Over the past few months I’ve been ramping up the appearances I’ve made at one business event or another. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve had the chance to meet some very interesting, creative, and energetic people.
However, there’s been a near continuous thread running through most of these events, and it’s been bugging me.
A picture paints a thousand words, et cetera…
It’s no accident that brochures and adverts — be they print, TV, or on the web — feature people. Good photography isn’t essential, it’s a given. I splashed out on photography a few months ago, and I would argue it’s had an impact, if the up swing in engagement on Twitter and LinkedIn are anything to go by.
It’s laudable to claim to having had a packed house, but if you have the photographic evidence to prove it, that’s something else. We build one success on the strength of those that went before it.
Share in the fun!
Now think of a sporting event, or an awards ceremony, or a prestigious lecture — anything where (yes, you’ve guessed it) there are loads of people in attendance — and you have people checking in with Facebook, taking (correct again) photographs, tagging friends, and “live Tweeting” the whole thing, each message replete with hashtags.
At this point, the event becomes a narrative when people engage with social media, and event itself — or the perhaps the venue, also — becomes the anchor of a myriad conversations.
Quantifying success with a question or two
If you want to know whether you did a good job, you ask, correct? After an event, an exit questionnaire — 5-10 questions — is how you would quantify what took place. Again, I’ve seen this a handful of times, but not as often as you might expect. Okay, a networking event might not be in dire need of such things, but if you’re organising a seminar, I would expect a post-event questionnaire.
I once got asked to complete a questionnaire by a taxi driver in Indianapolis, USA, so it can’t be that onerous a task. An email, or a telephone call is at least viable for any event less than a big 3-figure attendance?
Conclusion
Look, I am no event organiser — although a client of Octane, Tobook Limited is — but these things are, to me at least, the base ingredients of a modern business event.
I speak from my own experiences, and it’s possible that what I’ve seen is a mere thin slither of a wider more productive whole, and I would hope that was — and is — the case, and that elsewhere, event organisers are making a greater impact.
So, in conclusion, if I were to run an event, I would:
- Have someone taking photographs of the event, and of the attendees, perhaps video, too;
- encourage the use of social media, with hashtags, engagement, et cetera;
- have an exit questionnaire that I’d send via the mailing list to each of the attendees after the event.
