Breakout Sessions

Select a nice breadth in session topics if you are conducing breakout sessions. While they must still remain targeted on the theme of your event, this will allow participants to explore a variety of topics that may hold even greater interest and value for them. Additionally, by offering some of the more popular presentations more than once, you allow attendees to make more comfortable decisions about the sessions they want to attend and when.

Presentation handouts can be burdensome and costly to print, travel with, and hand out. Additionally, most handouts have a very short lifespan, often relegated to a drawer or pile once attendees return to their daily grind. Finally, all that page flipping during a presentation can detract from the message when the presenters want the audience’s eyes at the front of the room, on them.

Still, a common complaint about not having handouts surfaces when they are not available. What is a presenter to do?

Recommendation: Offer the complete presentation and any accompanying handouts on the event website. This will allow those who want the handouts to get them and will produce more exposure for the website.

Continuing Education Units (CEU)

Per Wikipedia, continuing education units or credits are defined as

“a measure used in continuing education programs, particularly those required in a licensed profession in order for the professional to maintain the license. Examples of people who need CEUs include architects, engineers, educators, nurses, mental health professionals, and social workers. [...] Any organization may award a traditional CEU without requiring any accreditation. With a traditional CEU an employer or other organization must decide on an individual basis whether to honor the CEU from a training provider.” (Retrieved from Wikipedia, Continuing education unit, at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_education_unit on November 10, 2010.)

Offering continuing education credits can be a good draw for attendees, who not only get to experience your event but also build their resumes and help keep their certifications current. Include an attendance sheet at the front of the room for people to sign in and sign out once they’ve attended the complete presentation. This helps ensure people actually sit through the presentation to earn the credit instead of signing up for the credit and ducking out early. You may want to place a person in charge of monitoring this process for fielding questions and ensuring the process is followed properly.

Wrap Up

Make surveys available for completion at the end of each session or send the survey out electronically within a day or two of your event. Waiting more than a couple days (even a couple hours) will allow attendees to cool off and participation in the survey will be lower, so do your best to survey while the participants are fresh from the experience.

Best: Allow participants to respond to speaker evaluations and surveys while they’re still at the event. Not only will their ideas for improving the experience be fresh in their minds, but it eliminates the need for them to review their notes in order to provide feedback later. Additionally, you won’t be taking their time away from other things once they are back in the real world. It may mean using paper and compiling the results and comments by hand, but it’s better than not having the feedback at all.

The event production team should meet one last time after the event to debrief on what worked, what could have been improved and to discuss the survey results. Take good notes here. This will be “best practices” guidance for the next event.

This concludes the my series on event promotion. I’m sure there will be more later, but I hope you have found this material to be helpful and informative! Comments are welcome and encouraged!

In support of your efforts,

Matt

Serve 'em the good stuff! It's your brand at stake.

Meals

If your event is a full day event or longer, you will want to consider providing meals. If your event participants are forced offsite to fend for themselves, many will be late getting back and you lose an important opportunity to have them network with one another under your brand. Sharing a meal is a symbol of tribal community that reaches all the way back to the days when fire was news and caves were homey.

Recommendation: Offer a buffet that allows participants to design their own meal. Keep in mind diabetic and vegetarian concerns when selecting your menu. The alternative to the buffet is to offer individual meals, but you will want to capture meal preferences during the registration process to ensure your attendees’ dietary needs are considered. Go the extra mile and make your menu friendly to gluten and dairy sensitivities.

Make snacks, tea, coffee and water available in the afternoon to help keep participants alert after that wonderful lunch you just fed them.

Networking and Focus Groups

If possible, build opportunities for networking into your event. This strengthens the experience for attendees and challenges them to meet new people. Activities that involve group discussion can generate new ideas and promote sharing between peers. Focus groups challenged with the task of solving the world’s woes will often get the creative juices flowing and learn a lot about each other in the meantime.

Reception

Receptions offer a place for people to go in the evening after the day’s events. It continues the bonding process and facilitates networking between industry peers. Note the reception area and time with clear, visible signage so people are reminded of the reception throughout the day.

Tip: Offering a cash bar and appetizers are encouraged, but only after your event has wrapped up for the day. If you’re holding an evening event with a reception beforehand, you may lose some participants!

Be good to them.. they are signing up for your event.

The registration process needs to be smooth.

If your event involves breakout sessions, ensure your registration form allows attendees to select their desired sessions. A session listing should have topic summaries, presenter names, session times (maybe even the presentation itself) available to assist in the decision-making process. By ensuring your participants select their sessions ahead of time, you will be able to plan appropriately sized rooms for the breakout sessions, reducing overcrowding and “undercrowding.”  Finally, would-be attendees may require approval from their managers to attend and having summaries of the topics to be covered will help them build their case.

Tip: No need to post times or room numbers at this point. That will all be decided once you know how many are interested in which sessions. Once you have an idea as to the attendance levels, you can place the larger draws in larger rooms, set up repeat sessions for them, and ensure sessions dealing with related topics are not competing with one another in the same timeslot. (For instance, if you have two sessions on youth, don’t schedule them at the same time without a repeat session for one of them.)

Registration and Sign-In (Onsite)

Make sure your registration/information booth is clearly marked with the proper signage. Also, include signage at stairs and elevators to point the way.

Having name tags available at check-in will help facilitate taking attendance. Have them orderly and organized alphabetically.

Accept credit cards, both online and at the door. Also at the door, accept checks and cash if you’re comfortable.

Do you plan to offer continuing education credits? Mentioning this during registration will almost certainly increase your attendance numbers.

Have a document that lists the registered event attendees and the breakout sessions they have selected. There will always be folks who show up without their list of selected sessions, so being able to provide this information when they ask will help keep your projected headcount more stable.