A conference can be a fantastic place to network with people in your industry as well as a chance to gain insight and ideas on a variety of different topics. But sometimes you can go away from a conference feeling that you haven’t really gained anything. There’s no use wasting your time on a flat experience, so here are four ways to get the most out of a conference that you are attending.

Smart networking

Many people think that networking isn’t their thing. How do you awkwardly approach and then keep up a dialogue with strangers? The truth is it’s actually relatively easy to be an introverted person when networking – you just do exactly what you do normally: listen. Ask questions to the people you meet and let them do the talking. Ultimately you are looking to forge strong relationships with people and sometimes the best way to do this is to allow them to take the lead.

Go it alone

If you attend a conference with a number of colleagues it can be tempting to spend much of the day with them, watching presentations together and even attempting to network together. This can actually be a mistake – trying to do anything in a large group just encourages you to talk to each other and can be too intimidating for other people to try to strike up a conversation with you. You’ll get more out of the day if you split up. You can spend time watching different speakers and engage in natural networking with others.

Get ideas for your own
presentations

Of course one of the key aspects of going to a conference is the opportunity to take a range of ideas away from it. One aspect of this that is sometimes overlooked is that the fact that you can get fantastic ideas and techniques for your own presentations. Your company may wish to be involved in a conference itself at some point down the line and this can be the perfect opportunity to take down notes on the best presentations you watch. This could be anything from the layout of a slideshow on PowerPoint or the use of technology like an audience response system.

Engage with speakers

There’s nothing that a conference speaker likes more than to have an audience that engages with their presentation. From your perspective this can also be a brilliant way to set up a great basis for networking later on. As you watch the presentation, think of questions to ask at the end so that you can begin a dialogue with the speaker. This can be an ideal way to get more knowledge or even develop unexpected business connections. Remember, speakers will always be flattered by the interest that you have shown in their talk and this can start your conversation out on a strong foot. It is a great idea to forge connections with respected experts too.

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Engage them before you start

One great way to enjoy a conference presentation with an engaged audience is if you’ve already done some of the ground work before they even arrive. A little while before the conference you should start releasing a few little teasers of what people can expect to learn from your presentation. Not enough that they get the information without coming to see you – just the right amount to make them turn up in anticipation of finding out what you have to say. If your audience is already enthusiastic about your presentation, it’s more likely to go well.

Be funny

Even if your presentation is on a fairly dry subject there’s no reason that it should be boring. Have some fun with the audience – tell a few jokes and keep the talk light hearted. This is especially true if your presentation is later in the day; people who have been at a conference for a long time won’t be in the mood to listen diligently through a serious talk so give them a reason to engage with you.

Include audience participation

A direct way to get your audience engaged with the topic is to have them participate in your talk. One way to do this is through an audience response system (ARS) – this is an electric voting pad that collects responses from a group all at the same time. Rather than relying on an inaccurate show of hands or trying to take responses individually, you could impress your audience by including their feedback in your own presentation.

Tell your conference a story

People love listening to stories – so tell them yours. No matter what your presentation is about you’ll have a story to tell from your experiences and your audience will enjoy listening to it far more than a lecture.

Post-event survey

Here’s a second chance to make use of an ARS at the conference. After your presentation is over you can invite people to take a post-event survey. Not only is this a great chance to reinforce what you talked about but it’s also a great opportunity to collect contact details. It’s much quicker using an ARS than a traditional pen-and-paper survey too.

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Introduce it to your audience

If it’s your first time using an ARS you should be able to relate to everyone in the audience who has never heard of the term before. That’s why it’s a great idea to provide a little introduction to familiarise all the listeners with the keypad as well as how and when to vote. Include a slide in your presentation and allot some time to make sure everyone knows what they are doing.

Skipping over this would be a mistake. Firstly you’ll get some members of your audience using it incorrectly and this will skew the results. But also you will turn off some people who feel they don’t understand what you’re doing. They are then likely to lose interest.

Simplicity is best

Spend some time ensuring that the questions you’re asking and the answers you are providing are as simple as they can be. In an ideal world you could use ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, or similar binary choices, but this won’t always be applicable to what you are presenting. If that’s the case, try to ensure that you are giving an answer that is applicable to everyone in the audience so that no-one feels left out.

