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Every year, Encore surveys thousands of meeting and event professionals about meeting/event patterns and formats, how they spend their money and their biggest concerns. Individually, these quarterly Planner Pulse reports form snapshots of current industry trends. But taken collectively, we can begin to forecast where the industry is headed. Looking at the big picture painted by results from our four 2022 surveys, here are the Top 3 event trends for 2023.
Trend No. 1: Immersive and interactive experiences to engage participants and enhance organizational culture
According to McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey, 58 percent of the employed respondents in the U.S. have the option of working from home for all or part of the week. With a dispersed workforce, in-person engagement is more important than ever for creating and reinforcing an organization’s culture, training employees and fostering a sense of belonging. Companies aren’t the only ones seeing the need for in-person meetings. Encore Planner Pulse respondents report that, compared to 2019, participants value the in-person experience more and are more engaged with and ‘leaning into’ the entire face-to-face experience (Winter 2022 Pulse).
Planners know participants derive the greatest value from networking/relationship building, education/training and organizational culture-building/enhancing activities (Winter 2022 Pulse). Meeting and event professionals are creating more immersive and interactive experiences to maximize the event return-on experience.
How are meeting and event professionals doing this? Designing events with the end in mind, investing in engaging technology, and collaborating with presenters to rethink how content is delivered.
Reverse-engineering the event design leads organizers to rethink how rooms are set to maximize connection and collaboration, bake more opportunities for networking into the agenda and think about how they can create sensory experiences. Technology, like LED walls and 3D projection mapping, is the easiest way to transform rooms and sets quickly. Event technology platforms that enable live polling and Q&A, can be used to educate and entertain. Challenging presenters to respond to questions about how they intend to engage the audience in the call for proposals is a fantastic starting point for conversations about designing and delivering the most meaningful and relevant content for event participants.
Trend No. 2: More attendees for in-person meetings
In-person events continue to gain momentum. Meeting and event professionals expect in-person attendance to increase by as much as 25 percent in 2023. This is a reversal of a downsizing trend seen last spring (Spring 2022 and Winter 2022 Pulse).
The most popular venues remain hotels (Spring 2022 and Fall 2022 Pulse). Sixty-one percent of planners expect to pay slightly to significantly more on hotel room rates (Fall 2022 Pulse). Sixty-two percent expect to pay more for food and beverage, and 57 percent report they will pay more for transportation (Winter 2022, Summer 2022 and Fall 2022 Pulse). Not coincidentally, these also are the Top 3 areas Planners Pulse respondents expect to see their 2023 budgets increase. Of the planners who say their 2023 budgets are increasing, 80 percent expect an increase of more than 25 percent (Winter 2022 Pulse).
According to Summer 2022 and Fall 2022 Pulse reports, the top technology products and services being sourced this year are standard projection/audiovisual equipment (50+ percent) and streaming technology (44 percent). Top attributes driving the selection of event technology partners are value, technical expertise and service excellence (Summer 2022 Pulse).
Trend No. 3: Inclusive and supportive environments to enhance participant wellness and sense of belonging
Health and safety had the greatest impact on participant comfort levels (Spring 2022 Pulse). For that reason, hybrid meetings comprised up to 30 percent of the meetings held in the first half of last year. (Winter 2022 and Spring 2022 Pulse). Now that people are more comfortable traveling, the number of hybrid meetings represents fewer than 20 percent of the meetings planned for 2023 (Summer 2022 and Fall 2022 Pulse).
It’s not just participants’ physical wellness that’s a focus for planners. They also want to support mental and emotional wellness by fostering a sense of attendee belonging, enhanced by face-to-face meeting. One of the ways planners are incorporating this trend into event design include education and conversational groups modeled on the ‘business resource groups’ present at most major organizations, where participants gather with like-minded community members. They’re also using technology, like AI-powered simultaneous translation and captioning tools, to ensure people with neurodiversity or disabilities have an easier time connecting to the content and enjoying it. And for those who don’t want to travel, hybrid event technology allows everyone to participate in the event, no matter where they’re located.
