Why Some Conferences RULE (and others FAIL)?

Think of it as like you got a VIP ticket to go- Okay ... backstage to the REO Speedwagon concert or something. Does anybody remember that band? REO Speedwagon? I don't know why I thought of that band. Yeah. It, it shows, it shows my age, you know? Um- Playing at a local casino near you, I'm sure. And not too hard to get backstage at this point.

No, no.

Welcome to the Marketing Team of One podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one-person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Eric. Mike. Just returned from another, yet another conference. Another conference, yeah.

I think this is my third one this year. Yeah. Which isn't a lot compared to some people. I mean, some organizations put on a lot of different- Yeah ... conferences, so. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're in a really unique position- Mm ... in where we're in charge of- Mm ... kind of creating things and helping support a lot of these conferences, but also you go in as an attendee where you, and there's things that you see and through the lens, so I thought it'd be a really good thing to talk about today, is, uh, some, some things you noticed.

Yeah. Some, some of the things in your travels that, that you think are really important that maybe get a little overlooked. In the last nine months I've been to four different conferences, so it's been interesting to observe from a design perspective what is working and what's kind of not working- Yeah

in conference experiences. And I know that there's a ton of conference content out there from conference planners and people who are in the weeds doing this all the time every day. I think what, uh, my perspective that I want to bring to this podcast is more from a visual design perspective, because we have been involved in designing experiences within conferences for some of our clients.

Mm-hmm. Um, but I wanna just observe other parts of it as well, not just the visual design side of it, but more of the ex- but also some of the experiential side of things. So it's an attendee experience- Yeah ... design. With an eye towards design. How's that? Is, yeah. Okay. How design can support, support your attendee experience.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. 'Cause they do work really hand-in-hand on a lot of these things that I wanted to talk about. Yeah. I mean, let's dive in. Okay. What, from a design perspective, what, what are you setting up for this event before anyone even walks in the door? We always start off with a theme when we're designing this.

So the theme should be something that you should also bring in some sort of a welcoming atmosphere for this so that it doesn't feel super corporate. Even if you have a corporate- kind of culture going on. A conference is an in-person experience, and you need to tone that corporate feel down a little bit, and that's what I've noticed is the ones that really work kinda take down that corporate facade a little bit more and really do a great job of welcoming in new attendees and understanding that it's a social event.

People get a little bit more nervous around that, even compared to, like, a Zoom meeting or anything like that. When they're meeting in person, everything sh- that's developed around the theme should be thought of in, in a welcoming aspect. It should be warm. It should be friendly. It should welcome in a lot of those new attendees 'cause I...

Like I said before, I was really surprised to see most of these events that I've gone to have a large percentage of people who are attending that are new attendees. Mm-hmm. To get over some of that- Fear or, you know, people get a little bit nervous about going to these things and not knowing how they should go to the event.

The theme should be warm, the colors, the, the whole experience of just walking into that space. Should do whatever you can to bring in and assume that everybody there is a new attendee. I mean, why not? Even if you've been to the conference say eight times- So you're kind of talking about, just to paint a picture, you're at a hotel.

Yeah. There's multiple conference rooms where everybody, these things are happening. Usually a ballroom. Yeah, right. You know, big empty. Like, you're talking about the experience of, like, going through the front doors- Mm-hmm ... and getting all the way up to the registration desk, like, right? Like, like how your, how your design is supporting that theme and introducing that theme before people even, like, get checked in to the- Yeah, and it- Right?

you brought up signage. I think signage is a big part of that. Obviously, you know, decorating the space with the theme is, is wonderful, but way finding is huge because these are cavernous spaces- Mm-hmm ... some of these, that people wander into, and there's potentially three or four other conferences going on at the same time in the same space.

Yeah. Having an understanding of what your new attendee or that person who's walking in for the first time is trying to experience or decipher and understand, you can do a lot of work with way finding, whether it's just signage that walks people from the parking garage into the actual ballroom or a space if it's a small one, or letting them understand where they need to go to navigate to get to that registration desk first, and having that registration desk identified very clearly as a registration desk.

Because I've been to some where there's just an information desk- Mm-hmm ... or an information booth or something. That's not registration. That's just somebody there at the desk basically acting as a sign- Yeah ... to point people in the direction of where they need to go, which I argue is kind of a wasted effort on that point.

