October 28, 2008
Those Who Can, Do — And They’re the Ones I Want to Meet
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Hearkening back to this earlier post, and this comment conversation — and what the hey, probably has something to do with this one as well.
Here’s how we put together the workshop program for our upcoming 2009 conference:
- Developed a list of over 120 potential topics — generated from attendee suggestions last year, committees, a direct request to members, and staff
- Sent them out as a survey asking our contractor members to rate the topics, from “I would definitely go to this” down to “You couldn’t pay me to sit through this” (I’m paraphrasing)
- Broke the responses down across a couple pertinent industry segment categories
- Looked at the topics that were rated 80% or higher positive by the various segments, and …
- Went out and found people who could deliver intelligent presentations on these topics based on their experience.
Was this the easiest way to put a program together? Good God, no … far easier would have been to look at the hundreds of requests and proposals that come across my way each year from people (mostly consultants, vendors, and professional speakers) just dying to speak at our conference.
But last year was the first year we did it this way, and got a very positive response — and the initial program this year has garnered a lot of interest, with registrations outpacing last year’s at this time.
Of the workshops being offered at our conference in 2009, 76% of presenters and panelists will be contractors, and 24% consultants or vendors.
This seems about right to me. Certainly as an attendee of conferences, it’s a ratio I’m more comfortable with.
Not saying this is the way everyone should do it, it’s just an example of how one organization is doing it. But if half or more of your program presenters are primarily in the business of selling things to your members/attendees, you might want to rethink whatever way you’re doing it.
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