Do you want to keep the interest and attention of participants? Think like them. Our attendees are heads of product development, product managers, analysts, designers, and marketers from all businesses. Therefore, we built the event structure according to the logic that is close to them – the product development cycle. We started with successful product cases and then delved into the details: strategy development, team organization, approaches to niche competition, product market fit, and brand development.
We created two chatbots for networking.
- The first one is random product coffee. This bot used algorithms to create groups of four participants from different projects and send them invitations for lunch or coffee during breaks;
- The second one is for general communication and announcements of performances. Create comfortable conditions for participants to network. Informal communication is no less important than presentations.
Tip: When preparing a specialized event, consider the needs of the audience. Avoid being too general and just “inspirational content”. In the process of preparing, research what narrow topics and issues concern the participants, find out from them what they expect or what they would like to hear.
How to process and store feedback
There’s no better way to work on mistakes than analyzing feedback from event participants. Here you should combine two tools: feedback during the event and a survey of participants afterwards. Analyze all the information collected and highlight the key points. This will be your “roadmap” that will make it easier to work on the next event.
After the event, we collected 70 anonymous questionnaires with participants’ impressions. We were most interested in what people didn’t like. What we learned:
- It is better to warn participants about all digital activities, such as chatbots, in advance, and to place more stands with links to bots. A stand and a verbal announcement by the host are not enough;
- Organized networking (in our case, random coffee) should be held several times during the day – many guests need more informal communication;
- It is better to place the program on the badges in full, not in a QR code;
- Include your own experience from the event in the roadmap. Record problematic moments with contractors, make a list of those with whom it was comfortable to work, calculate how much time to allocate for certain activities, and highlight the speeches that received the most feedback.
Tip: Think about what feedback you can provide to participants from your side. This will create additional value for the event. We expressed our gratitude to the audience in the form of a mini-film about the conference, which was filmed and edited by videographers before the event ended. It included the most interesting moments of the speeches and interviews with the participants. This was a real surprise for the guests and a bright end to the event.