Conferences can be an incredible place where new ideas can emerge and people come together to breathe life into them. As conference planners, we are constantly working to find new and creative ways to capture the ideation in a room. When doing this we always recommend a few key ingredients: Make it vibrant, interesting, and engaging.
Keep in mind, a part of this is that you shouldn’t do the same thing every time, to keep people interested they need to be a little surprised by something new. Here are a few of our favorites:
Graphic Recording
This interesting method you may have seen before. It’s when an artist is staged in a meeting room and captured the dialogue and presentation by sketching it out. This is a great tool for your visual learners in the room and is much more interesting to watch than a PowerPoint presentation. This artwork can also be displayed in a common area after each session for those who attended to be able to reflect on it and help foster new conversations about past session content. Want to see examples and find artists to assist you at your next event? Check out Drawing Impact!
Source: World Café Community, example of a World Café setting
The World Cafe Method
If you have never been to a conference with a world cafe setting it’s great in that it’s a simple way to connect with like-minded people and make high value in a small amount of time. The short and simple description of how to execute this is to create an open environment for creativity by finding a space with lots of natural light and greenery, create separate discussion pods by using round tables and topic cards and colors as identifiers, and table hosts provide the framework for the conversion and kelp to keep it on track. If your looking for more details on the structure of how to host your next world cafe check out this website.
Photo: Courtesy of Google
An Idea Wall
The main concept with an idea wall is that you have a wall that you have dedicated in the main common area of your event with an overarching question that ties in all of the content and attendees so that they feel inspired to contribute. This is often times done by having them write on sticky notes or note cards and placing them on the wall. By the end of your event you have a masterpiece of responces that is now a visual representation of all of the attendees participation and contribution to the mission of the event. An idea wall really can be executed in a few ways and picking the right way for your event is important to the general esthetic of your event and the way you want people to interact. For instance if you have a group of engineers at your conference having some order in how this wall is presented with catergories and colors in place before hand would be a good idea, on the other hand creatives really don’t benefit from that level of direction or organization and would thrive frome a display that has a lot of options with a variety of sizes in paper, markers they can use, and maybe even something like stickers so that they can individualize their note by adding in a little of their identity.
These and more methods are out there begging to brighten the engagement at your next event. Need help making it all come together? Toast of the Town can help, Contact Us today! We love innovation and are here to help your event level up!
