Attendee Experience
[ik-speer-ee-uhns]
1. a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something.
2. knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered or undergone.
Creating a memorable meeting or event involves creating personalized experiences that are unique, unconventional or out-of-the-box. In this Education Essentials, you'll learn how you can enhance attendee experience at your meetings or events by adding sensory elements, customizing your meeting by attendee needs, incorporating technology trends to make an impact and more.
Sensory Experiences
Is Your Meeting Tapping into the Experience Economy?
The meetings profession has begun to take notice of the vital importance of experiences, and we’ve started to see a heavy influx of experiences and activations at meetings. In this new Meeting Experience Economy, Kyle F. Jordan of the Financial Planning Association sees three major areas as critical to the participant experience: Experience Alignment, Sensory Engagement, and Surprise and Delight. Read more about how you can integrate these focus areas into your meeting experiences.
Ideas for Building Experiences at Meetings and Events
Take a page from Prevue's Visionary Summit playbook and check out these ideas for making your meeting more experiential. Try a do-it-yourself breakfast and encourage attendees to make their own smoothies. Or make your icebreaker activity more personal by asking attendees to list the name of a celebrity they have always been told they look like on the back of their name badge.
Here are a few additional ideas from Prevue Meetings + Incentives for building attendee experiences at meetings and events.
- Heat-mapping: Seeing traffic flow in real-time through heat-mapping can allow for timely adjustments and post-event analysis, thus increasing the meeting ROI. Read more.
- Kinetically Friendly Design: One of the areas that must be addressed in meeting design is kinetic engineering, says Dianne Devitt, author of “What Color is Your Event? The Industry Resource on How to Think and Plan Creatively.” This encompasses designing an environment that supports flow, movement, kinesis, and physical access directed through design to branding experiences. Read more.
- Art at Meetings: Just as music has become synonymous with building the mood at a conference, art at meetings can play a similar role as a networking activity, a live attraction or a way to reinforce content. Read more.
For even more ideas for building experiential meetings, check out this resources page from Prevue.
Make Your Meeting Memorable
Making your event memorable should be a meetings professional's top priority and that means striving to meet the needs of each attendee. Check out this article that considers the primary four reasons an audience member chooses to attend an event, and how breaking your event planning down into these classifications can give you a better chance of creating a positive experience for everyone.
An attendee with practical needs is seeking to meet a pragmatic goal or fulfill a basic need. These audience members may participate to earn credits, find information or make connections. Once the practical needs of an attendee have been met, it's time to look at their demonstrative needs. These are more personal reasons for attending an event, such as access, prestige and emotional satisfaction. They may be looking to spearhead a new initiative at work or access an influential person. At the transformative level, attendees are searching for something deeper, such as connecting with motivating concepts, accessing game-changing content and expanding their network in a meaningful way. Lastly, transcendent needs encourage the attendee to approach the event with the intention of reaching their full potential. The attendee seeks to use the event as a catalyst for positive impact within their community. By paying attention to each set of needs, you set the stage for participants to feel fulfilled and create an unforgettable event.
Find Additional Resources on TheNetwork
Did you know TheNetwork is brimming with informational session handouts, speaker presentations, discussion threads and more? Check out these materials on technology trends that are influencing event experience, and be sure to share your own tips for enhancing attendee experience in the discussion forums.
#TBT - The CSR Experience
At the 2018 FICP Annual Conference, attendees had a chance to engage in a corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity organized by Wildly Different. Find the full recap here.
Access Great Content Daily
Follow FICP on Facebook and Twitter to get important updates and timely articles. Here's what you may have missed: When planning a menu, what are three things meetings professionals should keep in mind?