Granted, it's probably a volunteer that's sitting in there, but- If you had a big, like, s- big arrow and they were doing the twirly thing and stuff like that. One of those k- yeah, one of those people would be awesome. Yeah. You know? I- I'm a big proponent of those. In fact, we rec- we recommend that for most of our clients, don't we?

No, we don't. What's funny is I remember a story you were telling me from one of the events you just were just out recently, where you actually had both sides of the spectrum on that when it came to, like, the way finding things. Like, you had the one where they'd really- Oh, yeah ... gone all out- ... and everything, and then the other one, it...

Did they scrawl on a poster board? It felt like they basically just had hired their, you know, preschooler to- To- ... do the event branding, yeah. The little arrow on some poster board on a cheap- Just- ... you know, $19 easel just kind of propped up. They actually were using it to cover other signage that we had done on the big digital boards and stuff, and thought that they were...

I don't know. People get competitive, I guess. Yeah. But it was kind of silly to see this amazing digital, you know, four foot by six foot signage with animations and all these different wonderful mo- you know, motion graphics behind it clearly telling you, "Go here. Go there. This is the agenda." You know, things moving on screen to really attract your eye, and then here's this, you know, $14 easel with some poster board with a one color logo on it, with a little tiny red arrow that- You're not here to have fun is what it's saying.

Yeah. It's saying, "Uh, we had to do this. Somebody told me I needed to put on a conference, and you might as well go over there." It's not very welcoming. No, it wasn't welcoming at all. The attendee experience is- Yeah. Again, it felt like they had to go to that event. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And it's like, "Oh, geez, my boss told me I needed to be..."

You know, they might as well wear a T-shirt, you know, that says, "My boss told me to be at this conference." Feels like in that moment you've got both ends, the far ends of the spectrum of- Yeah ... like this event, way finding and signage. Like, you've got animated digital boards and an easel, like I mean, most people aren't gonna be on either side of the spectrum, right?

But like- No ... I think what you're fighting for is in this middle ground where like put more effort in- Yeah ... here and it will be rewarded. I mean- And then- ... that's the first thing people experience when they walk into a conference is, "Where do I go for this?" Or, "Where do I find that?" Yeah. And, and if you don't figure that out, people start to automatically just like socially, like just close down a little bit.

Yeah. Because they're already feeling uncomfortable walking into a new space, then they don't know where they're going and they have a lot of questions, so then they're already nervous and on their back heels not knowing. Then they're gonna regress. Worse case then is then they got their phone out and then they're just sitting on their phone like, "I don't know.

I guess I'll try to figure it out on the app." Or, "I don't know and I'm not gonna talk to anybody 'cause I don't wanna feel stupid." And- Mm-hmm ... geez, that's not on them. Yeah. That's on you as the event planner- Yeah ... and designer to help them, enable them, understand. Like, walk the dis- walk from the parking garage to the registration desk.

Get distracted by everything that is- Mm ... there. There's the hotel registration maybe if it's at a hotel, or there's a parking garage attendant, or there's all these other obstacles you have to navigate. Clearly tell them how to get to this place. Once they get to a registration desk, then they can address some of the other questions they might have.

But then take the next step and help them with showing them which room are you in. Some of these places are massive. You go to a convention center, there's three, two, three floors. Yep. You know, million square feet. I mean, that's a lot. I mean- Yeah ... people already have to- Overwhelming. Yeah, I mean, sometimes they have bags and luggage and all these other weird things that they have to carry with them, you know, when they're going to these events.

Assume the worst, you know- Yeah ... and try to be as helpful as possible. Maybe think of it as, like, your 80-year-old grandmother. How would you help them get to your event? I think a- as you're talking, I'm thinking more, like, where, like, I think the word design gets applied to different things and- Mm ... with different meanings, stuff like that.

But I think what really what we're talking about here is the function of things. Like the- Mm-hmm ... the how, that it has to, it should be a collaborative effort between anybody, like, doing the way finding, but also the event planner in making sure that the whole experience and the function of everything that's there has a purpose and is helping push towards the experience that- And ask the-

everybody has ... a- a- as the planner or somebody who's setting this up, ask the event people that work there at the convention center or the hotel ballroom or whatever it is, ask them what's worked in the past too, 'cause they might- Yeah ... already know what m- mi- might have worked in the past for their previous conferences.

