August 26, 2005
Walking In
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with this opening session thing, but I just remembered that I said I would write about “the walk-in experience” in a later post. So here it is. Those who disagree with me about the importance of the overall experience of a conference, I’m sure won’t agree with me on this post either, but that’s okay.
The most important thing about walk-in, in my opinion, is that “walk-in” at an opening session should mark a “break” from the past. When attendees walk into the general session room, there should be the sense that they are “entering” something — something big, something meaningful.
If you can’t afford the “big” stuff it doesn’t matter, just be creative. It may be the people who are greeting attendees, signs that are placed around, lighting, the decor — whatever. The last thing you want is for people to just wander into the opening session room, find a place to sit, and wait for the program. Yes, that’s the essence of what they’re doing, but the session room should feel more “different” than that.
As an example, here are the five or six “silly things” I insist on during walk-in:
Secrecy
Nobody sees our stage set before the doors open a half-hour before the opening session is scheduled to start (except for the production crew, myself and a few staff, and the chairman and the CEO, who see it during rehearsals the day before). That means nobody — doors are kept locked. When they open, they are “revealing” something.
Music
Music is not background noise. We take special care in creating the mix used during the walk-in. The songs are not selected because they match our locale (we didn’t play country in Texas or zydeco in New Orleans), and they are not selected because they are songs our members like (our members are probably more country and adult contemporary oriented). They’re selected for their pounding beat. While not played at a deafening roar, the music is not turned all the way down, either.
Movement
The room needs to suggest movement when people enter. The big screen doesn’t just show a logo or a static slide. It runs a slide show, continuously looping, for example, a sponsor logo listing, interspersed with announcements and housekeeping items. Occasionally sweeping lights, gobos and other movements on set — all orchestrated and choreographed, of course — makes the room feel “alive.”
Lighting
House lights are not turned all the way up — in fact, are kept down somewhat. We want it dark enough that people, again, feel a break from the outside hall, but not so dark that they can’t find their way around.
All of these things — music, movement, lighting — work together to create a sensation of difference and entrance and anticipation. People don’t necessarily realize that this is what’s happening.
We Start On Time, Sort Of
We usually start 2-4 minutes after the scheduled time. It depends on the music — when the walk-in music ends, the show starts, period. Tim, my producer, tells me we’re the only client that doesn’t dither back and forth about the starting time.
We Work with Great People
And finally, the key to any great conference experience is the production company. I’ve got no problem plugging the company I work with, O’Keefe Communications, because they’re absolutely brilliant. Going on five years now and we work great together, continually thinking up new and exciting ways to shake things up at the meeting. I highly recommend them. They’re not cheap (when we found them originally, they were not the lowest bidder — but their work is of such a stunning quality it was unmatched by any of the other usual-suspect vendors bidding). But they are worth every penny and know how to work within a budget.
There. Done with the whole opening session thing, I promise!
P.S. If you don’t do anything else, please please please spend a little bit of money and have all of your public announcements created in a professional studio by a professional voiceover artist. Do it a week before the event and just have the same voiceover read everything that will be — and anything that might be — announced at the event (introductions of all speakers, housekeeping items, narratives you will need, anything at all). The “Voice of God” is such a small detail but it makes any event “feel” much more professional.
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Kevin, great advice and insight. All of your walk-in standards will help create a sense of arrival and generate anticipation.
One note:
I have seen these kinds of walk-in preparations executed well only to have it ruined by the first 8 seconds of communication at the front of the room.
The first words spoken by whoever greets the attendees is seldom thought through. They should be. In some cases the first words are trivial. In others they represent the anxiety of the person speaking and not the confidence of someone inviting the room to an important experience.
First words should never be predictable words of greeting only.
Rather they should be unpredictable words that suggest the usefulness of what is about to happen at this conference or in this meeting.
Oh well, you can tell your walk-in instructions got my mind racing!
Kevin - I thought it was interesting that the colleague that was with me at the ASAE meeting HATED the staff clapping as we walked in every morning. I didn’t really care one way or the other, but she made a comment every morning about how much she didn’t like that. She could give me no rational reason why besides, “It makes me feel creepy.”