Limit the number of interactive questions

ARSs can provide a brilliant way to break up a training session, workshop or presentation; they generate immediate interesting in what you are doing and often spark debates. But it is important to use interactive questions effectively. Use them too often and you’ll risk turning a fun aspect of your presentation into an annoyance. Some inexperienced users of ARSs will put all their questions at the beginning or end, for example. It’s a much better idea to spread them out across your session to maximise their effect.

Allow time for everyone to vote

What’s the rush? Too many users of ARSs will allow barely any time for their audience to answer the question. As discussed before, it’s important to remember that not everyone will be familiar with ARSs and may need a little more time to acquaint themselves with the technology before they respond. You should be especially mindful of this if you are asking more complicated questions.

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So, what should you do if you’re due to speak at a conference only to find out that you’ll be speaking last? It might not sound ideal but look on the bright side: if this was a music festival, you would be the headliner! Now here are some practical tips to help you out if you’re set to be the final speaker of the day.

Don’t pitch

After a long day at a conference, the last thing a tired audience needs to hear is a thinly-veiled sales pitch for your product or services. They will just turn off and you might as well pitch to an empty room. Allow your product and services to come up naturally as a part of the presentation rather than making it an integral part of what you’re talking about.

Make use of technology

You need to find a way for your talk to stand out and engage with people who have already listened to a lot of different ideas. To stick in the memory of your audience it can be a great idea to implement a form of technology like an audience response system (ARS). An ARS can allow you to easily increase audience participation in your talk and provide a reason for people to keep listening. Perhaps take a survey and explain that you’ll reveal the results at the end of your talk. This gives a reason for the audience to stay invested in what you’re saying.

Don’t worry about the sessions that have come before

One distinct disadvantage of going last is that the fact that you get to see all the other speakers who have come before you. There can be a natural inclination to compare yourself to what other people are doing and this might lead to you losing confidence in your own talk. This important thing here is focus on your own presentation and making it as good as it can be. Others will have their presenting style and topics they have knowledge on – just focus on your own and you will be fine.

Be yourself

It might be tempting to think that you should change your presenting style in order to try to engage with the audience. If you’re not naturally an energetic presenter, it will do you no favours to try to change the way you work to get people interested, in fact it will have the opposite effect. Stick to what you’re good at and be yourself during the presentation.

The post Last But Not Least: How To Speak Last At A Conference appeared first on CLiKAPAD.

Re-using conference speakers

It can often be the case that a speaker gives a fantastic presentation, but when they are invited back they return to topics and preach the same ideas. A good conference needs to have fresh material and ideas rather than relying on past successes, so try not to get into the habit of bringing back speakers too often.

If you have certain speakers that are enormously popular then it’s a great idea to have them return for another year as they may bring a loyal crowd with them. But it’s not uncommon to see conferences filled with the same line-up of speakers year after year and it just ends up getting stale.

Not keeping up with technology

There’s nothing worse than a conference that feels behind the times – how are you supposed to provide relevant and current advice if your conference feels dated? With almost everyone attending your conference now likely to bring a smartphone with them it makes sense to offer free Wi-Fi. This allows them to get additional information, access your website and engage with other attendees on social media.

It can also be a great idea to invest in an audience response system to improve the quality of the presentations on offer. You could also look into the option of live streaming your event and making it available online in order to increase its reach.

Not allowing time for networking

While you might like to imagine that everyone who attends your conference is simply there to listen to the amazing set of presentations you’ve organised, it’s not always the case. The presentations are an important part, but most people at your conference will want there to be networking opportunities. You should allow time for both pre- and post-event networking to make sure that you keep everyone happy.

Trying to fit too much in

Remember that time management is an important part of your job as an event planner. It can be tempting to fill all the available time with presentations in order for your conference to feel productive. However, many organisers forget to allow plenty of time for leaving the stage and setting up each new presentation.

It’s also true that organisers often leave no time for Q&A after each presentation is over. Q&A sessions are an extremely important aspect of most presentations as they allow time for audiences to engage further with the topic and follow up on any points that were unclear. If you don’t leave time for these sessions the overall quality of the conference will suffer.