Technology can also help people connect to each other on a more human level by capturing images and stories and sharing them with participants before, during or after the event. Consider setting up on-site interviews or photography booths to capture this user-generated content. Remember: everyone wants to feel special and included. If you can deliver experiences that deliver both to your participants, they’ll want to come back next year.
Those are the Top 3 trends we’re seeing. How are you planning to make your meetings more engaging, supportive of ESG or inclusive? We’d love to hear about your 2023 events and the challenges and solutions you discover as you move through the year. Click here to download the Winter 2022 Planners Pulse Report and opt-in to future communications to have your opinion included.
Discover what’s in store for the
events industry
- 80% of events taking place in the next 12 months will have an in-person audience
- 6 of 10 event planners expect their budgets to increase in 2023
- Meeting space layout and technology are the top 2 drivers of venue selection beyond table stakes criteria of available dates, space, and budget
- 80% of events taking place in the next 12 months will have an in-person audience
Download the Planner Pulse & Infographic for full insights
Humans are social by nature. We are inherently driven to connect and create moments of belonging. This is where in-person events shine — they satisfy this innate human need while fostering a sense of community. By bringing participants together, you enable engagement on various levels, whether through direct communication, nonverbal cues or even physical touch, such as a handshake with an industry peer. All these factors elevate an in-person event’s programming and how it can activate your audience. But are you missing out on opportunities to enhance your impact in today’s tech-savvy climate?
Leveraging digital capabilities through an event platform can be an invaluable part of your in-person event’s success. By incorporating the platform’s interactive technology, you can better engage audiences, strengthen your programming, and gain valuable data insights to enhance future events. Deliberating whether to incorporate an event platform at your next in-person event? Read on to learn six advantages to doing just that — plus, click the button below to download our free Event Platforms Guidebook and explore even more ways to elevate your upcoming events with a platform’s digital capabilities.
1. Boost audience engagement
According to the Encore Fall 2022 Planner Pulse Report, nearly half of event professionals want to improve attendee engagement at their upcoming events. While this may seem like a daunting task, including digital capabilities can serve as a key way to help boost audience participation. How? They offer exciting ways to engage your attendees.
Event platforms, like Chime Live ℠, are an excellent tool for this. From the get-go, you set the tone for a more interactive experience with its second screen technology. Attendees can participate with your content while it’s being delivered, directly from their own Encore-provided iPad. Whether via chat, virtual break-out rooms, gamification elements or connecting via social feeds, the platform’s experience opens up new opportunities for presenters and attendees alike to engage on a more intimate level than in the past. Chime Live is also unique in the way that it supports choreographed event design, allowing you to focus attendees on what they need to see or do in the platform. Push slides and pop-up interactive polls, Q&A and more — right on cue.
2. Strengthen your programming
When it comes to your event, the more targeted the content is for your audience, the more likely it will resonate and leave a lasting impression. With an event platform, you can strengthen your programming by engaging participants pre-event to check their pulse on topics that will be presented so you can best tailor the messaging. Send pre-event surveys and knowledge checks to assess how much background information to cover, encourage discussions via forums to learn about your attendees’ interests, and even provide helpful resources — including white papers or videos — for your audience to learn from beforehand.
Once your event comes to a close, you can use the platform’s tools to drive long-term engagement and reach. This provides people who couldn’t attend a way to connect with your programming while enhancing the overall experience for those who did. Simply include video content in your event platform’s resource section and choose how long you’d like the media to be available – for many event platforms, you can request that it be accessible 365 days a year. You can also efficiently repurpose and reshare event videos, clips and other digital content via email, social posts or blogs. This feeds your marketing pipeline and can expand your impact by allowing you to reach and engage new audiences even after your event has ended. Another advantage? These capabilities help you maximize your return on investment (ROI). With so many benefits at your fingertips, it’s no wonder that 78 percent of businesses that use an event application say it contributes to a positive event ROI.