And then look for creative opportunities to put things in, you know, put them on stairwells, put them, you know, we've used stairwell graphics a lot that direct you, like here's the stairs that go to this event, you know? It's the yellow brick road. Exactly. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Lead people because, like I said, people are distracted, and it's, you may assume that they know exactly what your stuff looks like, but part, sometimes what's a struggle on the design side is that the design elements have to integrate to the space, and sometimes they integrate too much to where they become hidden or they look like they're just part of the conference center.

Mm. Which is great because the conference center people are really happy that it doesn't pollute visually their space, but it may not help the attendee as much because- Yeah ... they can't see it- Yep ... and it seems to blend in with everything else that they're experiencing. Most people that go to a conference, they're there usually primarily for two reasons, right?

They're there to learn, and they're there to network. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So I think let's talk about one of the key pieces of networking here. Mm. And it, it's gotta be the name tags, right? Like- Yeah. The simple name tag, right? Right? Just print them out on a Avery label, slap it on. Is that all you need, is that all you need to do?

Avery label. I mean, sure, if you're trying to save money and not really blow the budget and not really- But I argue that the name tag is probably the second most important element to going to a conference. Mm-hmm. Because that is the facilitator between the one-on-one connections that are so critical to the experience of going to a conference.

Mm-hmm. 'Cause you said, you know, yeah, we go to there to learn, and there's important things to understand, and the signage can help a little bit with that. Agendas, all those things can help people understand that. But it's the people that you meet there that make the biggest impressions, and I say probably the most in- influential experiences of going to a conference.

Yeah. I mean, those are the things that I remember, are the connections that you make. That the bigger the name tag, the more helpful it is. So, uh, A- Avery labels to me are not big enough. Yeah. That's why I kind of laugh. Well, letter-sized paper. Letter-sized paper might be a little bit too big. You might look like you're in, like, a preschool spelling bee at that point- Okay

if you've got that- Okay ... kind of just strapped around your neck. So bigger than three by four. Right. Four by six to me seems- Smaller than eight, half 11 ... like think of it as, like, you got a VIP ticket to go- Okay ... you know, backstage to the REO Speedwagon concert or something. Does anybody remember that band?

REO Speedwagon? I don't know why I thought of that band. Yeah. But it, it shows, it shows my age, you know. Um- Playing at a local casino near you, I'm sure. And not too hard to get backstage at this point. No, no. Four by six to me, you know, th- think of that like VIP pass. Yeah. You know? Um, that's a really helpful thing because- Why?

Yeah, I mean, why, why that big? 'Cause you're gonna go up and walk... You're gonna walk up to somebody, and you're gonna say, "Hi, Mike." If you have to search for Mike's first name on the name badge, that causes a lot of that, that anxiousness that I keep talking about. Yeah. You wanna be able to feel natural and just glance over and see their name.

Firsthand, I was at, you know, the last event we went to. Yeah. And the... It's very awkward if you... And, uh, in this case, it was a smaller name tag. It was that Avery- It was ... size thing. And a lot of it w- you, you... I'm gonna exaggerating only slightly- Okay ... but you see this throughout the day.

They have to get in close to understand- Yeah ... who you are and maybe who you're with- Yeah ... to see if it's even worth having a conversation. Yeah. That's a little- A weird put, place to put everybody. Me, I'm... I mean, I probably was doing that a little bit and didn't... It was subconscious or I didn't even realize it.

Yeah. But other people are doing it. It's awkward for both, like, "Oh, I guess I'm not, I guess I'm not worthy of talk, being talked to right now." Or, or, or it's twisted a little bit, or it's- Yeah ... my

lapel is covering it a little bit. Yeah. That's where I struggle, too, with, like, those ones that kind of clip on as a name badge or something. Yeah. That's a hard thing to navigate and, and, you know, I've, I've don't have perfect eyesight. Imagine that. Yep. And I think the older I get, my eyesight gets a little worse.

So it's, it is. I do find myself, like, staring uncomfortably at somebody's chest- Yeah ... to figure out what their name is. It's just, it's an odd thing. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think an 11 by 17 name tag is out of the question. It would make it- Wow ... really easy. Interesting. Yeah. Just really big. I'd love to see some- What you do- Yeah

who you're with. Well, and another thing you could do is put, make it kind of interesting. Like, maybe there's a prompt question that you could say. Oh, yeah. You know, "Why am I here?" Or what, "Ask me about my cat." Or, you know, like, maybe there's some sort of personal interest thing you could add on to that, that doesn't immediately start off with a question, "What do you do?

Yeah. Because every conference experience is, "Oh, page design. What i- what is that? What do you design?" Yeah. Pages. One of the ones we went to, they had a game built into it, right? Yeah. It was like, w- like they, like you had a tribe designation. You had to find other people in your tribe. They kind of automatically broke you into groups- Yeah

a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought that was really fun to look at. Yeah. "Hey, you're another forager. Hey, nice to meet you, forager." Asking the question, "What do you do?" Is, is heard more often at conferences, and it's, obviously, if you're, if you're asked what you do, you should have a pretty good, you know, rap going- Yeah

and, and be able to spit it out in 30 to 40 seconds. But i- i- wouldn't it be more fun to kind of start off with something a little bit more, you know- Yeah ... personal interest or, you know, ta- talk more about who the person is first a little bit. Yeah. And then get to know them, and, "Oh, I really like sailing, too," or, "I'm, never heard of that.

You know, model railroads- Yeah ... that's interesting." You know? I always like to ask questions about what, you know, what gets you excited? Are you, you know, are you creative? What, what, what's one of your creative outlets? Something like that, just to kind of get people talking about something that they're real- You tend to find y- that gets right into their personality, like immediately.

Mm-hmm. Like you're- Yeah ... "Oh, you're a firecracker. Um, talking about square dancing, like, cool. Like, awesome. Let's get into it," you know? Yep. Yep. And then you kind of build a relationship first, so I really like kind of doing it that way. So name, super big. So yeah, you're saying 11 by 17. In this same vein, I'm almost fighting for, like, like cards on the head.

Card on the head. So you don't- Okay ... so you don't have to look downward and set up- Right ... these awkward sit- Like line of sight, I can see what your name is- Nice ... and everything like that. That seems a little r- uh, you know- Right ... crazy. But, um, yeah, no, I think, I think four by six sounds right. Like, like, like that VIP level- Yeah

thing, being able to, like- clearly see it, um, and have some fun design decisions that you've made there around not just the what do you do, like, like, games, thought-provoking things, some conversation starters that you could do. If you could build that into the design of your name tag- Mm-hmm ... it really helps facilitate the networking, um, side of things.

Yeah, I like that idea of like a puzzle or like there's other things you can kind of gamify inside of that. Yeah, yeah. Make it a- Make that- Put some thought into it. I think it's gonna improve the experience for everybody. There's also the flair element that I see a lot of these conferences where you can go to a table or a couple of tables where they have like little banners you can kind of glue onto the bottom.

I'm from this region, I'm from this- Mm-hmm ... industry, I'm a first time attendee. You know? So something like that is really cool, too, and I, I think that's pretty common that people do that. Yeah. I don't think we need to talk too much about that, but that also is another one of those elements that separates you and, and kind of brings out a little bit more of that personality.

We're walking in with our VIP badges. 11 by 17. Really, really big and- Yep ... blingy and- Yep ... but also very easy to read. But- A lot of flair. Yeah ... but, um, now we're walk- now we're into the conference, right? We're into the, to this event. What do you think is really important to convey to your attendees- And when you're thinking about the planning and design of this event, w- for people who are, who are now, we're in it.

Yeah. We're- We're in it. We're in it. So the, the things you need to consider is what's the experience you want people to walk away from? What do you want people to be talking about after they experience- Yeah ... this event? And that's where when you walk into that r- space, let's say it's for the keynote, you could even think about it in terms of like how are the tables?

Is it tables? Is it chairs? Are you attending it like a stadium seating or are you attending it and there's little rounds, six, eight-foot rounds or 10-foot rounds where maybe there's six or eight people at the table? I argue those are a little bit more welcoming because it's a smaller en- engagement and you can kind of ha- start to have small conversations before things begin.

Mm-hmm. And it starts that memorable connection that is, I think, so critical to today's events, as opposed to walking into like a theater setting and you just grab a chair and you're just looking at the people next to you and- You're all looking this way ... you're all looking in one direction. Yeah. And, and maybe you have to do that if it's, if it's a limiting, you know, you've got so many people attending and you've got a limited amount of space.

