Event Catalysts

Vladmir:  It's the start that's difficult.
Estragon: You can start from anything.
Vladmir: Yes, but you have to decide.
-- Waiting for Godot

So I've decided to start with event catalysts. 

Value for attendees at events is not evenly distributed.  For example, at a user conference, you don't learn about a product in a steady stream over the course of a few days.  Instead, there are long stretches of time where you learn nothing, punctuated by a set of moments where your knowledge lurches forward.   At nTAG, we call the interactions and experiences that trigger these advances event catalysts, and we try to help event owners create more of them at their events.  That involves two things: first, doing statistical analysis on data we've collected with nTAGs to figure out what interactions and experiences are associated with delivering value; then, using the nTAGs to "program" an event that creates more of those experiences for all attendees.    Here are a few examples:

At a sales training event, one of the event owner's objectives was to educate the sales team about advantages of their products over their competitors.   We discovered that the more time an attendee spent interacting with some external sales people who were at the meeting, the more those attendees said they learned about their products benefits versus the competition -- a statistically significant relationship.  This makes some sense:  the external sales people sold the company's products as well as competitors', and were apparently effective at communicating the salient differences to the internal sales folks they talked to.  Based on this, we advised the event owner to bring in more of these external sales folks for the next event, and to use some nTAG activities that would drive more interactions with them.

At another user conference, we discovered that interactions with people who had attended before (alumni) were powerful catalysts in making attendees -- both newbies and alumni -- want to come back the following year.  In fact, for alumni, interactions with other alumni were the only catalyst driving intent to return next year.  For newbies, the number of sessions they rated as excellent also correlated with their intent to return, but not so for alumni.  For them, it seemed to be  all about refreshing previously-formed connections (or at least networking with other alumni).  This led us to suggest several ways of enhancing the networking opportunities for next year's event.

I don't want the above examples to sound too clinical, so let me share some unabashed enthusiasm for what they represent.  Both examples offer the first steps toward hard proof of the value of social networking at events -- previously considered a "soft" benefit.  With data collected from the nTAGs, we were able to show that networking with certain constituencies drove the key objectives of the event owners.  This is crucial for making sure event owners preserve time for "off grid" interaction at events -- what happens outside the formal sessions.  If this is only considered a "nice to have" benefit, it will always be endangered by creeping "on grid" time.  I'll write more about off grid/on grid interaction later.  I'll also write more about the kind of "closed loop event improvement" that we're starting to demonstrate, with the tag's dual ability to help figure out event catalysts, and to effect change at an event.   

* Thanks to Paul Litvak for doing the statistical analysis on event catalysts.

Comments

[Maaren Vanneste]

Hi Rick,

I got the blog link from Paula Crerar. I love your concept of "Catalysts" and the analysis of the quality of networking and how that influences future success at meetings. I hope you are willing to share that with the industry, because I strongly believe the industry needs a vocabulary to start a paradigm shift from 98,5% logistics (and close to nothing for meeting objectives aka content) to 10% content, including the learning and networking.
Words and concepts like the Meeting Catalyst (I'm a meeting and conference guy) need to be used in many ways so they get a real meaning. I'm writing a book, called “Meeting Architecture” and would like to quote some of your thinking. Also the Portal site www.MeetingArchitecture.com would need to give your blog a spot. Have a look and let me know your thoughts.

Maarten Vanneste, CMM
The Meeting Support Institute