3. Grow sponsorship reach
Did you know you can offer more sponsorship packages when your event includes digital components? Depending on the platform, you can add a sponsor banner or enhanced branding, empowering you to deliver additional promotional opportunities. With physical and digital options to choose from, businesses have the flexibility to choose the level of participation that makes the most sense for them, which can increase the ROI of their investment.
As mentioned above, using an event platform can also extend the shelf life of your programming, as your content can be available on-demand after the initial live event has ended. This means that sponsors’ logos and other branding elements will continue to be seen by potential customers. If you’re looking to attract sponsors for your next event, adding these digital capabilities will work in your favor.
4. Enable smarter networking
Meeting and event professionals know that one of the most important elements of a successful event is networking. It’s not enough to just have people in the same room; participants should be able to connect with each other on a deeper level. Utilizing an event platform simplifies and facilitates this process — it can help identify attendees who have shared interests or attributes and encourage them to build strong professional relationships with each other. Event platforms can take job titles, interests, skills, backgrounds and even more customizable factors into account to make sure attendees can learn about and meet others who share similar goals or interests.
This makes it easier for everyone attending an in-person event to find the right person to talk to without having to filter through hundreds of people they have little in common with. Additionally, this digital capability facilitates professional development by helping participants identify potential mentors or career opportunities within their network.
5. Gain valuable data insights
At traditional in-person events, you can track attendance and observe attendees’ reactions to the programming. But you gain more specific data by connecting your audience with an event platform, which features a live analytics dashboard. With this tool, you can track not only attendance, but also participant engagement and event results. This type of functionality can demonstrate how engaged attendees were and even get their responses to the experience via surveys or feedback forms.
Because digital components allow for more interaction during presentations than typical offline events — thanks to features such as polling and Q&A — you can gather streamlined data on participants’ preferences and continually develop more tailored content that speaks to their interests. The platform makes it easy to track all this data and more, so you’re equipped with the insights that will help you craft future events that are even more engaging and relevant to the needs of your audience.
6. Impress participants with great-to-know info
Using an event platform, you can present participants with powerful and important information that is easily accessible. Not only does this add to the event experience for all involved, but it can also empower you with more control over your event offerings than ever before. Feature a detailed agenda, bios on each speaker and even multiple language options to enhance how inclusive your programming is for diverse audiences.
Will your event include break-out sessions? With an event platform, you can include personalized tracks for each attendee based on your specific requirements. Your event platform’s “toolset” can be customized to your needs — simply bookmark potential items you’re interested in offering. These may range from preloaded destination information to helpful contact info to nearby sites attendees may want to check out while they’re in the area.
Incorporating digital capabilities with an event platform
According to the 2022 Global Meetings and Events Forecast conducted by American Express, 73 percent of event professionals are very optimistic about their ability to use technology to enhance the attendee experience.
By leaning into digital components, planners can create opportunities for their events to engage audiences in new and memorable ways with an event platform. However, your success in doing so is dependent on your technology. It’s critical to have a user-friendly platform that can host events on any device — whether desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile phone — and that offers easy-to-use digital features that can breathe fresh life into your programming and deliver your desired outcomes.
Want to explore how to deliver more impactful, seamless events of any size, location or complexity? Download our Event Platforms with Boundless Possibilities Guidebook.
Interested in learning how Encore can elevate your next event through our end-to-end event platforms and strategic solutions? Our experts offer free consultations if you want to discuss your specific needs. We’d love to help you develop a transformative experience for all attendees — so that your events can foster a new level of community, inspiration and connection.
Environmental sustainability is one of the Top 3 attributes most meeting and event professionals look for when selecting venues, vendors and suppliers, according to the Encore Fall 2022 Planner Pulse Report. But are you missing opportunities to ‘go green’? If you’re interested in incorporating more eco-friendly initiatives in your event planning, learn the micro-moments that hold opportunities to be environmentally conscious with ‘Next Steps in Sustainability,’ the first section from Encore’s Break Free from Conventional Thinking Guidebook.
