Creating Innovative Events

Posted by: Tahira Endean

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

A summary from the
Engage365 Water Cooler Chat
March 11, 2011
Topic: Overcoming obstacles to innovation in events

The Engage365 Water Cooler Chat this week had me thinking about many things…

Event Qualities

• Safe places to learn and to share your own knowledge with peers
• Connection catalysts where people with similar interests and needs can deepen relationships
• Catalysts for change, innovation, transformation where the power of face to face dialogue increases opportunities for success to breed
• Fun! Attendees should anticipate the meeting, and through shared unique experiences come away feeling invigorated

The topic included innovation in meetings, barriers to innovating, and how we can take small steps to improvement.

Six Key Barriers to Innovation

• Lack of objectives / not clearly identified objectives
• Audience needs assumed not researched
• Assuming audience wants things to be the same
• Planners “scared” to change / don’t have the tools to initiate change
• Lack of tools to sell new ideas to the executive suite stakeholders
• Budget (barrier or excuse…)

Improving Innovation in Meetings

• Identify your Audience and Objectives: As @TrevorRoald said, “Project needs to start with evaluating the audience and building appropriate objectives that resonate within that community.” While this sounds so obvious, it is a step that is often overlooked or short-changed.
• Ask Yourself / Your Committee: Who is your current or anticipated audience? Who is still benefiting from this meeting, who should be targeted, and who is no longer the best fit? What is their motivation to attend?  What are you offering that will allow them to sell their attendance to their stakeholders – those who will be investing in their attendance at your event? How are you going to deliver on your promise? What do you need to change to better deliver content and relationship building opportunities?

Succinctly said by @JeniseFryatt, “Innovation needs to be looked at in the initial planning phases rather than as an after-thought.”

Four Tools to Improve Meeting Design

1. Are you reliant on a traditional theater / speaker or panel with one point of view / 60 – 90 minute model? What are alternatives to this that have seen success? (TED is but one great example)
2. Events require sponsorship, but how are you embedding your sponsors into the meeting in ways that provide mutual benefit?
3. Are you leaving enough “hallway” time? We all know hosted-buyer programs and education are important, but equally important is the informal time where relationships are built and conversation generates ideas that lead to… (so many good things).
4. Change the environment, and create a space(s) that increases attendee motivation to participate at the meetings and associated events, and to spread the messages learned.

Stakeholder Needs

Just as important as knowing what your audience needs is knowing what your stakeholders need. If you want to innovate, or even make smaller changes you can see a need for, you will need to find first the tools to support the change, associate these with a budget, and then have both solid reasons and a plan to table with the stakeholders. Ultimately you need to convince them that these will likely succeed. If there are potential fail points, recognize them. Don’t be scared to fail, but learn from what didn’t work.

A final comment from the chat that resonated by @djstomp, “Innovation in my opinion has to come in small steps. Be patient. Start with ambassadors. OR Sometimes be radical.”

Finally, let me defer to one of the masters of this process, Jeff Hurt, who continues to bring up the tough subjects and provide solutions from his own (and those he spends his energy with), perspective.