One of the best ways to get quick access to what is hot or not in search and to learn a lot in a short amount of time is visiting one or more of the bigger or smaller conferences in the world about search marketing and related topics.
The conferences serve another purpose also: talk to those who can help you take the next step in your search experience and the way you work in search. With that I mean the people who are doing groundbreaking work in the industry. They not only find out what works, they are also willing to share that information.
You can see that I think going to conferences is a good idea. And by looking at all the badges of conferences I visited over the years, you can see that I’ve visited quite a few and am therefore able to take a good look at what is good and what is not.
In this post I would like to address not the visitors of the conferences, but instead the organizers. Because the way a conference is organized makes how successful the conference is for its visitors and makes how much you can learn and how much its worth. Five tips for conference organizers.
Visit a medical conference and your wifi will be excellent. Visit a web-conference and chances are you will have lots of trouble getting the right connection. Why? Because every single visitor there is web-minded and probably wants to be online as much as possible. Because of the exploding mobile web every visitor on a conference has the need for an internet connection. With applications like Twitter, which are easily accessible through mobile devices, everybody wants to use the conferences wifi. Here’s where conference organizers get in trouble. The wifi usually isn’t capable of serving all these visitors who want to go online.
This usually is a problem which is difficult to solve for the organizers. Some of the times the wifi is ‘part of the deal’ in the deal the organizers make with the venue.
So what can conference organizers do to get the most out of there internet? I would suggest a couple of things:
How many hours does your laptop work without power? Probably a lot less than you were aiming for. A well know sight at internet-conferences is visitors looking for power adapters. If you are the one lucky enough to have that one adapter in the room you will get a lot of envy from others.
A shortage of power cords could lead to what I call the ‘towel’ effect. Someone places their stuff on a chair and desk and leaves it there for the rest of the day, “claiming” the spot, while not being on that same spot for half of the day. The lack of power makes that by the end of the day most bloggers are out of power, thus not writing about the conference.
So what can conference organizers do about this power shortage?
Readers add-on: A tip in the comments should be added here: “If you go to a conference in a country where your laptop’s power cable needs an adapter do work, it is very helpfull if you can buy an adapter at the conference rather than having to leave the conference for a while and try to find one in the “city” = waste of time.”
One thing which is always something which makes visitors talk is food. Many conferences have improved the food they serve drastically in the past few years. Lunches are mostly good. And they need to be good, because the one thing you don’t want is to have bad comments about the food you serve.
One thing is probably even more important than lunch however: coffee. As a conference organizer, make sure there is plenty of (free) coffee, especially in the morning. No coffee is probably worse than a bad lunch. Make sure that in the morning your visitors have fresh coffee and something to go with that and they won’t miss the first session.
Many visitors pick their sessions because of which speakers they see on the list. Those speakers however might not be the best speakers around. A good name isn’t always a good speaker. And as a conference organizer that is difficult. You can’t see every speaker out there so you have to trust that speakers are good. A tough job.
There are a couple of things an event organizer can do to get the best out of their speakers:
One of the main reasons people go to conferences, next to the content off course, is networking. People want to do business or want to simply talk to those they haven’t seen in a while. Make sure that in conferences you give the visitors that possibility. You even have to make room for it in your program.
Some things you should keep in mind as an organizer when it comes to network opportunities:
These are five tips for conference organizers. There are many conference organizers doing a great job already. I just wanted to give my insights on what I believe are points which are important for me as a visitor of conferences. I’m now off course very curious about your ideas. What is your tip for conference organizers?
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Surely all of the advice put forward in this article could be used at *any* conference. It kinda frustrates me when I see articles on Search type sites which are basically re-writes of common sense articles with the added “search” BUZZWORD.
Jon
Hi Jon,
ehm yes you are partly right. Most of these tips could be used at *any* conference. BUT you are totally wrong about a couple of things. First of all: this is far from a re-write of a common sense article. Yes, I used my common sense, but I’m not sure if we’ve ever met. If so you would know I attend a lot of SEARCH conferences so in this case its “just” my own common sense speaking. It has nothing to do with a re-write what so ever. I could take that as an insult, but hey, I’ll take that as a compliment because it clearly makes sense what I’m saying.
Second: there are some pretty important differences when it comes to “online-related” events compared to “offline” events. The wifi for example is only a problem on web-related events. Likewise with the power. That I used the word search here is because 90% of the conferences I attend are search conferences.
Hi Bas
Great post.
I have a comment for ‘Tip 2: Power outlets’.
If you go to a conference in a country where your laptop’s power cable needs an adapter do work, it is very helpfull if you can buy an adapter at the conference rather than having to leave the conference for a while and try to find one in the “city” = waste of time.
/Grosen Friis
Good point Grosen, I added that! But I suspect conference organizers won’t go through all that ‘fuss”
I’m just saying.
I’m however not saying its not a good article. Just that it frustrates me. My point is not necessarily directed at you personally.
Yes, you have never met me.
Point taken Jon. I didn’t take it personally by the way. I think you make a valid point actually, there are many ‘rewrites’ out there. And also, there are many things you can copy from one industry to another. I studied history, much of the things I see happening now on the web people also did back when the Romans were ruling the world, not everything is ‘new’. Hey, you just gave me a new idea for an article
[...] Hier der Artikel mit den 5 Tipps für Konferenz-Veranstalter. [...]
It seems you may have inspired Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz to write a similar blog post – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/optimizing-search-conferences-how-differing-incentives-create-audience-vs-organizer-issues
[...] both organizers and visitors. And that made it a refreshing conference. The organization tried to look at as much as possible to make the event a succes. These days I mostly speak at conferences, but as a media partner for [...]
[...] of the speakers. We as speakers all agreed on the fact they did that very good. Which is important when organizing a conference. I am already looking forward to next year, where the organisation wants to make things even [...]