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Annual Conference Mode
Eric Lanke
FEBRUARY 18, 2019
On the day this posts, my association's Board meeting and Annual Conference will be two short weeks away. This has traditionally been my time to enter what I call my "Annual Conference Mode."
Conference Related Topics 
The Physics Of Conference Entropy
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 21, 2019
In physics, the second law of thermodynamics says all things—bodies, businesses, conferences, energy, organizations, relationships—move toward chaos and disorder. As your conference matures, it experiences entropy. As a conference professional, you know this to be true.
Making The Common Conference Uncommon
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 27, 2018
Who wants to attend a common, ordinary, ho-hum, everyday , I’m-just-like-all-the-others traditional conference? Your conference growth and revenue depends upon repeat paying attendees year after year. And your customer loyalty is built upon making your common conference uncommon.
More Conference Physics: Inertia
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 31, 2019
However, a conference at rest, tends to die. The enemy of most conferences is the way it’s always been. Cognitive and organizational inertia keeps an association on its current conference course even when facing disruptive or rapid external changes.
Leveraging Team Learning at Conferences
Velvet Chainsaw
MAY 22, 2019
Traditionally teams from organizations attend a conference with a divide-and-conquer game plan, as they split up and attend as many different sessions as they can. Yet conferences are lagging in meeting the needs of team learning.
Developing Your Conference Story Arc To Activate Participants’ Brains
Velvet Chainsaw
NOVEMBER 8, 2018
Applying a story arc to the conference can activate participants’ brains. You can use the story arc concept to carefully craft the messages and issues you want your conference participants to explore, experience and learn. So exactly how do you use a story arc for your conference?
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The Secret Value of Conferences
Smooth The Path
JULY 18, 2017
Why do people go to conferences even though online learning and books are a better deal? These are all reasons to go to a conference rather than buy a book or take an online class. When you invest in a conference, you give yourself permission to take the time to be there.
Emerging Evergreen Conference Practices—From This To That
Velvet Chainsaw
SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
To paraphrase Hoffer, you can never get enough of conference fads, gimmicks and trends. Unless your a conference participant and we often have had enough!). They also want access to your conference budget. You can never get enough of what you really don’t need says Eric Hoffer.
Good news foodies: Conference venues are listening
Aaron Wolowiec
APRIL 28, 2015
At a conference dinner earlier this month, a bunch of us, hungry and tired, sat at the table joking that chicken was most likely on the menu. Sounds about right for a conference, yes? Farm-to-food eating is gaining popularity across the globe, so conference venues are taking note.
Conference Reform Requires Cultivating Leaders With Moral Purpose To Make A Difference
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 7, 2019
Many conferences are stuck in the rut of legacy routines, age-old rituals and cloned programming. Conference organizers and its advisors replicate the past maintaining the traditions and well-established procedures of yesteryear. Conference Reform Requires These Leadership Traits.
Do Not Be Seduced By Meeting Fads Or Conference Trends
Velvet Chainsaw
SEPTEMBER 17, 2018
Most conference and meeting professionals want the coolest, hippest, latest ideas and trends for their events. We want to know what unique things other conferences are doing so we can borrow their ideas. We pursue fads, gimmicks and trends as the silver bullets of our conference woes.
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Star Struck: Identifying Your Conference North Star
Velvet Chainsaw
JUNE 21, 2018
The North Star is the perfect metaphor for your annual conference purpose. When your conference purpose serves as a North Star, it guides all decisions, tasks, behaviors and strategy. Uncovering Your North Star Conviction To Find Conference True Target Market.
Encourage Your Speakers to Engage Conference Participants
Smooth The Path
JUNE 12, 2018
The opening keynote speaker sets the tone for the rest of the conference. Then schedule a call in advance of the conference to discuss what you hope to achieve with the opening keynote. Ask to repost their blog posts in pre-conference marketing.
Conference Circuit: Professional Piercers
Associations Now
MAY 9, 2019
The Association of Professional Piercers’ 24th Annual Conference & Exposition begins in Las Vegas this weekend. Conference: APP 24th Annual Conference & Exposition. The conference offers a mentor program to help new attendees get the most out of their experience.
The Conference Lecture Paradox
Velvet Chainsaw
OCTOBER 1, 2015
When talking about conference education, most people think about the traditional lecture. It is perceived as the holy grail of much of the conference. Our Love/Hate Affair With Conference Lectures. Five Myths Of Interactive, Participatory Learning For STEM Conferences.
Misguided And Misinformed Conference Barometers
Velvet Chainsaw
MAY 8, 2015
Many of us who plan conferences have become so busy at the logistics of the event that we lose sight of the goal. Misleading Barometers Our own expectations of repeating what we’ve always done for organizing our conferences have become misguided barometers.
The Conference Owner’s Guide: From Conference Touchpoints To Journey Experiences Part 1
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 25, 2018
Too often conference and meeting professionals assume that their role is best suited to planning and executing the conference. I get that from the education section or the conference technical teams.”. They own designing the conference customers experience journey.
Conference Innovation Through Paradigm Busting
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 12, 2018
These mental models are deeply embedded in our conference planning and management practices. Savvy conference organizers realize that their mental models have much more influence over their outcomes than their decisions and actions. Surfacing our cognitive conference constructs.
What Is Your Conference ROM?
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 10, 2015
So what is your conference’s return on mission? Think of ROM as investments that should move the mission of your organization and conference forward in very real and tangible ways. So how are your investments in your conference moving the mission of your organization forward?
Turning Post-Conference Euphoria into Action
YourMembership Blog
AUGUST 7, 2013
The days after a major conference are filled with busy work, attending to all of the things you pushed off leading to the conference. I have 50,000 vendors calling me (yes they call me too, I know how you feel) some from conference and others I politely deferred before conference.
