Ideas from WEC 2015

It is hard to believe that WEC was a week ago already! Most of these ideas pertain to my role as the Attendee Experience Manager of an education technology association, but hopefully something here will spark an idea for your event!

·       Points or other currency in the mobile app game can be accumulated to purchase items in your onsite store. (Watch session video here.)

o   Have sponsors / exhibitors donate items for “sale” at the store.

o   Find other companies who might participate in this kind of promotion but who are not typical vendors and would otherwise not belong in the Expo Hall, but would like to sell to your demographic.

·       Sustainability Engagement in the mobile app game – give points for participation. (Watch session video here.)

o   Hotel linen program, walking instead of shuttles, mobile app instead of printed program, don't use bottled water (or use re-usable bottle), donate $1 for a tree

·       Better assess learning / impact the conference is having.

o   Pre-conference survey sent via email or built into the app

·       Capitalize on / help educate our community on the collaborative economy.

·       Most memorable points for attendees: beginning, high points (keynotes) and end. (Watch session video here.)

o   The Beginning and the end are the loneliest (especially the end).

·       High Impact Learning: Design Your Meeting to Maximize Audience Engagement with Jeremy Bergwerff and Annette Gregg

o   Empathy mapping for each persona (i.e. newbie vs. veteran): What do they hear/see/say/do?, What is their pain/gain?, How does that make them feel?

o   Question for presenters that communicates our desire for participatory learning: “What do you want to learn from the audience?” vs. “What will the audience learn from you?”

·       Awesome coincidence – tweet I saw about #ISTE2015 when I was tweeting about something I heard at #WEC15

Interesting sites & services

• Fancy Hands is a team of US-based assistants at your fingertips. Use any device, at any time of day, and our assistants will tackle anything on your to-do list! https://www.fancyhands.com/
• #1 Video Conferencing and Web Conferencing Service http://zoom.us/
• Social Q&A is a simple and powerful way to know what questions your audience has and which are most important to the entire group. https://socialqa.com/
• Your one-stop shop for Online Registration, mobile and web software for Conferences and Trade Shows. http://www.eventrebels.com/
• Our event-centric SaaS solutions help you efficiently and securely manage all of your events anytime, anywhere, via the cloud. Tucked into one convenient application, your contacts, data, calendars, schedules, tasks, and more -- will always be right at your fingertips. https://eventcollab.com/

Pictures the event photographer captured of me

With Jon Trask in the media lounge

With Megan Powers at Rendezvous

Me tweeting

More pictures here.