Yeah. But I would d- tend to wanna defer away from that because I don't think it's as impactful. Think about the impact you're making. So again, when you come into a space and it's designed and it has signage and it's got all of the decorations maybe up on stage, you've got backdrops that have high impact, you've got maybe some motion graphics.

You can even do a lot with just lighting. Mm-hmm. If you make it a darker setting, and not like fully, you know, blackened room, 'cause that also will limit that connection, but make it, you know, colorize the space a little bit so that it leads to that warmth and it leads to that connection a little bit more.

Walking into a cold, blank ballroom with just overhead lighting and it cranked up to 100 and you just kind of sit down at a chair Really, you know, people, like I said before, people are anxious when they walk into these spaces 'cause they don't know who they're gonna connect with. They're looking around for a friendly face.

They're looking for somebody to connect with, and if they don't find that, and if that's not facilitated optimally, immediately, they're gonna close down, and they're gonna just socially just kind of go back to their phone. I mean, the phones are, you know, that's where everybody wants to default to is- Mm-hmm

just, "I'm gonna just go on my phone and not really talk to anybody." So, I mean, you, you talked about, like, impact and everything. I assume that, like, if you're, if you're putting a focus and a, and a priority on leaving a lasting impact, you would want to do things to make sure that everybody kind of feels like this is unique- Mm-hmm

and that this is something that's built for them. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Uh, uh, so, um, and if you do that, I assume people will wanna come back again, 'cause that's really what you're... If you're in the event business at all, you want, you want people coming back. Yeah. You- You want it to be memorable. You wanna do all these things, right?

You also have to think about it as, like, show biz in a way. I mean, you kind of have to think about elevating the experience so that it is something that breaks away from the norm of what people have experienced in the past. And I know that that gets into budget constraints, and there's issues around that, and I understand it, but there are probably simple things you can do to create that impact with things like I just mentioned, with maybe some large-scale signage, or maybe just projected imagery- Mm

and some lighting could do a lot for that, and that really is just having your AV team integrate some of those things into the experience itself. And think outside the box. See, when you project stuff, maybe you just project colors. Maybe you're just projecting a texture, and maybe you don't have it projecting onto anything specific.

Maybe it's shooting up at the walls, at the ceiling or the corners or something like that, that you can create a really memorable experience. You can produce all kinds of different scale with imagery and, and projections and things like that. And light. Just light. Just light. Light and texture. Yeah, light and texture does a lot.

In fact, I remember a while back we designed some conference, um, materials large scale, but to save costs it was, a lot of it was just printed in black and white. And then we utilized really creative lighting solutions that changed- Over time, very slowly, but that light projected onto these black and white textured sc- backdrops, which were produced very cost-effectively, produced a really amazing experience that was very flexible too, so- Yeah, and it never felt like it was black and white.

It- nobody ever even assumed it was that. Yeah. They just walked away with this incredible, like, "Oh, my gosh." They couldn't believe it. Yeah. You know? So there's some theater tricks, and then you're a theater guy, Mike, you know this. Yeah, but I- I'm the, I'm- I'm the muscle, I'm not the- Oh ... the creativity on those things.

The minds. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. As a designer, we can go into these things and, like, I don't think we think about, like, the budgetary side of things- Yeah ... you know? But, like, I do remember going to a few conferences where, like, looking ... One in particular, they just had a very textured white wall- Mm ... behind where people were speaking, and they used colored lights that went up the- Oh, yeah

up the texture, right? And so, and they could change the color of it based on things, but, like, it- I'm assuming that background was something they rented- Mm-hmm ... that had had 3D dimensions and could catch the light in different interesting things, you know? It didn't have to be super expensive to, like, print or produce or anything like that.

It was, it was a, it was a light design thing. It was not- Yeah ... a, you know, um, materials thing, so- And you could cover a lot of space with that too. A lot of space with this. Yeah. This was, this thing was massive in this case, but I think there's a lot of little things, like I'm thinking, when I think back, there's probably some impactful- things that people have done.

And we're talking about the spaces where the learning is happening now, right? Right, right. Like, we talked about networking, but now we're like, we've got the, the programming, the things that are, you know- Mm-hmm ... like making sure that you're creating an impact for people there so they wanna leave and tell everybody about it, and then definitely come back again the n- for the next one.