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But you need to be aware of Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Not every audience will give the same answer – that’s a given – but what you might not expect is how often audiences will throw you a complete curveball. There’s nothing that wrecks a presentation like an audience responding in a way that makes your next point seem laughable because it’s completely at odds with the stats in front of you.

Have a plan

You need to expect the unexpected and plan for every eventuality. You can mitigate the chance of being wrong-footed by an unusual response with the right phrasing of the question and answers. Make sure that your question is clear and that there can be no misapprehension on the part of the listeners.

Remember that just because it makes sense to you doesn’t mean it makes sense to the audience – test your questions on colleagues or family beforehand to ensure the phrasing is clear.

But you can do all of this and still find yourself in an awkward position. So if you do find that the audience has given an unexpected answer to your question you’ll need to be prepared for that too.

Think about each the scenario beforehand and have a plan for how you can play it to your advantage. At the very least have a joke prepared to ensure you can continue in your stride.

Difficult situations

Perhaps one of the hardest things to deal with is if there is no consensus from the audience – in this case you’ll need to talk through the different options and bring the argument together. You can never assume that you know what the response is going to be in any specific poll so you instead you need to have a different direction you can move in no matter the outcome.

On the other hand, if you’re using an ARS to make a point and you need a specific answer then you will need to lead your audience into it. Don’t just open with your question and hope your audience will respond in the way you are hoping for – talk about the subject for a minute and give them a reason to respond the way you want them to.

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Let Audience Response Guide You

The outcome of your poll may determine which way your presentation goes. Using a closed question will yield more specific results than trying to get more information out of a single question.

For example “Do you use Twitter?” will give you more information to work on than “Which social media platforms do you use professionally?” Which you can then use to ask more detailed questions and move the presentation along.

By starting off a presentation with a simple question, you give the audience an immediate representation of what your seminar is about.

The results of that question will then either prove or disprove the point that you are trying to make. Depending on which way the poll result has gone, you can create two different presentations. If for example, not many people use Twitter, you can go on and talk about the importance of the platform for modern businesses.

If it is widely used, you can talk about the importance of making sure it remains a professional and reachable marketing platform for both business associates and clients alike. Just because your delegates know to use Twitter, it doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to make the most of it.

Keep The Audience With You

You may not think that a single question posed at the start of a presentation has all that power, but it represents a gateway into more detailed and thought provoking questions. Starting off with a yes/no question can easily warm up your audience and can even sometimes produce unexpected results. Getting people into a relaxed state of mind with an easy question to start off with – perhaps even making it comical or relatable – makes for a good introduction to an educational seminar.

If you hit the ground running before giving your audience a chance to take any information in, they are not going to be able to focus properly. Thinking on and choosing the right wording for your initial question is important, so make sure to make the right choice!

The post How a Single Question Can Help Shape your Presentation (Part 2 of 2) appeared first on CLiKAPAD.

So what can be done to use these polls, these questions to your best advantage? We’ll look into this in two main parts.

What is the point of asking a specific question? Your presentation needs to have a clear objective that you will want to have achieved by the end of it. Have a strategy of where you want to go with it and the points you want to get across.

People will attend seminars in the hope of learning something – so what knowledge is it that you want to impart? Bear this in mind when devising your audience question.

For example if your aim is to get your audience thinking more on the effects of social media and how it can affect their business, your questions will need to lead to this. Questions such as “Do you think it is important for a company to have a social media Account?” and “Who believes that social media has a direct effect on the success of one’s business?” will help to provide you with the material needed to take your presentation in a certain direction.

Audience Involvement and Word Choice

The word choice of your initial question is crucial. Phrasing should be short and punchy, simple yet thought provoking. Grab and keep your audience’s attention. Make it easy for them to understand the question without using overcomplicated vocabulary. Rather than asking ‘Does the proliferation of social media platforms in today’s business environment have any positive bearing on commercial successes? keep it short, simple and unambiguous: ‘Does social media play an important part in making your business successful?’

By choosing the right sort of wording for your presentation and putting it across in a clear and concise manner, you can minimise the amount of time spent dithering over potentially confusing questions. Remember that you want to get quick and useful information from your participants without much fuss.

Check back with CLiKAPAD’s next blog post later on this month for more information and advice on choosing the ideal question for your presentation.

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