You should be getting more from your conference speakers. With a little more outlay of effort on behalf of a conference organizer, you can see for no extra outlay of financial resources a better return. By getting you conference speakers to be simply better, you’ll be giving your attendees more. This post gives you a few ideas how.
The Product
The start point must be an understanding of why attendees are willing to sign up for conferences, take time out of busy schedules and pay to attend. Accepting that each case is different, broadly speaking attendees want the opportunity to network and to benefit from the experience of speakers – to learn. This post focuses on learning as opposed to being spoken at.
If this is true, the last thing you want your speakers to talk about is technical process, efficiency savings and so on. You need them to explain what it is they’ve done to be successful. Perhaps, why did they make those process changes, efficiency savings etc; as opposed to the details. The difference can appear small but is actually huge.
The People
So accepting people want to learn, your job is to set the conditions for that as best as possible. The start is to explain to your speakers what you need them to do; this is not want you want, but what you think your attendees want to learn. Conscious of the fact that this will be about learning, you need to ensure that they give thought to how they’re going to teach. This means engaging exercises instead of academic style lectures. It also means embracing lots of types of media and learning methods; learning by doing, learning by example.
There are many methods that conference speaker can use to become better and the good news is that most of them want to be. Some ideas are: trying to change attitudes and behaviors as well as teaching skills; realizing that learning is about acceptance of a new topic for the student as much as about hearing; the importance of questions and discussion in convincing skeptics and confirming knowledge, for example.
We hope that these ideas help stimulate thought about how you can do your job better. We can offer you one more great and cast-iron method of being better: As a world-class ground transportation company, we know if you use a reputable provider of transportation, your conference will start and end friction-free. Griffin Transportation is based in Vancouver, BC, and aims to provide the “Ultimate in Safety, Service and Satisfaction” to our many valued customers. We’d really like you to become one, so call us today to make it happen.
