4 More Mistakes to Avoid at Your Conference

Introduction:

Scientific conferences are crucial for knowledge sharing and collaboration, but attendees often express concerns that hinder their experience. Let's dive into four common complaints and suggest practical solutions.

In a previous article (link) we discussed the #1 complaint and how to lower conference costs. In this article let’s discuss the next 4 major complaints and how to avoid them. They are:

• Excessive scheduling conflicts (aka "Too Many parallel sessions")
• Not enough time for Q&A
• Not enough time for community building, networking
• Navigating the Venue

Let us look at each of these in turn.

Excessive Scheduling Conflicts / Too Many Parallel Sessions:

Many times, a successful conference becomes a victim if its own growth. As the number of parallel sessions increase, attendees struggle with conflicting sessions and overwhelming choices. There is always the frustration of “I want to be in both of these sessions scheduled at 2pm!!!”

Obviously, to alleviate this, you employ these strategies:

• Organize diverse program tracks to cater to different disciplines.
• Curate sessions carefully to minimize overlaps and ensure coherence.
• Provide clear session descriptions in advance for informed decision-making.

But what happens when these obvious choices still do not work? We know of many events with 20 or 30 parallel sessions, and with the best efforts of the program chairs, you still have people grumbling about the ones they can’t be at?

A Proven Approach: This is where you leverage technology. At Underline, we record EVERYTHING (and can do it at a very low cost). Also, in our platform, one can ask a question of a presenter days, weeks or months later; the presenter is then notified by email and can respond, many times fostering a new collaboration.

Inadequate Time for Q&A:

Limited time for Q&A during presentations is a frequent issue. Most times, only 2-3 minutes is far too short a period for Q&A. Obviously, you can always increase the time for Q&A. However, many times from a scheduling perspective this is just not feasible!

This is where you need to leverage some additional “out of the box” thinking:

Virtual Q&A: This is where you can leverage the online platforms to extend Q&A sessions beyond the physical event, allowing attendees to submit questions digitally and receive responses from presenters at a later time. Flipped Conference: You can try something radical. Have the actual talk pre-recorded. Open the site early and ‘educate’ the attendees in their pre-conference homework, to “watch” the sessions and come prepared with questions. Then, during the event, the speaker does a 2-minute lightning intro – and opens the floor for questions. In this case, you also want to make sure the moderator or session chair has done their homework and comes prepared with questions in case the attendees are silent.

It’s radical, but a lot more engaging.

Community Q&A at the poster sessions: You can have ‘tables’ for each set of presenters where during the breaks/poster sessions where the presenters can sit – and others can join to ask questions. This would allow for networking, team and community building as well as a longer extended Q&A opportunity.

Not enough time for community building, networking

People are most motivated to come to a conference by the networking and community building opportunities. It is your responsibility to make sure that you foster this with every creative idea you and the committee can dream up. Some approaches might be:

• Dedicated Networking – Birds of a Feather: You can have dedicated tables for specific topics, assign one or two ‘group leaders’ to each table, keep the beer flowing and start discussions
• Game Night – any sort of game night, icebreakers to get people to meet is immensely valuable.
• Mentoring – Assign “office hours” to the senior attendees and offer them to others to come and visit with them. Best if these appointments are set ahead of time. If there is limited time, you can schedule this concurrently with other social events or the poster sessions.
• Speed Dating: Yes, you can always do this as regular dating… or do it by “Discipline”
• The Unconference: This is quite radical but effective. Sort of an “Ask me anything” for a discussion group… the agenda is created on the spot by the attendees themselves. At the beginning of the event, participants propose discussion topics, ideas, or presentations that they are interested in or would like to lead… and off you go.

The bottom line is to keep our eye on the goal: get people talking. Get them to meet new people they have not previously encountered. Start discussions and light fires.

Navigating the Venue and finding Specific Sessions

How much time have you spent in a new facility, figuring out where to go for the session you want to attend? Let us make it easy for the attendees. Here are some approaches that we found have worked for us:

• Volunteers: Have knowledgeable volunteers who have studied the layout, know the schedule (and how to use the app to look up the session) and direct people.
• Have a good conference app / programmable schedule that is searchable and shows the room locations.
• Clear Signage: This can be digital signage to save money, but clear directions are key.

Conclusion: By actively addressing these attendee concerns, scientific conference organizers can significantly enhance the overall conference experience. Let's create an environment that fosters knowledge exchange, meaningful connections, and seamless navigation for all participants.

About Underline Science Events Underline Science specializes in Scientific conferences, having produced more than 200 events. We help to produce a smooth and successful, profitable conference. Our aim is to grow your conference and reach. We aim to increase your membership engagement and value to your constituents.

We are experts in Audio Video (which we do in-house) and technology, usually one of the largest conference costs.

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