Find smart and simple ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your next in-person, hybrid and virtual events, with a guidebook developed with your priorities in mind.
Download 'Next Steps in Sustainability'
What's Inside:
Key ways to make your events more
environmentally conscious
More meeting and event professionals are actively booking or sourcing new events now than any time since 2020. According to the Encore Summer Planner Pulse 2022 report, that number represents 71 percent of 461 survey respondents, who represent a diverse swath of corporate, association, administrative, marketing, third-party, independent and special event producers and organizers.
More than half of the meeting and event professionals surveyed say they are booking new events. And only five percent are currently rescheduling or re-booking events — the lowest number since the pandemic began.
Despite rising costs, in-person events are expected to increase in the second half of 2022.
Key survey findings:
- 80 percent of events will have an in-person audience
- 20 percent of events will be hybrid, with both in-person and remote audiences
The demands of keeping these dual hybrid event audiences engaged and planning two parallel events are a major stressor, the report finds. Perhaps that’s why the participant experience is becoming a greater factor in event design, with professionals layering technology over the in-person experience to create events that feel like they are in-person+ — with or without hybrid participants.
When asked how future in-person events will compare to pre-pandemic in-person events:
- 45 percent of respondents said better attendee engagement
- 38 percent of respondents said more networking
- 37 percent of respondents said more attendee personalization
This trend drove Encore to create a free guide to help meeting and event professionals meet shifting audience expectations: Boundless Possibilities for Engagement. The Encore team also offers free consultations on how to enhance the in-person and remote attendee experience.
Other challenges meeting and event professionals say they face include lead times, specifically for large events. Event professionals report that a third of their events for more than 250 people (34 percent) must be organized within a three-to-six month window. Only half of these sized events are planned more than six months out. Most small meetings with one to 50 participants (43 percent) are being organized within one to two months out. Most mid-sized events with 51 to 250 participants (43 percent) are being organized three to six months out.
Want to read the full report? Download it here.
Learn how to map the attendee journey
Do you know the 5 key steps in mapping your attendee journey?
Learn how to map the customer journey for your event participants and key stakeholders so your event design achieves your desired outcomes. Download our free guide, Mapping the Attendee Journey, and learn the strategy and benefits of attendee journey mapping.
Download the free guide: Mapping the Attendee Journey
Discover what’s in store for the
events industry
The industry and in-person are bouncing back in a big way. Although we are sure to experience ups and downs as we get back to normal, keeping up with changing event trends can help all industry professionals stay ahead of the game. In the Summer Encore Planner Pulse report, we take a deep dive into what to expect from in-person, hybrid, and virtual events in 2022.
- Industry optimism has increased since summer 2021
- Most planners predict full industry recovery by 2023
- Outlook indicates 75 percent of 2022 events to be in-person
or hybrid - And much more!
Get your complimentary digital copy of the Summer 2022 Encore Planner Pulse today.
The basic tools, technologies and best practices you need to engage dual remote and in-room audiences.
What are your event essentials?
Basic event technology requirements
Camera and audio: For small, hybrid meetings, most cameras offer integrated audio and speaker solutions. For larger events, you may want an external camera or a broadcast-quality setup. The three main considerations that will help you select the right camera and audio for your event are:
- Connectivity: Will the camera/audio be integrated into a laptop, plugged in via USB, or will it be a broadcast solution connected via SDI or HDMI?
- Field of view (FOV): Do you need a camera that swivels 360 degrees? Or is a static shot with fixed angle of 125 degrees or less sufficient?
Wired internet: Pre-pandemic, wireless internet was the standard, but for broadcast events, you need a wired internet connection.
- Simple wired internet (3 MB) is ideal for 1:1 videoconferencing but not great for webinars.
- Superior wired internet (5 MB) is ideal for webinars, but not great for hybrid conferences.
- Dedicated bandwidth (varies depending on need) is ideal for hybrid conferences and broadcast events but is overkill for 1:1 videoconferences and most webinars.