I wasn’t big on the clapping and reception line thing, either — not that it was necessarily creepy (though I can see her point), but because it created a bottleneck where there didn’t need to be one.
Kevin, I’m sure you’re going to admonish me to lighten up again, but I think that if association leaders devoted just a fraction of the time and resources to the pursuit of innovation that they devote to the frivolity of general session production, we might work in a very different association community.
General sessions that are triumphs of flash over substance are a colossal waste of the association’s supposedly limited resources, precious dollars that could be better directed toward making real breakthroughs with tangible results for the industry or profession. Now, I am not saying that you’re advocating “sizzle not steak,” because I know that is not your view. But this is a hot button issue for me: non-strategic spending in organizations that say they can’t afford to invest in innovation. It may not have to be an “either-or” choice, but far too many association leaders seem to have framed it in precisely that way, and I find that incredibly frustrating.
BTW, I’m posting this comment from Australia, where it is approaching 9:40 am on Sunday. I just arrived 3 hours ago after traveling all night, so I’m a little less restrained than usual!
Hi Jeff,
Having never been to Australia, I’m envious (though the fact that you’re commenting on blogs as soon as you get there *does* make me want to say “lighten up” again … but then, it’s 8:30pm on Saturday night here and that’s what I’m doing, so you could just as easily admonish me to “get a life.”)
I understand your position, I really do — I just disagree with it. The things you dismiss as frivolity actually play a profound role in providing the life-changing experience that associations should want to provide their members. I certainly understand that there are some organizations that waste money producing pure entertainment extravaganzas that serve no other purpose, and as you say, I’m not saluting them — or even talking about them.
I’m not dabbling in theory here. I’m almost sorry I brought the whole subject up because I really don’t like to talk so much about what our individual organization does, but that experience is where I’m getting all this. In a nutshell:
– The list of attendees who have been to our conference over the past few years who offer very specific details about improvements they have made to their businesses (and their lives) is a mile long (we’re compiling several of them into a piece for our next one). That is the purpose of our conference and, I’m guessing, the purpose of most trade association conferences.
– Our conference has undergone significant growth over the past few years. Our membership has also grown, but percentage-wise, nowhere near as much.
– If we had not made the changes I’ve discussed, that growth — and the life-altering experiences described above — would not have happened — because most of those people wouldn’t have attended in the first place. The overwhelming majority of new attendees tell us the reason they come is that they heard from another individual how great the event is.
– “Word-of-mouth” is generated by things that hit emotion, not intellect.
My original position on this hasn’t changed. The success (and growth, if that is part of how an organization defines success) of a conference is a result of 1) hitting Level 1 — providing educational programs that make an impact, and 2) then hitting Level 2 — making the overall experience so exciting that people feel compelled to talk about what a great experience it was.
You call this “non-strategic spending” but that makes me chuckle; what I have described is strategic spending at its best. This sort of stuff is not something you do for “fun” — we have this down to a science. It plays a central role in the success of the event, which plays a central role in the success of the organization (not to mention the bottom line) — and it is quite strategic, in that we make a conscious decision to do it, in a specific way, to achieve specific (and measurable) results.
You’re absolutely right, I’m sure some organizations choose “sizzle over steak,” and they’ll get the results they get. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to avoid talking about it because other people might get confused.
I appreciate this is a hot-button issue for you (we all have ‘em) and it’s been a fun discussion. Thanks and enjoy Australia!
I hear you Kevin, and I do value your arguments. And, by the way, my intention here is not to criticize what you’ve done at ACCA. I just wanted to make the point that there are other ways that associations can invest their limited dollars to achieve growth and success and that all of those ways should be fully considered. Thank you for offering up your personal experiences as a foil for an important conversation. It is much appreciated.
You should definitely come to Australia. It’s beautiful here. This is my second trip, although I haven’t been here for 12 years. And with time zone changes, I’ll be posting at all kinds of strange times over the next week. Take good care!