Interaction + Fun = Participation
Every conference I have ever attended strived to be the best, better than last years and better than the competition. Even though the conferences had great motivational speakers, the message was many times lost – even just a few days after the event. Why? Because they were not speaking to me about my work challenges, I could not apply anything concrete from their advice.
What can you do to make sure this doesn’t happen at your next conference? For starters, attendees need to feel they can bring the meeting messages back to the workplace and implement fresh ideas immediately. While they crave knowledge, it has to be relevant. Oh, and by the way, the delivery of the message has to be entertaining, too.
Here are six tips as identified by Meeting Professionals International, along with my own suggestions about ways technology can aid in the learning process.
Prep Your Attendees for the Message
Before the presenter comes out, spend several minutes creating curiosity and buy-in about the message. Many times attendees don’t know what the presenter is all about until the 2-minute introduction by the event emcee. Prepping the audience can help attendees ask better questions and direct the speaker’s dialog to what attendees want to hear.
Keep the Speaker’s Content Simple
Complex content with over-scripted PowerPoint slides is out of style. Determine what is absolutely critical and, if necessary, give your presenters a template to follow that limits the number of words on a slide and the number of slides in a deck.
Learn from Each Other
Rather than having the presenter do all the talking, let learning occur between meeting participants. It is estimated that 70% of a person’s job is learned from their peers, so it is a natural extension for meeting attendees to both teach and learn from each other.
Switch Things Up
Hire storytellers, show a video and/or review a case study and discuss the salient points. All of these activities can potentially evoke emotions and spur conversation to help attendees grow.
Poll often
Whether you use a polling application on a mobile device or an Audience Response System (ARS) rental, it is important to ask relevant questions throughout the meeting so content can change based on the request and input of others.
Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate
Whether your meeting is large or small, live or virtual, collaborating around a large Smart TV rental makes a lot of sense. You can pull in documents, add comments, video conference with experts around the world and create an action plan that can be sharable, instantaneously, on the cloud.
SmartSource Rentals Helps Engage Attendees
SmartSource Rentals is dedicated to making your attendees’ meeting experience as memorable as possible. Simply request a quote or initiate a chat and one of our experienced Account Executives will help provide the best technology rentals for you from our depth and breadth of inventory.
