks like Les Blogs falls in the second camp. The amazing thing is that real life explodes into the blogosphere and then back to real life, this impacts the impression that people have of your event and will impact future attendance.
Here’s a bunch of suggestions that conference organizers should consider:
- Be sure to communicate up front to your guests if there are any changes in schedule, don’t surprise them.
- Don’t overcharge them.
- Don’t sue other conference organizers that are building similar themes and names.
- Don’t insert your personal conquests into the pre-planned theme.
- Don’t rush the sessions, give people time to mingle and network, that’s one of the most important things for attendees
- Be considerate of the attendees that are coming. Accommodate them as guests, be sure to provide speakers to them that are in the appropriate language.
- Diversity in speakers are required our you’ll get dragged through the thorns.
- Get up-to-date speakers, rotate through keynotes and speakers, not all keynotes much be authors.
- Remember, you’re supposed to be a community resource.
- Remember, the event is often online as it’s in person, consider having preset tags upfront for the social media community
- Update: David Dalka adds in comments for more Electrical Outlets
- Update: How could I forget that there needs to be ample wireless access.
The best conference I went to last year was WebVisions. I didn’t attend last year, but I suspect that SXSW will also be great.
Update: In case you didn’t know, people are really really really mad at Les Blogs. That’s what inspired me to right this post. It seems as if parody pictures are already starting to appear, here’s the original, and now the modified one…
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Great list, I’ll add a few.
More electrical outlets!!!!!!!!
Create a transparent registration list for other attendees to know that a friend is going or someone they’ve always wanted to meet will be there so there is no misconnection.
I wrote an article on how to maximize your conference experience recently.
http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/articles/networking_conference_influencer.aspx
Jeremiah, wonderful start of a list, I already started one myself too and will make sure to link back as well!
Leader to Pariah in a single leap…
Following on from Andrew’s post from LeWeb3 about delegates’ discontent with the political agendas……
Here is a list that Nick Douglas made last week.
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/diggbait/the-7-mistakes-that-eventholders-make-220271.php
I don’t attend many conferences, but I have a question. As far as internet access is concerned, ‘internet cafes’ have been the norm at most events for some years now. Is wifi being made widely available at most conference now? Is it replacing the ‘net cafes,’ or just a supplemental amenity?
Juan
At most web conferences, there is Wifi available from the main halls. The ‘audience’ actually starts to blog live, helping spread the conference to the entire networked community.
At some conferences, the wifi was spotty, went down or just wasn’t there. When you’re paying 3k, you expect better.
Great points. Will keep them in mind. Look forward to having you be involved in February.