Participants (especially younger ones) are more likely to remain members of your organization, tell others about their experiences, and pay to attend your future events when you get them actively engaged.
Creating a Time to Unplug
You probably regularly send texts and interesting videos to your family members. But something is refreshing when you can completely put away the electronics for a while and be present and at the moment with each other. For example, I recently spent a weekend with my Millennial daughters, and the only time we pulled out our smartphones during the trip was to consult Google Maps.
A Paradigm Shift for Conferences
Yet I find that most conferences I attend are structured as though the participants do not have these sophisticated tools of the 21st century at their disposal.
For instance, Millennials don’t stay up to watch someone deliver the weather forecast at the end of the evening news like Matures or even some Baby Boomers might do. They don’t stay up to watch somebody read them the news! No, they have instant access to (better) information from The Weather Channel and similar apps on their phones.
Yet many association events are still designed as though the Internet does not even exist, believing that the primary way participants will still get the information they need is by attending the association’s gatherings once or twice a year. This is the association’s equivalent of having the television meteorologist tell participants what they need to know.
These organizers failed to realize that participants could now access much of the information being presented in the concurrent sessions through a simple Google search after just a few seconds of effort. Articles, recorded webinars, and white papers are there for instant assimilation.
Why should participants pay hundreds (or thousands) of dollars and spend dozens of hours dealing with travel hassles – just to get the same information?
And do they (or you) enjoy just sitting in silence – for days?
In addition, they may have even already watched a YouTube video of the same presentation your keynote speaker will deliver to every association he or she works for. So why should they sit through it again?
Be a Hero; Provide an Experience Instead
For future association events to be attended and successful, they must provide experiences.
For their continued existence, conferences will need to do more for attendees than simply dish out information. They will need to provide something that becomes harder and harder to get anywhere else – face-to-face interaction with like-minded people.
The person at a conference who is most likely to benefit an attendee either personally or professionally may be the person next to them or one row back. But they may never get to meet her if both simply sit and listen to the “sage on the stage” for session after session.
So meeting professionals are moving on from the “talking head” keynote speaker who may have been popular with the participants’ Baby Boomer or Generation X parents because many younger audiences find these speakers to be just too boring. That is why interactive keynote experiences have become popular.
Tip: Make it be About the Millennial, NOT the Speaker
Web-savvy Generation Y now comprises the largest segment of the workforce and represents your association’s future. The majority of attendees in my sessions are, indeed, Millennials (like my daughters). I have learned from my experience with them that they are quite different from the Matures, Baby Boomers, or Generation X, which preceded them.
Millennials are probably the most “social” of all the generations and crave interaction with others the most.
As we discuss in my social media marketing conferences, Millennials, by and large, have tuned out the one-way messages of the past. Using tools like Instagram and Snapchat, they instead create two-way conversations.
Millennials, in particular, dislike being lectured by a speaker or having to endure yet another canned presentation, but they certainly enjoy helping to create a script in real-time.
They no longer want a conference presentation to be all about a particular speaker. They want the presentation to be all about them.
The Benefits of an Interactive Keynote Address
So why have an energetic and enthusiastic interactive opening session?
An attendee who gets involved in your conference right from the start (rather than just sitting there as a passive bystander) is more likely to remain a member of your association. They will be more willing to invest significant time and money to attend future events – to once again get the unique opportunity to interact face-to-face with other members they have come to know.
During my interactive keynote experience, participants get to know each other (not the speaker). Based on the group they choose, they receive a fun, colorful wristband. They then use this tool to build relationships with others with the same (or different) color wristband through the remainder of the conference. Some participants use this tool to form lifetime bonds for both personal and professional benefit!
Not only do other speakers and I offer an interactive opening keynote address, but scheduling an interactive address as the closing general session can also make the difference between the overall success and failure of the conference.
For instance, I was told by a conference organizer, “We did not end well yesterday. We needed to discuss some changes in policies and procedures that nobody was happy about. They left the conference grumbling yesterday. I certainly hope you can turn things around this afternoon.”
The last thing they needed to hear at that point was how somebody whom they would never see again successfully scaled Mount Everest or endured to win an Olympic gold medal.
Instead, within minutes of beginning my presentation, I could sense an immediate change in the spirit of the room. After our opening interactive activity (which was a welcome change after a day and a half of just sitting and listening), people were talking, smiling, and laughing with each other.
After the event, the organizer sent me an email that read, “I have had many people come by and thank me for inviting you to present at our meeting last week. Everyone had a great time, and they also learned a lot about themselves and their co-workers. You did a great job and had great energy! Thank you for helping to make our event a success!”
The Bottom Line for Conference Success
The point is to do something different during your conference this year. Don’t let the speakers on stage have all of the fun while your audience is limited to being passive onlookers, learning all about the speaker’s successes. In fact, don’t just schedule speeches but instead actually create experiences for your attendees.
And just like I have hopeful anticipation that my daughters will accompany me on our annual trip next year, the Millennials will actually look forward to your next association conference.