That's kind of the whole point, and it kind of lands on a, uh, it's almost a marketing effort, right? Is to make this so memorable that people come back to it. And again, it comes back down to relationships and the people that you meet there. It comes down to the ease at which you can navigate through the conference throughout the course of the day or days that you're there.

And it comes down to creating those memorable experiences using things that hopefully are not that cost- costly- Mm-hmm ... and, and below the budget. But things that are a little bit more theatrical that really... Uh, one of the things I know that when we did for design week that I thought was pretty effective, it all starts, you gotta kinda have a stage.

Yep. A- and then that's an expense. You know, elevate people, kind of raise them up. This would be more for, like, keynote stuff. Uh, but having just some very affordable pop-up banners, and you could just have texture or color or, or, or simple graphics, maybe logos on those. Having a few of those, and they make them four, five, six feet wide now.

So- Oh, wow. Okay ... you know, they make large scale pull-up banners. Uh, and this is kind of more of a cost-effective way to go about it. If you've got a really small event, but you- Yeah ... wanna start- Yeah ... you know- Kinda elevating it- ... put that in somewhere ... a little bit. Yeah. You know, then we had a, uh, full, like, 8 by 10 photo backdrop behind it- Mm-hmm

that was just printed on cloth that just had logo textures on the back of that, almost like a step and repeat- Mm-hmm ... but a little bit more quieter than just black and white logos or, you know, white logos on a colored background. That kind of formed the back of the stage a little bit, and then we used, um, pull-up banners that kind of brought everything a little bit more forward.

And it added some dimensionality to the stage that I thought had a pretty impactful visual experience for people. They, they felt like it was, you kind of had areas where you could come on and off stage that were kind of hidden a little bit. You know, it was kind of, it, it was a fun and cost-effective way to do it.

And as you're talking about this, I'm thinking about, like, one other aspect that maybe you, you might wanna consider too through this whole thing is those are pretty cheap and easy things- Mm-hmm ... to do. But, like, you know that especially if people are speaking up there, you see it on LinkedIn all the time, people are, like, taking pictures while people are speaking- Yeah

and everything, and that's reaching an audience that isn't even at the event. It's a good, yeah. But it is conveying a lot of things, right? Like, would you rather have, like, a little bit of a curated background- Mm ... that, that's branded your event a little bit more, or do you want the ballroom beige, uh, you know- That's-

in the background? ... really a great thing to consider, 'cause you're right. I mean, there might be 40 people in the room at your talk, but that might get s- pl- posted on LinkedIn, and hundreds or thousands- Yeah ... of people might see it on there. And so having it branded inside of that social content is a huge consideration.

Yeah. You know? And it kind of expands the reach of what you're doing out beyond the bounds of the conference itself. I mean, if you, if you wanna figure out how to bust your budgets for an event- Mm ... and you wanna talk to us about it, we got plenty of ideas. Great ideas. Yeah. Like, if you wanna go way over.

Yes. Like 3x, 3x your budget, 4x. That should be our tagline, right? We're, we're your guys, right? Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna 4x your budget. Surprise, you're broke. I mean, kind of to switch gear a little bit. Yeah. Um, I know that, um, you went recently to Associations West- Yeah ... Elevate Conference. This is their big one for the year and everything.

And wanna give props to Associations West because I think they put on really good events. Oh. I also think they have to- Mm-hmm ... because they are the association for associations, and all these associations are putting on their own events. Yeah. They have to look to them to be a leader in, like, best practices and how to put on these great events.

But I would love to hear your perspective of going to your first Elevate Conference and the things that they did there to cater to people like you who are there for the first time and kinda, like, the design- Yeah, I- ... of the event and everything. I always use them. They, they to me exemplify the perfect way to do events.

Because you're right, they do three a year, have different scales at locations all over. So they have to really engineer the functionality of navigation and all that stuff for a lot of different spaces. They were at the Sacramento Convention Center. They were down in Newport Beach at a big sprawling hotel, a resort.

Uh, and then they were at a hotel downtown in Sacramento as well. So they had kind of small, medium, and large locations that they were adapting to. And for each one of them, the thing that I tell other people that put on conferences is to study what they do at Associations West 'cause I was a newcomer to these events that I went to, and I felt like everything was catered for my experience.

