THENEXTMACH

Objectives, Audience and Making Events That Work [Pt. 3]

The community is hungry (demand is way high). With social media shining a light on what’s happening there is a big opportunity to reach a large audience quickly and freely. We need to ensure everyone—both organizers and attendees—are getting what they bargained for. We also need to remember the objectives, quality [authenticity] and audience precedents.

Let’s return back to the original challenge: how do you attract the “knowledge workers” of the Internets to a place where they can learn, share and grow with peers? My proposition for conquering recent market fluxes and answering this question includes three pillars:

1. Clear Objectives Tied Directly to Curation
   • Our Answering for example, “What is the future of the web?” and driving out an accompanying participate strategy.
2. Focus on Content Co-veillance
   • Identify the thinkers/doers in the community and enabling them to both develop criteria for and source relevant participates. 
3. Participation-level Dictates Audience-level
   • Segment the audience into two streams:
     1. Thinkers / Doers / Thinkers that Do
        • Designers; show and tell criteria; articulate and illustrate thinking; already sharing; rigor demonstrated; etc.
     2. Everyone else  
        • Segmented “participation” with differentiated pricing.*

I have only suggested a bare-bones strategy for making events work. Naturally, this leaves execution largely unaccounted for. What would you do in order to add value back to the community while remaining authentic?

*My initial proposition for the everyone else participate segment included not allowing certain participants in. More specifically, you couldn’t be part of the conversation if you’re not going to add value. I shared this with a few colleagues who all cautioned me to be careful of alienating the audience. If community members want to take part, putting up barriers to participate will not only fail to foster authenticity, it will also guarantee event bankruptcy.

Objectives, Audience and Making Events That Work [Pt. 2]

A couple months back I read an entertaining post, followed by some even better commentary. Some dude contributed to the story’s comments and one remark really stuck with me:

“… [social media is] predicated on this notion that marketing and saturation and content (gotta have content!) are more important than quality.”

No one—not the audiences that matter anyways—gives a damn about saturation, marketing and content if the quality is garbage. If you’re failing to solve the initial problem you started with but still throwing a great event then we all lose. Authenticity presupposes quality, however. The focus then really starts with authentic problem solving. The real challenge is identifying complimenting objectives—or problems—within the community when building authentic events.

Falling into the marketing trap is easy—and something we all do. Admittedly, I’m guilty of habitually placing marketing over quality. I obsess over what my Tumblelog [content] theme displays as ; or, if my Posterous simultaneously posts to all my social networks [saturation]; and, if my Twitter sidebar design colour is d6d366e, NOT e7e1dd5 like the sidebar border. What’s worse is that I am doing this all before I even pick up the pen or begin typing!  Participants and organizers alike, are all caught up in drinking our own Kool-Aid that we’ve forgetting why we even showed up to the party. 

Objectives, Audience and Making Events That Work [Pt. 1]

A colleague recently challenged me to solve an interesting problem: how do you attract the “knowledge workers” of the Internets to a place where they can learn, share and grow with peers. I want to share some of my recent thought-crumbs; if not only to clear my head, but also raise a flag with hopes to find some more friends who are thinking about solving the same problem. Before introducing where I am at in terms of next steps—will run through some of the [blanket] observations I’ve made recently.

Here’s the thing: Interactive/Digital/Web events and their value-add back to the community are turning to mush. With previous heavy hitters beginning to suck and Toronto events becoming less accessible we are experiencing some market fluxes that need readjusting. What’s challenging is event designers are under real pressure to make it work while also avoiding losing their shirt.

Objectives are Paramount

There is a fine balance between financing an event, filling the room and exploring great content. Getting that balance right will decide an event’s fate, ultimately. What I am questioning is: ‘participant’ objectives. And if the participants are increasingly dictating event session topics, pricing floors, etc—without complimenting objectives—we’re all screwed.

Working Your Audience

From an audience perspective, it has been really cool to watch the tech/digital community in Toronto (and abroad) grow substantially. The explosion of social media has opened our doors to a whole lot of new people; some of which are looking to bring value to the community, while others are only looking to take away. What’s scary are these diverging objectives and their inherent impact on event quality. However, having all audiences in the community attend and take part at some level is valuable.

So what does the audience fine-balance look like? Not sure. However, all event organizers need to find creative ways at financing an event and ensuring relevant audience members are in attendance and able to add value to the conversation.