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Improve Your Next Conference – 5 Really Easy Tips

On 18 April, 2014 by Ciara Feely Comments (0), leave your own!
Categories: Book more conference business, Conference Hotels, Conference Planning, Conference Sales Toolkit, Conference Venue Tips, hotel sales professionals

Tips to make your delegates conference experience easier and dramatically improve networking.

Today’s blog post is written by Kevin Newman who organises BrightonSEO.com conferences as posted in Event Managers Blog. You will love these tips – they just make sense!!

Improve the Usability of Your Name Badges.

Why do you give people name badges at events? It’s probably to make sure you’ve got no freeloaders.
Why are they useful to attendees? To help them remember the name of someone they’ve forgotten or to spot people they’d like to speak to. Yet the badges at most events are tiny, with minuscule fonts that might be on brand but are a nightmare to read at distance.

We take a different approach, that seems to work well for us.
Our badges are huge. A double sided sheet of A6. We do get comments about how huge they are, but making them bigger makes it much easier for them to be useful.
We also use the font Blue Highway. This is not one of our brand fonts. It’s a free font based upon the fonts used on American road signs. That means it’s designed to be clearly read from a distance.
If you can’t read the name of the attendee from 20ft away, we have failed on our badge designs.
Also think about what extra information you could put on the badge with the extra space a bigger badge allows. In the past we’ve included Twitter handles. Sometimes people are more familiar with people’s names on Twitter than their ‘real name’.
Though don’t be afraid to exclude things, on badges whitespace is your friend!

Programme More breaks.

I’ve struggled with this one over the years. I’ve always wanted to cram as much content into a conference as I can, so I was always nibbling away at the breaks.
Then I had a proper read through our feedback. I got the message that the opportunity to network was one of the main reasons people attended our events. So we made more time for exactly that.
Having healthy breaks does mean when a speaker inevitably runs over time, there is still plenty of time for attendees to stock up on caffeine, fresh air and industry gossip.

Arrange More Power Sockets
You can spot who the conference veteran is. They are the first person in the auditorium scoping out the seat nearest a power socket. They will even get charging early in the day to ensure their fully juiced for the whole day.
The reality is at most events your audience will be spending time on their mobile, tablet and/or phone. They will want power to keep them charged.
You can never have enough power sockets at a conference.
Use this opportunity. There are some great off the shelf charging solutions and it’s a great thing to get sponsored or branded. Chargebar is a great service where charging stations can be rented. It becomes the centre for connecting and like the “watering hole” of the conference. Chargers are the most forgotten item at a conference, if you are providing a solution to someones panic of almost running out of juice on their phone or notebook, then you are a saviour.

Send out a ‘What to Expect’ Email

Early on in my conference organising days it amazed me the number of emails I used to get about dress codes. I was organising marketing conferences not gala dinners. It’s one of the things people legitimately get concerned about in the run up to events.
One way to fight this anxiety in your delegates is to send round a ‘What to expect email’ a few days before the event. Talk about dress codes, what types of food and drink are going to be available, whether there will be wi-fi etc.
Think about every small question your attendees have asked ahead of your events. Turn then into a helpful piece of communication. You’ll save your attendees a lot of mental energy fretting.

Schedule Tweets to Pre-empt Problems
There are certain problems we know we are going to have at our events. People arrive early, they can’t find the wifi password, their running out of battery and are looking for a charger.
We know to expect these things so ahead of an event we schedule tweets covering exactly these issues.
It leaves us the time to concentrate on other things on the day but allows people on the back-channel to answer their own questions. You’ll also find other attendees retweeting these ‘Public Service Announcements’. Spreading the message for you.

In Conclusion.
A successful event is all about the details.
These are just a few of the things that have helped make our events more successful. Useful badges, more networking time that you might expect, extensive power sockets, allaying people’s fears with a what to expect email and pre-scheduling tweets to pre-empt problems.

You probably do lots of your own, I hope these tweaks will help you run your event better.

If you like this blog post, you will love these related topics:
One Brilliant Question to Ask When Organising a Conference
How to Effectively Analyze Your Conference – Survey Questions

Feel free to Contact Ciara if you have any questions on how to get the biggest results from your Conference or Event.

Tagged: arranging conferences, charging stations at conference, conference experience, conference organisers, conference planning tips, conference technology. conference apps, networking tips, tips on planning an event

27 Things to do before a Conference…

On 7 May, 2013 by Ciara Feely Comments (0), leave your own!
Categories: Uncategorized

Came across this great conference tips and advice from Chris Brogan…… It is lengthy, but worth the read…

This is also a great check list for conference organisers, ensure your conference is networking friendly.

