Event Education. What is it all about? Part 2

Sit for 5 minutes with any idea and you are certain to come up with more to say. Hence a part two to my last blog post. I wanted to spend a bit more time on bullet 5 from the last post: Events can be content for education/there is education in the experience.

This appears to me so obvious, it strikes me as surprising that experiential learning at event conferences tends to be a foreign idea. There is this tremendous rivalry between the "social" events and the "education" sessions, but I have never understood why the two have been put at odds, other than to say that there is a track record of "social" events produced as parties, not as educational tools. But I find it truly unfair as a paying attendee (and recently a producer of one of these events) to be short-changed by conferences panning off these events as purely social exercises. Without fail at each conference event I can point to lessons and learning (important caveat) I have made. I can count on one hand the number of meaningful educational class sessions I have attended in the past six years.

Ask me and I will tell you that part of the problem is that the showcasing and award events at conferences do not know what purpose they really serve (or are not open to serving as a formal educational opportunity, though they inevitably always serve as passive education). While I am certain people will disagree with me, the role of an event at an event industry conference HAS to be bigger than networking and celebratory. These experiences should represent the best of what the business can do - displaying the process or professionally producing an event, emerging technologies, ideas, strategies and practices in delivering event experiences. They must be more than pretty parties. They must have goals and stick to them; they should take calculated risks and be OK falling forward when some don't pan out and others succeed.

If I ran a conference, I would love to attend this class: The day after the big showcase event or awards ceremony, the event team which worked on the event sits on a panel with a strong facilitator to discuss with the audience the process and design of the event, what was successful, and what challenges were faced and how were they overcome. This is NOT a class opportunity for the event team to brag, but requires extreme vulnerability on the teams part to host this live "actors studio" type discussion on the creation and execution of an event experienced by the audience. The audience can pose questions and help examine the choices that made that experience in 360 degree fashion. Now that would be a fun class.

Event Education. What is it all about?

I am home from my second event conference of the year and after a successful week of networking, attending great events and teaching (however successfully) classes, I find myself reflecting again on a perpetual question-argument-debate at every conference. Just what is event education supposed to be about?

At each conference this year I was fairly disappointing with the turnout in the education sessions. Feel free to blame the speaker (me) or the timing (last day, early). Here I was, about to teach a class, in a massive room with, in one case, (ugh), convention theater seating, and in the second case, (ugh), classroom tables for rows set-up and the always to be expected one participant per row

First, my soap box: Come on people! We are in the event business - we have to do a better job at designing breakout and general session spaces to be conductive of learning. Why do we insist on putting so many barriers in the way of interactivity: a podium on a riser (for 20 people, really.) Classroom tables. Uncomfortable theater seating, where I have to put two chairs in-between myself and the next person because A) I don't fit in the chair with no gap between myself and my neighbor and B) because I am lugging around this big conference bag of materials. While "comfortable" and expected, these items act as barriers between a speaker and the audience. And if you believe, like me, that education more about facilitated dialogue among the crowd and less about what I the speaker know, then these set-up really just get in the way. (And don't ask me about the screen which was set back at an angle such that 1/3 of the room couldn't see it!)

But to the bigger question. Staging conference education is a lot like staging an event. In any given audience you will have someone enthralled with what you do, someone bored silly with what you do, someone who is passing time, but the content will sink in later, and someone distracted by the latest disaster/news being reported 140 characters at a time over their mobile device. It is a vast audience with so many specific ideas and needs it will make your head spin. The repetitive issues seem always to be the same: Content is too junior! Content is too senior. Content is lacking all together.

So what is the deal? Here are my rules:

1. People want content. (period.) Celebrity status means nothing anymore and doesn't cut it to fill an hour. Sexy titles may win selection, but often are empty...and more and more crowds will walk out of classes in which nothing is being said. Audiences want solutions (to their issues) and ideas.

2. Let the audience provide your content. Who knows what they want better than the audience. So let them talk. Whether they enjoy participation or not, the most successful solution to education is a facilitated conversation among the audience by a great facilitator because the audience is smart. And we can not forget that they are smart.

As a session speaker I have taken this one specifically to heart and open my sessions with the following:

"This class is a conversation. I want to hear from you. I want to know if you agree with me or think I am full of it. Yes, I have things to say and have prepared a presentation, but I am just fine throwing that out of the window to discuss what you want to talk about. Because this class is about you (the audience) not about me. Your education is in your hands, so tell me what you want to hear."

3. Aim high with course work and provide challenging content. Again your audience is smart - so stop talking down to them. Engage them where they are at with a discussion that they want to have. But don't forget a track for the newby's. But be cautious. There is often a belief to make education experienced based, but I think education should be comfort based. Newby doesn't mean beginners or young people and Expert or MASTER doesn't mean old or experienced. Rather, each should speak to those who feel more or less confident on a given topic.

4. Look beyond the borders of your industry. There is so much knowledge and learning that can happen by linking relative outsiders to the industry for dialogue. You have to invest in good education content, not rely on free volunteers. Or your audience will stop attending.

5. We are in the experience business. So why is education presented in classrooms. Get out. Walk around. Sit comfortably. Engage in the environments around you and in the event experiences around you. Every one of these conferences stages events, and yet the integration of those experiences into the educational track is not to be found. Turn those events into more purposeful parties: make them learning opportunities.