Additional displays: If your event is a one-way broadcast, then you don’t need to worry about additional in-room displays. But they are phenomenal at increasing engagement between remote and in-room audiences. They help these dual audiences see and talk with each other.
- Traditional tripod screen kits are ideal for educational meetings, standard presentations and large conference rooms. They’re not great for rooms with limited space or interactive sessions.
- Large format monitors are idea for board meetings, rooms with limited space, collaborative sessions and large conference rooms. They are not great for single-focus meetings.
Enterprise videoconferencing tool: When you’re broadcasting content, you need a reliable videoconferencing tool to stream content. Encore offers an enterprise videoconferencing tool through Zoom that guarantees the highest quality stream available. Encore also provides platform solutions and onsite support for technologies such as Chime Go℠, Chime Live℠ and Notified Virtual Event Platform®. We can also help support other platforms purchased directly by our customers such as Cvent Attendee Hub®, please ask your Encore representative.
Laptop rental: If you want to be able to show up and start your meeting, or if you need to check email and work during breaks, then invest in a rental laptop. For a relatively small investment, it provides huge peace of mind and frees up presenters and planners onsite. Having a dedicated laptop for your event guarantees:
- Properly configured software and broadcast settings
- Full integration with technology services
- Required processing power needed to display rich media content without glitches
Event technology provider: Producing a hybrid event means you’re designing two simultaneous experiences. With one of them being face-to-face and the other existing in digital spaces, this creates additional layers of complexity and potential errors. Partnering with a trusted event technology partner, like Encore, can eliminate human error, turnaround professional-quality events in an abbreviated period, and help you exceed expectations. Contact Encore for a free consultation.
Want to read more about hybrid essential technology? See this content and more in guidebook form by clicking the link below:
Boundless Possibilities for Engagement
It’s exciting to watch in-person meetings and events return. According to Blackstone Securities, group meetings and convention gatherings will return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. However, in this post-lockdown environment, attendee expectations have changed. Event technology has advanced. Your audience will also look very different than it did pre-pandemic.
How can you adapt your strategy to accommodate these different audience needs? How do you know what technologies or platforms will offer the best engagement and return on investment?
One of the best ways to create a seamless experience is to focus on engaging both the in-person and remote viewing audiences. Not sure where to start? Download our free Boundless Possibilities for Engagement Handbook.
Let this document be a guide to help you navigate the process of innovating your event and content design processes so you can access the boundless opportunities for engagement in-person, hybrid and digital events offer.
What’s in this guide
The purpose of this guide is to help you navigate these new opportunities by focusing your attention on seven key areas:
- Developing an innovation process for event design — How to generate, select, and evaluate ideas as well as how to catalogue and store ideas for future use.
- Leveraging event technology for engagement — The basic tools, technologies and best practices you need to engage dual remote and in-room audiences.
- Mapping the attendee journey — How to map the customer journey for your event participants and key stakeholders so that your event design achieves your desired outcomes.
- Creating healthy event ecosystems — Events comprise multiple components, or ecosystems. This section will help you test the health of each one and fix unhealthy ecosystems.
- Practicing radical inclusion — How to avoid common problems that leave attendees feeling disengaged, unwanted and excluded from your event experience.
- Designing engaging educational experiences — How to help event participants engage with content before, during and after your event in ways that will help them learn, remember and value your conference content.
- Maximizing return on education, return on objective and return on investment (ROE, ROO and ROI) — How to analyze event data, report results and use them to improve the event experience, revenues and ROI.