Really? And it felt so comfortable to walk in and just talk to people and navigate the space. There was rarely a point where I had any questions about what to do, where to go, and who to talk to because they, they actually specifically put tables, sat you at tables with... as a newcomer that were, had other newcomers there, but they also had some veterans that were there as well.

So they curate the crowd at, with who you're talking to. And it was a really wonderful experience 'cause I was no point in that, that I felt any sort of anxiety or, or questions about what I should be doing, who I should be talking to. Every conversation felt very natural. Everybody there felt like they were there for the reason of networking and talking, and so they were all open to discussing all kinds of different things.

And yeah, we entered some of those conversations with, "What do you do?" But a lot of them weren't. They were a lot around the experience we were having. I met some really interesting people. We went on, you know, some of the experiences that we had were, like, long walks or doing activities that were creatively centered, you know, around building or making things.

Every talk that we went to had interactions built into them to where we did breakout groups, and we had conversations with other people in that specific talk. There were all kinds of different activities. There was, of course, all kinds of social events and They really know how to have a good time. At Associations West, we all knew why we were there.

We all knew how to navigate the space, and just had some wonderful conversations and connections with people that I'll probably have for a long, long time. They... Yeah. Fantastic. One of the other great experiences that I have, and I think the team at Associations West that puts these conferences on work super hard and focused on the experience.

You can tell. It just- Yeah ... it's there. But they also do a lot of feedback stuff. They do a feedback- Mm-hmm ... survey after every day of maybe a three-day conference. They wanna know what you think, what ideas you might have. Um, and so getting that feedback loop and being really very persistent with that- Mm-hmm

and having people engage with it, gives them a lot of really great data and, and allows them... And they have the flexibility in, inside, 'cause I, I've talked to a lot of the people on those teams and, and they, they love that feedback. They, they want that, appreciate it, and need it for them to keep improving their experiences.

Uh, in fact, like, um, our sister podcast, Revenue Speaks- Yeah ... uh, Sheila has a great interview with Jim, and he talks about how data-driven they are and how much that- Yeah ... that helps inform their decisions. Um, and you see it firsthand when you, when you attend these conferences. It's great. It's, it's... Yeah.

It's, it seems to be always shifting a little bit and optimizing and getting better and better- Yeah ... between all of the ones that I've said. So, yeah. That's right, Mike. Go check out the first episode of the Revenue Speaks podcast, our sister podcast, with Jim Anderson from Associations West. He did a great interview with Sheila.

Yeah, there's a lot of good insights in seeing how they, how he approaches them as an organization in general, but you see it reflected a lot- He talks a lot about- ... in the conference ... what we've been talking about- Yeah ... here a lot too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Very good. We covered a lot. Yeah. I'm inspired to go out and Do good in the world, especially for my next event.

But it's overwhelming. You- We covered a lot. Like, is there a one takeaway that you could give for people who might be like me that are inspired? Yeah, I, I think what you need to do is think about it from the perspective of the first time attendee, and when they walk away from the conference that first day, 'cause that's the most high anxiety audience member and high anxiety moment in the conference experience, what are they gonna walk away with?

What do you want them to be thinking? What do you want them to write down? Like, what i- what's the one important thought? I mean, do they walk away thinking, "I don't wanna leave. I wanna stay here and learn more and meet more inspiring people." You know, that's what you should be shooting for. Oh man, it's over already?

Yeah, like, "I, I don't wanna go-" Yeah ... yet." You know? Like, you want, you want people excited, inspired, and ready to come back the next day or ready to come back the next time you have that event. It's perfect advice. I'm ready to go. All right. Let's do it. Let's- Let's look for a conference and go. Let's do it.

I'm booking now. We can just crash one. Yeah. All right. That's happening. Hang out around downtown and we just, like, look for conferences going on and see if you can just crash them. Make, make our own name badges and see. I was inspired by, as we were talking about name badges and stuff like that, like, just have your own that you use all the time- Mm

that you know is gonna be bigger than most and that you can wear and yeah, yeah, yeah, here's our other one to prove we should be here, but ours is better, Conference Crashers. Here we go. Conference Crashers. We'll do it. Let's do it. All right. Let's, let's make it happen, Eric. All right. Let's get out of here.

Let's finish this podcast and go to a conference. Let's do it. All right. See you there. Thanks everybody.

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