Conference Circuit: American Psychiatric Association
Associations Now
MAY 16, 2019
Conference: 2019 Annual Meeting. If you’d like us to consider your meeting for an upcoming Conference Circuit, contact Samantha Whitehorne at swhitehorne@asaecenter.org. Head to Facebook and Twitter (#APAAM19 ) for other conference details. Rundown Attendees: 15,000 plus.
Designing Conference Customers, Not Just Traditional Conferences
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 16, 2014
We are thinking about conference innovation from the wrong perspective. We usually think about conference innovation as something we create for our paying attendees. Conference innovation is a way to design attendees! Evolving Your Conference Customer.
365-Day Conferences Are Unrealistic
Velvet Chainsaw
SEPTEMBER 3, 2014
Conference organizers have been on a quest to create a 365-day community around their big annual event. Most conference organizers do a decent job of delivering education and networking value before and during the event. But what about after the conference?
Conference Cloning: Principles Not Practices
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 8, 2015
We observe what other conferences are doing. Conference Impersonators. Yet too often, conference professionals copy someone else’s idea before they are really prepared to implement it. They search for a model that is working in someone else’s conference. Many of us do it.
Conference Creativity Rooms
Reid All About it
MARCH 19, 2013
Although I didn’t participate in today’s #assnchat about ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference , it still inspired a blog post. Perhaps playing with toys shifts our mindset from serious office mode to relaxed engaged conference mode. The association professionals in today’s Twitter chat had plenty of great ideas (heh heh) for conference creativity rooms and I even have a few of my own. F&B : The Canadians also served poutine at one point during the conference.
If You Design Conference Experiences, Read This!
Velvet Chainsaw
JUNE 4, 2018
As conference organizers, why can’t we also have a fun, fulfilling, and collaborative experience planning and designing the conference? Here are six ways to focus on designing your team’s experience during your next conference planning process.
The Conference Experience Starts Before the Conference
Smooth The Path
AUGUST 23, 2016
How do you create a great conference experience? By getting attendees ready for a great conference experience! Here are three new things to try out: Rock the pre-conference communications : What are the most common attendee mistakes or misunderstandings?
Cultivating Conference Kindness Not Cynicism
Velvet Chainsaw
AUGUST 24, 2015
He didn’t like dealing with people, especially disgruntled conference stakeholders. As conference organizers, we can easily fall into today’s culture of cynicism. Instead of fostering and practicing conference kindness, we embrace a stoic armor of rightness, pessimism and skepticism.
Burn Conference Traditions Immune From Criticism
Velvet Chainsaw
OCTOBER 17, 2018
Your association, annual conference, and governance are all institutions. One of the sacred cows for associations and their annual conference is attributing notoriety to the office of the president, board chair or annual conference committee chair.
Your Conference Is Unbalanced!
Velvet Chainsaw
APRIL 1, 2015
Your conference is out of balance. And most conference organizers don’t even know it. Sure as a conference organizer you know that creativity and innovation are important to your planning. These conferences collect data in myriads of ways.
Six Conference Paradigms To Bust Immediately
Velvet Chainsaw
JULY 13, 2018
If there’s something strange in your conference-hood. Our cognitive frameworks—our mental models and paradigms—shape our thinking, behavior, operations and success of our conferences. We falsely believe that future conferences are just an extension of the past.
Disney-inspired conference experiences
Aaron Wolowiec
AUGUST 3, 2016
If we dive a bit more deeply into this aspirational culture statement it’s easy to see how the values that make The Walt Disney Company an extraordinary place to work are the same values that are capable of transforming association events into member-centric conference experiences.
Disney-inspired conference experiences
Aaron Wolowiec
AUGUST 3, 2016
If we dive a bit more deeply into this aspirational culture statement it’s easy to see how the values that make The Walt Disney Company an extraordinary place to work are the same values that are capable of transforming association events into member-centric conference experiences.
Practicing Conference Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less And Better
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 10, 2019
It’s hard for conference organizers to stick to planning the essential elements of their events. As a conference professional, it is your mission each day to keep your focus on the essential elements of your event for your customers’ sake. What is the essence of your conference?
Plan, attack, conquer: A conference strategy
Aaron Wolowiec
JUNE 28, 2016
13-16, we wanted to share more advice from conference goers to help you capitalize on your experience. Like many people, when I attended my first ASAE conference in 2006, I was overwhelmed and distracted by how the massive number of people, sessions and booths.
Plan, attack, conquer: A conference strategy
Aaron Wolowiec
JUNE 28, 2016
13-16, we wanted to share more advice from conference goers to help you capitalize on your experience. Like many people, when I attended my first ASAE conference in 2006, I was overwhelmed and distracted by how the massive number of people, sessions and booths.
Post-Conference Debrief Tips To Improve The Conference Experience
Velvet Chainsaw
OCTOBER 27, 2014
In a matter of days, important details about the best conference moments (and the worst moments) will get fuzzier. Ultimately, you team will forget their thoughts about improving the conference experience if they don’t have some type of prompts. The closing keynote was a big hit.
Your Conference Needs a Hub To Entice Customers and Prospects
Velvet Chainsaw
OCTOBER 12, 2018
At a recent conference consultation with a client, a millennial made me think that I wasn’t keeping up with the times. I voiced my strong opinion that conference organizers should embrace inbound marketing (pull) over traditional outbound marketing (push).
The Conference Owner’s Guide: Steps 2-5 To Transition From Conference Touchpoints To Journey Experiences
Velvet Chainsaw
JANUARY 26, 2018
Once you’ve observed the conference through the lens of your target customer and gained insights from conference data, you can move to the next steps. These steps are critical for you and your conference planning teams to embrace, enlist and employ.
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