… and now for the compliments suggestions and criticisms
Applause, Applause – What #IABC10 Did Right
1. Great location
2. Warm and welcoming staff and volunteers to provide assistance throughout the conference
3. Fabulous opening ceremonies and Gold Quill Award ceremony
4. Engaging keynote speakers who challenged us to think beyond the business of communications
5. Well orgainized tourist support and dine around options
6. Great pre-conference tours
7. A worthwhile community project
8. Wide variety of global speakers to provide a diversity of perspectives
9. Good selection of topics within each stream
10. Addition of another interactive component (UNconference)
11. Attracted a fabulous group of delegates
Suggestions for #IABC11
1. Repeat unconference concept – expand it to include ANY communications topics and increase the time allotted to it – perhaps the whole first day
2. Provide free wifi everywhere – wifi is the contemporary communicators oxygen (frankly, I’m tired of excuses, if four people running an unconference can arrange for Rogers to step in and provide wifi support with a couple of phone calls and emails a week before the conference, then the conference committee should be able to come up with a viable solution over the course of the next year – and when you do, make sure it’s advertised heavily as it’s lack of availability can be a deal breaker for some delegates)
3. Have online or smart phone app of the conference schedule
4. Embrace a revised format for the conference brochure – it’s old tired and time it was retired
5. Redesign delegate name tags – include email, twitter names, etc….in the delegate name tags, speaker profiles, etc….
6. Continue to provide ways for delegates to connect beforehand (further in advance)
7. Include a greater concentration of hands-on/workshop type sessions
8. Don’t run out of things that are supposed to be included – like coffee and lunch – you know how many people are in attendance, plan for them. Include one for each and if there are leftovers, donate them to a food bank, but don’t run out!
9. Better utilize social media tools to promote the conference AND make it easier for us to promote it to our respective networks– (great start this year though)
10. Add a “Minga” to the agenda- have all delegates concentrate on one key communications issue or world problem and create a number of solutions for it
11. Have opportunities for people to provide feedback at the conference – a speaker’s corner type booth – feedback ambassadors who gather video or audio feedback as sessions finish and in the halls of the conference – give us more opportunities to share our thoughts about the experience or schedule a formal debrief/feedback session (we held one of our own)
12. Provide online feedback forms as well as hard copy forms for session evaluation
13. Record/podcast sessions and share them with conf delegates so that we can see sessions we missed and/or share these ideas with our colleagues back at the office.
14. Needs to encourage a greater sophistication of speaker presentation material – powerpoint with bullets is not engaging and frankly communicators should know better – this approach is powerpoint-less!
15. Create a short video to honour the Gold Quill Winners and play at the closing ceremonies, post it on the web, feature it on YouTube to further promote these folks to the greater IABC community
16. Better promote/communicate the community projects in advance – perhaps even to local media
17. Would love to see a visual at start of the conference showing how many people from what cities in what countries we have attracted to the conference – really show our global diversity
18. Like to see videos/photos/presentation put together that summarizes each conference and gets used from chapter to chapter to encourage attendance the following year – need to have some additional energy demonstrated in marketing this great conference
Question of the day
What would you add?
Great ideas, Linda! I would especially like to see sessions recorded for later viewing. So many times, I was forced to choose between two or more speakers/topics. Sure, you can get a copy of the presentation, but it’s just not the same. And what happened to the traditional video promoting the sights and sounds of the following year’s conference, to get people jazzed up about it?
These are great suggestions! I saw on another site that maybe IABC should think about providing more than one drink ticket for the opening reception. I think that one is plenty (but make free water available). What I would prefer to see is more snacks such as fruit and veggies for breaks. After a decent breakfast but an early start, I tend to feel a little hollow mid morning and then again mid afternoon!
Wow – this is extraordinarily insightful and practical advice. Thanks for taking the time to create the lists – I couldn’t have said it better!
[...] partner Linda has recently been part of an international team of people who planned an unconference event for the [...]
[...] Linda Johannesson / Unconference / shared her feedback on the conference through her posts: “IABC 2010 world conference thoughts, themes and take-aways” and “#IABC10 World Conference feedback – compliments, suggestions and criticisms”. [...]