December 14th, 2011
Inclusion is the act of seeking out and including additional difference, and a lot of this work is focused on people. It is also important to make sure that we give some attention to diversity of practices and diversity of experiences. This is an additional layer of this work, but it also comes with some very real benefits and I believe supports success in the other aspects of what we do.
Let us consider the design of the conference experience.
I have the privilege of attending a lot of conferences and similar types of events. All conferences have their own look and feel, some more unique than others. I think that the average conference has tremendous opportunity to provide greater variance in the kinds of experiences available.
I am a huge fan of building Ignite sessions into the conference format. Somewhere close to the beginning of the conference agenda, set aside 60-90 minutes for a handful of Ignite presentations. This is great way to bring some energy, some new voices and some fresh perspectives to your conference, and does not involve a lot of additional work. ASAE has done a nice job of this at several of their conferences.
Have some deep dive sessions on the agenda. Some folks want to go deeper and they are willing to set aside 3-4 hours to really dig into a topic. Pick a topic or two and take a small group of folks off site for a half day to do some intense work. Some SHRM conferences do a good job of this with their pre-conference workshops. On the flip side of this…all your breakouts do not have to be 60 or 75 minutes. Have some 30 minute sessions.
Set aside some open space time, giving your conference attendees the opportunity to explore topics that did not make the agenda. Toward the end of the conference set aside an hour, make some rooms available and give people some guidance and some encouragement toward leading and participating in their own sessions.
Find a way to get your conference, or at least part of it, out of that square, bland convention center where every other conference takes place. Granted, some events are simply too large for this to be an option. But if you can, get people into an art gallery, a children’s museum, an airport hanger, the local zoo, somewhere where the physical space actually adds something to the experience. The HR Reinvention Experiment has done a good job of using unique and compelling space.
Put some topics on the agenda that don’t really make sense. Give people a general session on journaling, yoga, drawing the human face, origami, storytelling, fitness, cooking…something personal, creative and expressive. This is the kind of thing that your attendees will never ask for, it will not make any sense to them when they see it on the agenda, but it is one of the things that will stick with them. And, it can still be very relevant to their profession. Any expressive activity can be used to share insights around identity, experience, perspective, diversity, leadership, culture, etc.
Use social technology to engage people before, during and after the event. Once people register let them vote on some of the topics or some of the speakers. Make it easy for conference attendees to find each other, connect, share questions, pictures, information, etc. There is much more knowledge, passion and experience in the roster of attendees than there is in all your speakers combined…make that accessible.
Make at least some of your sessions more interactive. HREvolution has done a good job of this. Some of the sessions are still standard presentations complete with powerpoint, but most of them are more interactive with the session leader facilitating a conversation (sometimes very robust conversations) rather than presenting.
You can still have keynotes, and breakouts and learning credits like you do now…just mix it up a little. People need to be pushed outside of the comfort zone a little bit, we all learn differently and we come to these events from different experiences. Shake it up a little bit. Put people in different spaces, different kinds of formats and different experiences. And if you are involved in planning conferences or similar kinds of events, you should read Jeff Hurts blog religiously.
Mix some magic sauce into your agenda this time. Spill some paint. You do not need to do your conference the same way that you did it last year, that is what everyone else is doing.
Be good to each other.