1. This seems silly to start with, but check the schedule of the event. Mark off what you want to see. Get a sense of what you might ask for a pertinent question based on the session description, and/or decide what the business value of your interaction at any session might be.
2. Check in at Twitter Search for anyone talking about the event you’re attending. You can then determine if you want to follow them and start conversations ahead of the event. This works amazingly well for people who might be a bit shy.
3. Check via Google Blogsearch and Technorati for any references to the event. See whether any companies are announcing anything. Look for signs of business opportunity ahead of the experience, and if you find some, do more homework with search and research.
4. Visit Flickr and look for recent pictures of attendees or other people you hope to meet at the event. I keep a little document of all the faces I might want to meet, sometimes with a few facts about the person, in a document. (I don’t do this for every event, but when I do, it helps).
5. Visit the prospective attendees or business people’s blogs and Twitter streams for ideas of how things are going in their lives or in their businesses. Before running into someone, wouldn’t you want to know if they were in a car accident the day before, or maybe you’ll read that they just closed a B round of funding, and thus might have budget for a project with you. It’s free intelligence before a meeting.
6. Read up on any industry news around the event you’re attending, to understand what might be impacting the people you’re mingling with. My guess is you’ll know where this information is for the type of event where you’re going. If not, consider this similar to my point above about Google Blogsearch and Technorati, but also check Google News and maybe do some straight Google searches as well.
7. If you can, check a few of the people’s Twitter streams before you say hi at the conference. This way, you can have a few tidbits of someone’s personal news top of mind before connecting at the event.
8. Check out the exhibitors and sponsors for the event. Click through the site links and visit their web pages. What do you know about them? Are they a prospective vendor for you? A client? Do you see some business value in meeting any of them?
9. Check your LinkedIn for the city where you’ll be attending, and/or for any of the speakers’ or exhibitors’ names to see their professional profile.

Content Preparation – use the opportunity to raise your profile at a conference…

10. Consider putting up a few post-dated blog posts so that you don’t have to worry about writing on deadline at the event. Unsure what to write about? Here are 100 blog topics.
11. Write some of your best work in the days leading up to the conference, and have a great post launch on the day of the event. The likelihood of people checking out your blog during or just before an event is high. Heck, I just recommended that you do it.
12. Consider writing posts that might help you form conversations at the event. For instance, if you’re looking to work with restaurants, write a blog post about how you’d help restaurants improve sales. Thus, people who might investigate your blog ahead of time might also know what you’re thinking about and will engage you.
13. If you’re looking to connect at the event, some of your content should be outreach related, via services like Twitter or Facebook. Message the world using the event’s hash tag (if it has one), and/or the city/state (or province, etc) where the event is held. Thus, people using Twitter Search or poking around via Facebook might catch you in a search and engage you.
14. Consider making a video about something and posting it to your blog. Videos will give people an even better opportunity to observe you and see what you’re about. It might also help with the people recognition factor, as seeing you in motion might improve their chance of seeing you at an event.
15. If you’re thinking of liveblogging the event, prepare ahead of time (here’s a great article at Web Worker Daily about that).
16. If you’re going to take lots of photos or videos at the event, check your gear to make sure you’ve got everything (charger, media transfer tools, spare whatevers). This seems to muck up things often.
17. Sometimes an event has a blog. It might be neat to see if you can guest post on it. That might up your chance of meeting folks at the event.
18. Here’s one: blog about people you know who might be at the event that you hope to connect with. Write about what you might want to talk with them about. It can’t hurt. (Though, in saying this, I’m not sure you’d have to blog that you want to meet me to meet me. You can just come over and say hi.)

Make the networking work for you…

19. Order fresh business cards. They don’t even have to be corporate-approved. Here’s the thing: make the NAME part very large. Make your primary mode of requested contact come first. Make it VERY clear what you do for business. Make sure you add the kind of offering you’re putting out there for the event (or for the next several events, if that makes sense).
20. Scour your LinkedIn contacts for the city where you’ll be visiting and send some personal emails to people that you might want to meet in the target city. They don’t necessarily have to meet you at the conference, but you might be able to schedule coffee.
21. Send message via Twitter saying that you’ll be visiting ____ conference in ____ (city) and let people know you’re coming. See if you can strike up friendships ahead of time. Maybe mention some of the stuff you’re looking to do, business-wise.
22. Backup your laptop before you travel. You might not think about it, but there are many chances to destroy your data once you’re on the road. Make sure that’s not going to happen.
23. Consider any extra batteries or power supplies you might need to bring with you.
24. If you’ve got a business offer to promote at an event, practice and practice and practice how you’re going to talk about it. Be crisp. Make it easy to say. Be very clear about the ask. If you’re looking for people to review your demo, then make that the ask. If you’re looking for work, be clear that you’re available for a few extra projects. It seems that lots of folks beat around the bush or don’t exactly know how to have a beginning, middle, and end to a conversation.
25. Practice believing in yourself.
26. Remember that not meeting someone at an event isn’t always the end of the world. There are other chances, other times. Just the same, if it’s the kind of event where people have traveled to be there, take every opportunity to reach out. It’s harder to recreate an opportunity once everyone’s gone home.
27. And this should come first, but remember to give your family a bit of extra love before leaving for the event. Take them out to dinner, and/or give the little ones some extra fun. Make a game of showing where you’ll be via Google Maps, and switch to Satellite or Street View to show them the visuals instead of just the map. Give everyone a chance to connect while you’re on the trip via Skype video, so they can stay in touch. It makes it easier.

For some other insightful tips from Chris Brogan – visit his website and sign up for his magic.

If you liked these tips, you will love these… there is a little overlap.

Tagged: arranging conferences, conference advice, conference check list, conference networking, conference organisation advice, conference organisers, conference organization tips, conference planning tips, conference technology. conference apps, conference venue ireland, corporate event planning tips, smart tips on attending a conference, things to do before going to a conference
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    Ciara Feely

    Welcome to the blog of Ciara Feely, the founder of FindaConferenceVenue.com, Ireland's expert on Conference Venues in Ireland. Ciara offers a free service researching and giving advice on venues in Ireland for Conferences, Meetings and Events. Just call or email her. The website is a comprehensive listing of over 500 venues in Ireland – independently search for venues and send an enquiry directly through to the venue.
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