Download the Boundless Possibilities for Engagement Handbook
It’s exciting to watch in-person meetings and events return. According to Blackstone Securities, group meetings and convention gatherings will return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. However, in this post-lockdown environment, attendee expectations have changed. Event technology has advanced. Your audience will also look very different than it did pre-pandemic. Consider these February 2022 findings from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics:
- 3 percent of people over the age of 55 have left the workforce
- 9 percent of the entire American workforce (47.4 million people) quit their jobs in 2021
The pandemic reshaped how we work in America. Even as offices reopen, roughly 6 in 10 US workers (59%) who say their jobs can be done from home are working from home all or most of the time, up from just 23% who worked remotely before the COVID-19. (Pew Research Center, Feb. 16 2022)
According to the Q1 2022 U.S. Travel Association Business Tracker, business travelers say developing relationships is the most important aspect of their business trips. Education and networking traditionally are the No. 1 and 2 most-important reasons to attend events. But the way education and networking components engage participants needs to change. No one is coming out of this pandemic with the same set of values or expectations they had going in. And that creates significant barriers to enjoyment if you intend to plan your events the same way.
All this means event designers must adapt to meet evolving audience expectations.
As an event designer, you have the opportunity tonew event strategies and help discarding their outdated ones. There’s never been a better opportunity to position yourself as a strategic team leader. The rules have changed. It’s time to step up your game. This guide will help you adapt, transform and outperform expectations. Are you ready to play? Game on!
Think ‘in-person+’
Consider the following:
- The number of in-person events are increasing as fully-virtual events decrease, yet nearly a quarter of all meetings will remain hybrid through 2022. Source: Encore Planner Pulse Spring 2022 Report
- Association professionals report more than 50 percent of their second and third quarter 2022 events will be hybrid and 35 percent will be digital/online only. Source: PCMA Convene Covid-19 Recovery Survey
This data signals a need for meeting and event professionals to shift their mindsets. If between 25 percent and 50 percent of an organization’s events will be hybrid, it might be useful for organizers to think of hybrid events as being ‘in-person+’ rather than just added work or a passing fad.
What do we mean by in-person+?
We mean that technology developed for virtual event platforms can be adapted to enrich the in-room event experience and allow in-person attendees to switch between real-time and on-demand engagement, as needed. For example, if a participant gets an important call during a session and has to leave the room, they could use the event platform Chime Live to consume the content virtually and toggle back to the in-room experience once the call is over.
Virtual attendees are valuable members of any meeting community. Research by MPI and PCMA have proven that virtual events don’t cannibalize in-person attendance. In fact, people are more likely to attend an in-person event after experiencing it as a remote participant. Offering that virtual option allows people who can’t attend the in-person gathering to still experience your event’s content and community. It broadens your reach and helps you engage new audiences. It also amplifies your event return on investment (ROI) by increasing potential participant engagement, transactions and revenue from sponsors and exhibitors.
One of the best ways to create a seamless experience is to focus on engaging both the in-person and remote viewing audiences. Let this document be a guide to help you navigate the process of innovating your event and content design processes so you can access the boundless opportunities for engagement in-person, hybrid and digital events offer.
What’s in this guide
The purpose of this guide is to help you navigate these new opportunities by focusing your attention on seven key areas:
- Developing an innovation process for event design — How to generate, select, and evaluate ideas as well as how to catalogue and store ideas for future use.
- Leveraging event technology for engagement — The basic tools, technologies and best practices you need to engage dual remote and in-room audiences.
- Mapping the attendee journey — How to map the customer journey for your event participants and key stakeholders so that your event design achieves your desired outcomes.
- Creating healthy event ecosystems — Events comprise multiple components, or ecosystems. This section will help you test the health of each one and fix unhealthy ecosystems.
- Practicing radical inclusion — How to avoid common problems that leave attendees feeling disengaged, unwanted and excluded from your event experience.
- Designing engaging educational experiences — How to help event participants engage with content before, during and after your event in ways that will help them learn, remember and value your conference content.
- Maximizing return on education, return on objective and return on investment (ROE, ROO and ROI) — How to analyze event data, report results and use them to improve the event experience, revenues and ROI.
Developing an Innovation Process for Event Design
How to generate, select, and evaluate ideas as well as how to catalogue and store ideas for future use.
Step 1: Identify what needs to change
Sun Tzu wrote, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
If you begin the innovation process without knowing what needs to change, you’re prioritizing tactics over strategy. That’s why it’s important to look at data and feedback from past events or marketplace research before you design your next event.
