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If noisy, crowded receptions aren’t achieving the human connection your attendees crave, try adjusting your program.
Beth Surmont, CMP-Fellow, FASAE, CAE
There is a growing tension between what attendees want to get out of an in-person event, and what their bosses — the approvers — want to be the result of their participation. “I travel to events to network with my peers,” we are told time and time again, “but my boss will only approve my travel if they see a lot of education options.” “I don’t want to approve a boondoggle,” bosses say. “I’m not sending them to hang out at an open bar with their friends. I need them to bring back practical and actionable information.”
How do we end up trying to solve for both? We overstuff events with content and leave the attendees to connect on their own at noisy receptions and in the hallways. And what we are seeing, two cycles into this new, post-COVID era of events, is that this outdated model is fast losing its appeal.
In our hybrid workplace environments, we are often isolated from our peers, and in-person events provide what is becoming a unique opportunity to have face-to-face conversations with professionals who work on the same kinds of issues we do. And it is way more than just small talk. Participants want to brainstorm, to benchmark, to discuss, to vent, to solve, to share, and even just to simply enjoy the company of someone who is facing similar challenges.
The good news is that we can design for this tension. We can create the right balance of connection and education by adjusting our program formats. And the bonus is that we can deliver events that are more compelling, offer higher value, and are more fun.
There are multiple ways to accomplish this. Here are three successful examples we’ve seen lately.
1. Don’t wait for fun. We all know the standard schedule for events, and usually there are several sessions we need to clear before we get to the fun stuff. We delay the gratification — and what people are there to do, which is connect with each other. The FLEX Summer Camp, a regional event for event execs, broke open this model. Before the opening speaker, before the sponsor thank-you’s, even before the welcoming remarks, the organizers had the audience get into groups of three and asked each person to share something they were good at and something they needed help with. The result was an instant burst of energy and connection. Suddenly, everyone in the room seemed like old friends.
2. Engineer connection into the sessions. When a client recently needed the team to feel more empowered and be more aligned around making tough decisions, we designed a robust scenario session, where teams had to work through a fictional case study and decide where they would make a hypothetical investment. The twist was that each of the paths given offered relatively equal good and bad opportunities. The teams had to work together to discuss the options and agree on the decision, which they then had to defend to their peers. In addition to building skills through real-world application, the teams expressed how much fun they had working on the problem together.
3. Encourage groups to grow organically. In July, at the Destinations International Annual Convention, a woman handed me a ribbon with a strange set of initials — SWWGSD — as we were walking in the hallway and told me to come to an unlisted reception at 4 p.m. That person was Tammy Blount-Canavan, president and CEO of Visit Seattle, and founder of SWWGSD (Smart Women Who Get Sh*t Done), a group that grew organically from a few women who connected at the convention every year. At the reception at this year’s DI convention, around 100 people in the room celebrated each other, and invited newbies to be inducted into the group by taking an oath. By making space for this organic community, the organizers built loyalty and connection to the event.
None of these options required expensive investments, or even a lot of time to develop. But they did require the organizers to be intentional in creating connection at their events. Let’s do the same. As The Art of Gathering author Priya Parker says, “Connection doesn’t happen on its own. You need to design for it.”
Beth Surmont, FASAE, CMP-Fellow, CAE, is vice president of event strategy and design for marketing, strategy, and experience agency 360 Live Media.