The traditional conference format is all too familiar.
Conferences open in large plenary sessions with a few experts speaking to the crowd, the participants seated in rows of chairs too close together, and then there are break-out sessions where experts speak to smaller groups of people, seated once again in rows with little opportunity for interaction or conversation except for brief questions and answers.
Ironically, the most substantial conversations at conferences occur informally during the coffee breaks, meals, and cocktail hours rather than during the formal meeting times.
The challenge that faces conference planners is how to bring new life and energy into the formal sessions.
Conference participants usually attend meetings and conferences to meet new people, to get together with old friends and colleagues, to make connections with individuals they have heard about, to learn about what is new in their field, to learn about things they need to know, to network, and to learn about new ideas and ways of getting things done.
Yet when conference participants sit in rows and get talked at hour after hour in dark rooms where slides and overheads are all they can see, people get bored, feel disconnected, and may feel they are not getting what they want and need.
Moreover, when new participants enter this kind of conference arena they may often find it difficult to make the initial connections that would help them feel comfortable enough to want to return to subsequent meetings.
One thing a chairperson can easily do at a conference do make them more engaging and interactive is to allow the participants to have a short conversation with each other after a speaker has finished their talk but before entering the Q&A.
Here is a short video of people doing this at the Ark Groups KC UK Conference in London in June 2007.
It works amazingly well.
Media Information:
Quotations are extremely effective at capturing and concisely communicating thoughts and ideas. They can be inspirational but more importantly quotations can help us reveal and assess the assumptions, values and beliefs that underlie the ways in which we perceive the world.
I have compiled over 800 quotations and short excerpts on this website. It is an eclectic mix but most of them are inspirational or insightful in nature and relate to knowledge, learning or personal development in some form.
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Quotations from Ann C. Baker, Patricia I. jensen, and David A. Kolb:
The traditional conference format is all too familiar.
Conferences open in large plenary sessions with a few experts speaking to the crowd, the participants seated in rows of chairs too close together, and then there are break-out sessions where experts speak to smaller groups of people, seated once again in rows with little opportunity for interaction or conversation except for brief questions and answers.
Ironically, the most substantial conversations at conferences occur informally during the coffee breaks, meals, and cocktail hours rather than during the formal meeting times.
The challenge that faces conference planners is how to bring new life and energy into the formal sessions.
Conference participants usually attend meetings and conferences to meet new people, to get together with old friends and colleagues, to make connections with individuals they have heard about, to learn about what is new in their field, to learn about things they need to know, to network, and to learn about new ideas and ways of getting things done.
Yet when conference participants sit in rows and get talked at hour after hour in dark rooms where slides and overheads are all they can see, people get bored, feel disconnected, and may feel they are not getting what they want and need.
Moreover, when new participants enter this kind of conference arena they may often find it difficult to make the initial connections that would help them feel comfortable enough to want to return to subsequent meetings.
If you are interested in Knowledge Management, the
Knowledge Café
or the role of conversation in organizational life then you my be interested in this online book I am writing on
Conversational Leadership
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The traditional conference format is all too familiar.
The traditional conference format is all too familiar.
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