Look for:
- Data-point outliers: In which areas did your event score the worst? Where did it score highest? Build upon your successes. Look for areas of opportunity. If something isn’t working, either tweak it or stop doing it.
- Strong anecdotal feedback: Survey results don’t tell the full story. What kind of feedback did you, event team or staff gather from hallway conversations or complaints? Note: People will be more forthcoming and honest with an independent third-party auditor.
- Customer or industry pain points: What keeps your customers up at night? What arethe industry’s biggest pet peeves? These are friction points that your event might be able to solve.
- Big fails: Was there anywhere else you feel your last event (or other events by your competitive set) fellshort?
All will present opportunities for change. Identify three to five items that would make the biggest impact on your event or audience. These are the areas on which you want to focus your idea generation efforts.
Step 2: Invite the right people to generate ideas with you
If everyone in the room looks the same, has the same background or works in the same department, chances are that they’ll generate similar ideas. You don’t want an echo chamber. To generate ideas, you need diversity of perspectives, backgrounds and opinions.
To achieve this, invite a cross-section of key stakeholders and internal team members, including people who may not be directly connected to your event team. Make sure they all feel welcome, included and have an opportunity to share their voice.
Step 3: Lay down some basic rules
If you don’t lay down a few basic rules for idea generation, you’ll end up with a brainstorming session dominated by a few people. Avoid this by:
- Making space for introverted contributors: Before group conversations or any sharing begins, let people have five to seven minutes to write down their ideas on a set topic or question. This allows people to generate ideas without fear of being shut down.
- Create a clear activity schedule: Idea generation should be a time of pure brainstorming. Help participants resist the urge to start shooting ideas down or discussing them by creating different time-bound segments of the idea generation process. For example:
- Make it clear that idea generation time is solely for generating ideas without discussing or debating them. If you allow people to start judging ideas now, you’ll shut everyone down. If anyone offers an opinion, remind them there will be time to discuss the ideas later.
- Follow idea generation time with an activity that allows groups to add bullet points or creative strategies to ideas that speak to them. For example, if you’ve got five areas to innovate, divide the participants into five groups so there is one working on challenges and solutions for each area.
- After these ideas have been fleshed out and contextualized, give groups time to present on the challenges and solutions they worked on. Now is the time to discuss, debate, tweak and improve.
- Develop a parking lot: When people get off-track, gently steer them back on course. One of the easiest ways to do this is to take items that they want to discuss and place them in a “parking lot” that you can come back to later, if time allows.
- Decide on winning ideas and innovations: Ideally, the group in the room can also make the go-ahead decisions. But if that’s not possible, enlist their help in creating the presentations, videos or pitches required for the senior leadership team or event decision makers during the idea generation session. Remember: You don’t need to change everything. Trying one to three new things may be all you can handle.
- Determine how you will measure success: This is an important item to discuss while you’re debating and discussing the ideas. Once you know how success will be measured, then identify who will be responsible for implementing, tracking and reporting those measurements so you can evaluate the success of the experiment post-event.
Step 4: Capture the ideas and innovations generated
- Document the process: Film the presentations, assign dedicated note-takers for each group, or capture what is discussed in some way that makes it easy to archive.
- Create a knowledge database: Sometimes you’ll discover a great idea or innovative process that won’t work for the current event, but which you’d like to try at some point. Don’t lose these ideas. Instead, create a knowledge database.
- Keep records of your experiments: The knowledge database is also a phenomenal place to keep track of what happened when you applied your grandiose ideas and innovations to your event.
Step 5: Analyze results and iterate on your success (or failure)
- Analyze the results: What did you learn implementing this idea or innovation? Why did it work or not work?
- Present your findings: Who is invested in the success or failure of your event? What is the best way to communicate this information to them?
- Iterate and build on your success: Innovation is an iterative process, not a one-and-done thing. That’s why it’s important to examine and improve on your innovations, even if they were successful. If it worked, is there a way to build on that success? If it didn’t work, is there a something you can tweak that might help it work next time?