It was an actual Karma moment, yesterday; over the course of twenty minutes, two things happened to me that made me sit down and write this post and drop everything else I was working on (sorry, guys). Two simple things that could alter the way you look at meeting, event, and conference planning and how you actually do your job.
First, this came flowing down the Twitter Stream:
I like Jeff and everything that he writes so I immediately clicked through to read his latest and what I found on the other end blew me away.
A great post on actually seeing, hearing and listening to your attendees. I will not review or rate the post except to say that I think that every meeting and event planner on the planet should read it, print it, and stick it on the wall over their desk.
Here is a little snip, I want you to read the post so I don’t want to give too much away:
Every one of your event attendees enters your conference with the following unspoken questions in their mind:
Do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you understand my challenges and needs? Does what I say mean anything to you?
Everyone wants to be validated. Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone wants to be seen at a deeper level than just their outward appearance.
Yet, do you acknowledge these concerns? Do you think about these basic needs when you are planning an event?
You have my permission to click out of here and go read it now… here is the link.
I am serious when I say that you should probably read it twice and then pass it on to every stakeholder in your event, especially if you have an event where attendee satisfaction scores are down, attendance is down or there seem to be issues… maybe you are the issue and not the weather, the economy or the attendee.
So, a few minutes later, another Tweet comes over the waterfall and falls straight into my lap, here it is:
This Tweet linked to nothing and went nowhere but had the power of an atomic bomb in the mind’s eye because it was a link in a chain.
How? Well, I have written about this in the past so this is nothing new, what was new was how it was presented, 1-2-3 in that order, I saw Jeff’s tweet which led to his post, and then BAM, a final tweet to pull it all together.
These two simple tweets and a post put it all in perspective in just a few minutes. You want your attendees to be rabid for your event, you want to build community, and you want to create a bond with attendees that cannot be broken. This is what makes an event a success and will make it work in the long term.
Now you have a simple road map to complete event success.
Follow Jeff’s advice and teaching, and you will create attendees that feel cared about, wanted, and included… because, as he says, meeting planning is a gift. You can use this gift as you see fit, but use it wisely and you will create attendees that are true “Fans” and like Johnny Says:
