If you’re not talking, you’re not learning

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Scott Gould

In preparing for our Like Minds itinerary this year, I’ve been thinking again about how people learn and how events should help them learn. In particular, I’ve been thinking about a diagram I blogged about almost a year ago now:

This is the cone of learning by Edgar Dale, which says that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, but 70% of what we say and 90% of what we say and do.

This is great news for event producers, right? Because now all we need to do is get our attendees talking and they will start learning more.

Well, it should be great news, but it isn’t. Unfortunately, most events focus on people listening and they are unlikely to change this because we have adopted the view that the best events are those who have the most and best speakers. We don’t have the view that the best events are those which help you learn.

In Let Attendees be Participants, I discussed the major root of this being an obsession with new content. On Twitter we love the newest thing, and it is new content that really drives the Twitter ecosystem. No wonder then that when these same people get together in a room, it’s to hear more of the new stuff.

The reality is, however, that whilst events run in this way might have buzz and get more people along, they don’t help people learn. And ultimately, the only reason people go to the event is about association rather than learning. Essentially, these events become networking events rather than learning or thought leadership events.

I can’t emphasis this enough. Scientifically: if an event is just you listening to speakers, you aren’t learning, and they are ripping you off.

How To Talk

But enough doom and gloom and onto your thoughts and some creative room for us to brainstorm.

My question is this: how should we be talking at events?

At Like Minds Conference last October we did a 20 minute insight, and then we would ask the crowd to turn to the people next to them and discuss what they just heard. In addition, we have facilitators going around who sparked conversation and helped people reflect on the content.

Whilst this was certainly better than the panels that we’ve had last time, I think there is too much start-and-stop for people to really get into things.

What I want to try at our event is having a 2 hour session, during which we will have a number of 20 minute insights, a few interviews, and then time at the end to digest it and reflect the key learnings. But enough of me:

Your Leading Thoughts

When have you learnt the most at an event? Why did you learn the most then?
How do you think, as being someone in the crowd, you’d like to interact with content and talk?

Like Minds: Ego Is Dead. Long Live Learning.

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Scott Gould

Excuse the silence this last week – I’ve been busy delivering Like Minds Conference this week in Exeter, where we had 200 people from across England, Europe and even a handful from further afield, convergence over 2 days on the topic of “Creativity+Curation.” Man, even this line sounds like another one of those PR line’s I’ve written dozens of in the last weeks!

Most of you know that I run Like Minds along with Andrew Ellis. It’s actually the place where the majority of the discussion on this blog finds it’s actualisation – putting the ideas and insights shared here into practice at our Conference and also our community building.

This last one was exceptional. It superseded our event in February in every way (which was the best event I’d ever run and went down very well), but the biggest success was that this event was a HUGE risk on a few fronts. I actually, on the first day when I opened the conference, listed these.

The Risks

1. There were no superstars. Considering my post on “Why Social Events Aren’t Social“, I had to swallow my own medicine and not allow ego to slip in. This was risky because a large number of people go to events for names.

2. It was about learning, not buzz. Our previous events were very buzzy, so to then opt for a format which I knew would create less buzz, but deliver more lasting learning through immersive learning experiences was also risky because it meant fewer people talking about us and therefore buying tickets or participating online.

3. Two days means three days out of the office. Given that we expanded it to two days, this meant a day of travelling on the Wednesday too and that meant fewer people might come because, lets face it, so many still are bound to their 9-5, bill by the hour mentality, rather than billing for value.

But what happened over those three days was just phenomenal. Come the end of Friday afternoon, I could stand up and list these:

The Results

1. There were superstars – THE PEOPLE. Turns out that people really think highly of Like Minds, which is incredibly humbling, and our past events have done a good job for forming a strong culture that meant each person added such life to the event. For instance, Stephen Bateman, who I’m pictured with, travelled over 3,000 from America to join us. That is humbling. And what you can’t see is that behind the camera is 200 people clapping at his contribution.

2. People want to learn and meet new people more than get buzzed up or hang on the words of gurus. People SERIOUSLY got into the learning spirit of things, and all day you could see that our new format of Immersive workshops, Lunch Time Talks, and then keynotes in the afternoon meant people got far, far, far more value that they would’ve previously.

3. Our advocates made the time. Only a third of the people who came booked one day. Two thirds came for the whole two days, plus the two evening events, and they saw it as a major investment. Unfortunately, we had far fewer local people this time, which personally insults me because they were the ones who wanted it to be more practical this time (which we did). Makes me think of Jesus who said “no prophet is without honour, except in his home country” – in other words, you’ll get support from everyone but those who benefit the most from you locally. I need to find a way to crack this.

The Roundup

Events must shift their focus and let attendees be participants. I learnt a lot of things this week, which we’ll discuss in the weeks to come, but the top learning for me is that people really are now tired of the weary conference scene. There must be more than just innovation – there needs to be a revolution, a reformation, a re-evaluation of events – without which, I fear many will die. People want learning, they don’t want ego anymore.

As Robin Dickinson wrote almost a year ago that “Room-filling [is the] last thing a post-Internet leader does“. We must take note.

But the biggest thing? It was the like minds in the room that made it. I fully confess that even on Wednesday night, I still wasn’t sure how it was going to go with our new format. It just goes to show, like I say, that Like Minds is the Like Minds, not Andrew and myself.

Your Leading Thoughts

If you participated in Like Minds, either physically or virtually, what was your top takeaway? Did you appreciate the risk and did you benefit from the results?
As we’re all ones on the inside of these changes from attendance to participation and watching to learning, what do these comments mean for you? What are you thinking about participation right now?

Fantastic photo by the incredible Harry Duns

Learning About Event Design From Church

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Scott Gould

We’re running the He Saved The Day Men’s Conference tonight. I wanted to share some of the thoughts behind how we’ve changed the format to make it more about learning and connecting:

A lot of this comes from what I’ve learned from Jeff Hurt and Dave Lutz at Velvet Chainsaw. It seems like common sense that an event should be about talking and learning rather than just listening, but it’s not that common because of the ego issue.

The reality is that most times speakers (in church and without) like to hear their own voices and get the promotion that comes with speaking more than they want people to learn. Or, they want people to learn but incorrectly think the key to is people listening to their wisdom, more than discuss with them. We discussed this in Let Attendees Be Participants, in which I also reference Edgar Dale’s Cone of Learning.

Your Leading Thoughts

How are you running events and using different formats to encourage participation? What works and what doesn’t?
Do you find it difficult to confront the norms when it comes to event format? I find it can be hard work as people have quite cemented expectations.

Using Social Media to Extend and Enhance Offline Events and Experiences

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Scott Gould

Wow, that’s a mouthful. And that’s exactly what I’ll be discussing at the unGeeked Elite Retreat in Chicago on May 12 – 14, 2011.

How does Social Media extend offline experiences? Sure, you can get a long list of resources that will make your event what is called a ‘hybrid’ (a virtual and physical event), but how do you know which ones are the priority for you, and what is the strategy behind those tactics anyway?

In 2004 I was running a youth organisation that I started called Feedback. We’d already discovered that by putting bands in the show they’d bring their fans along, and that would increase our numbers, but it was when we latched onto MySpace that we discovered the ability to increase participation virtually, aside from the physical limitations of our monthly events. (You can see some old footage on our old MySpace profile still today!)

This really is the benefit of Social Media as an extension of an offline offering. An offline event or experience is typically a single point in space, time and matter, but through Social Media, it can be extended in all three of these areas.

We then need to know how to extend those three in a way that is meaningful and relevant to ‘the why‘ of the offline event in the first place. Perhaps the most helpful element in this is Joe Pine’s model on The Multiverse (For a fuller discussion of this, you read our discussion on ‘virtually present‘)

There are 8 possible configurations of merging time, space, matter with non-time, non-space, non-matter. Joe presents a video on it here, which I would recommend you watch should you have a spare 50 minutes to get acquainted with the future.

Space: virtual / physical. This is the mix between being physically there, and being virtually there. Being virtually there means that you don’t have to be restricted by:
Time: linear / non-linear. This means that I be at the event before the event, during the event, after the event. You get the idea. This also means that I lift the restriction of:
Matter: real / bits. This is about what things are made from. You can be in the same physical space but then still still experience bits – digital data – with which you can then contact those who are virtually present.

It can get very complex, which is what my talk certainly won’t be. I’ll be keeping things simple by getting back to the three core Social strategies that we’ve talked about recently, namely Socialising Channels, Socialising Content, and Socialising Culture. (I think things are easier to remember in threes, don’t you?)

I don’t want to share much more, but there’s a good taster for you here, and I’ll be sharing more of the content over the months, as we’ve got quite a bit of time until May!

Your Leading Thoughts

What’s the best example that you know of, of Social Media extending an event?
What would be you dream usage of Social Media as an enhancing of an offline experience?

Legendary photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

Producing Proof

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Scott Gould

My good friend Munya Hoto once told me that we live to produce proof. I like that. It means that we live to produce physical proof of what we believe.

When I started out as a consultant two years ago, I had some proof, but it wasn’t clearly documented. The first thing to do is certainly to produce proof (and once you have, that doesn’t separate you from most), but actually producing that proof in a way that someone get’s it is hard work. Many of us have successes, but still there isn’t the knowledge of those successes that we’d like.

I think the thing with proof is that one man’s proof is not another man’s proof. I was talking to a friend the other day and offering some insights in their business. Whilst they are greatly respected, no one really knows exactly what this person does and therefore doesn’t purchase or promote their services. To him, there was proof, but to others, there wasn’t.

Michael Meyers, my pastor, and I were talking the other day and he made the exceptional observation that everything you say before the event is an intangible. It’s only after the event that you have something tangible. That is sooo good – because don’t just all of us focus on before the event, rather than after the event? “I can do this, we will have this, we have got this going on, I am able to deliver this for you,” etc, etc – but this is all intangible speak. Rather we should be saying “I have produced this. I have done this. We have made this happen. Do you want it too?”

Before the event is intangible, after the event is tangible.

This is why my friend saw they had proof but others hadn’t. He’d seen what he’d done before – the tangible parts – but he couldn’t communicate it in a tangible way.

Michael went on to say two further things which illustrate what you need to do, which I thought were gold:

1. Pick up the proof

After you’ve done it – after the event – you have to pick up the bits that prove you did it. The testimonies, the videos, the reviews, the blogs, the Facebook comments and the best tweets.

I’ll be honest, this is something I’m bad at because I’m exhausted after the event. His tip is to introduce a team of people whose sole responsibility is post-event PR. I’ll be giving it a go over the coming months, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

2. Publish the proof

Once you’ve picked it up, you need to publish it. This is where Social Channels help. Scatter that proof, baby. Have it on YouTube, the blog, the static pages, on Flickr, on Twitter, on Facebook. Make sure every channel has proof – because people are always looking at various channels and might never see the whole picture.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’m bad at producing proof and need to get better. If you are successful at this, what tips can you share?
This does fly in the face of the myth of the over the top digital personal brand, because they often lack proof. How do, however, produce proof without bragging?

Interesting image courtesy of Austin Kleon

Lessons from Helsinki: Kill the Speaker / Attendee Divide

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Scott Gould

The best bit about Like Minds Conversation Helsinki was when the panel got up and crossed the invisible divide that separates speaker and attendee, and began chatting with the people in the crowd like equals. Because guess what, that’s what they are: equals.

Almost a year ago, when I was forming the ideas for Like Minds, I knew that ‘attendee’ would never be a word in our vocabulary. Everyone at Like Minds is a participant – whether they stand and delivery a keynote, turn to the person next to them and share their experience, or help guide a group a discussion.

The reason for this is quite simple: people are smart. The speakers are smart, and the listeners are smart.

I’m now seeing the word ‘participants’ replace ‘attendees’ all over the web. It certainly seems this participatory form of event is catching on – and I love it. In a people-to-people world, a people-to-people event needs to be participatory in order to ensure people learn. Note this isn’t about the speaker satisfying their ego, or the listener satisfying their lust for criticism – this is about learning.

Inspired by my friends Jeff Hurt and Dave Lutz who write the number 1 event management / event design blog in the world (at least, in my eyes), I’m sharing what we found in our latest event what worked and didn’t work, by experience, in regards to creating a participatory learning environment.

Killing the Divide

Worked: Preparing keynotes and panels. I know it’s obvious, but all too often a keynote is being prepared on the plane, and the panel in the corridor before hand. Preparation means I’ve thought about what the community of people who are present need to hear – not just what I’ve said before. Don’t underestimate speakers – they want you to help them prepare and want your direction on how they should prepare.

Didn’t work: Laptops for keynote speaker notes. The best thing about TED Talks is that they are so focussed and well oiled that they impart exactly what they want to communicate, free from fluff or ‘urms’. This means as a viewer I get to connect with them, free from standing behind a laptop, and connect to their ideas that have been well thought out and are being clearly communicated. This is the way I’m going for the future – no laptop notes.

Worked: Panels with giving people who seek the truth on behalf of the listeners. You need strong people on the panel – but they need to be able to give and take, speak and listen, and act on behalf of the listeners. This means carefully selected panelists based on their facilitation skills, more than their speaking skills.

Didn’t work: Un-facilitated panels. Our panel preparation wasn’t good enough, and we left the panels unmoderated. I actually think we need facilitators more than moderators. A facilitator will help keep the panel focussed, and also draw questions from the floor.

Worked: Having panelists go into the crowd and begin talking with the clusters of groups. A few people said they enjoyed this even more than the keynotes. We called this ‘Crowd Discussion’. What we also did was ask people to sit it different seats each time they came back from the break, which increased discussion the new people that were engaging with one another.

Didn’t work: Adjusting the break length and crowd discussion length when the internet participants were lost because the stream went down. We shouldn’t have adjusted the experience for the people present to cater for the ones who weren’t present. Mistake.

The Future – Your Leading Thoughts

I’m keen to hear your feedback on this. As you know, I have a little event framework for four levels of learning: person-to-people, persons-to-people, people-to-people and person-to-person. So, person-to-people could be a keynote; persons-to-people could be a panel or interview, etc.

What is the future of participation in events, in your opinion?
What would you like to be done different to increase your learning? (I’ve got a suspicion we could use my 7 Levels of Particpation model here.)
How do you increase participation without creating disorder and therefore reducing the potential to learn?

Cool photo courtesy of looking4poetry

Where to Begin…

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Scott Gould

Hey guys.

I’m sorry for not sooner getting back to writing after our time in Finland with Like Minds Conversation Helsinki. Part of it is that I just don’t know where to begin. So I guess a good place to start is to first thank those who put in much of the hard work, my team:

This is Jonny, James, Rachel, Jon, John, Jason and Claudia. The oldest in the photo is me (26), and the youngest is James (15).

All of these guys are punching well above their age. Jason, for instance, who has worked with me for almost a year now, and on all the Like Minds events thus far, is personally known by everyone of our Like Minds Alumni – a collection of 50 industry leaders like Mel Exon, Olivier Blanchard, Molly Flatt, Maz Nadjm, John Bell and the rest.

I keep on saying, over and over and over that firstly, it’s all about people, and that secondly, one is too small a number to achieve signficiance.

Well here are the guys who are helping Like Minds be significant - most recently by using our international platform to promote the incredible work being done in Helsinki.

That last sentence made an important distinction that you might’ve missed – so I’ll make it clearer: Like Minds is about using an event to promote a community, and not about using a community to promote an event. If one is too small a number to achieve significance (and it is), then you need to partner with the communities around you to build something of shared value to everyone.

It’s far too easy to crucify people on the altar of running the event that was built to serve people in the first place. In other words, the event is made for people, not people for the event.

In building participatory events (or attendee-centered events as they are known), you have to be very prepared in order to make it as easy as possible for your participants to learn, but you never sacrifice their learning at the expense of standards or protocol.

I have lots of things that I want to talk about that I’ve experienced over the last 2 weeks. It’s the amount of stuff that has happened and that I’ve learnt that has literally paralyzed me from communicating it. But – I must get it down. I’ll post some of it at the Like Minds site, and then carry out some deeper analysis on the topics and ideas here that we can then munch over and discuss.

I also want to, again, thank you for your support and encouragement. I felt it everyday that I was there.

Yours,
Scott

People Don’t Remember What Was Said, They Remember How They Felt

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Scott Gould

This is a photo of me, Chris Brogan and Molly Flatt and the Like Minds Summit earlier this year. Looking at it reminds of one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learnt – namely that what I remember from that day isn’t the content we discussed (despite it being amazing), but it’s the feeling of friendship that I had.

Earlier this year I guest posted an article on Search Engine People discussing a simple framework to focus on feeling, because the reality is that when people reach the door, close the laptop, or put their head on the pillow, they don’t remember what was said, they remember how they felt. Continue reading →

WOM UK: Spreadability beats Reach

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

I have the pleasure of speaking at WOM UK‘s next espresso briefing on Thursday 25th March, where I’ll be with Drew Ellis discussing two things from a very likeminded angle:

1. How spreadability is beating reach. How did the music industry get punk’d by a hacked up Facebook gathering? How did a conference get international attention without any marketing spend? We’ll look at how neither had direct reach, but both had spreadability.

2. How teams of people are beating factories of employees. How are we changing in the way that we work to move from mutual benefit to shared benefit? How do businesses begin to think socially about their staff and their customers?

WOM UK (Word of Mouth UK Association) is the elite squad of forward thinkers who are basically spearheading the Social Communications movement in the UK. They are partnered with WOMMA in the US (whose president is John Bell, one of our Like Minds alumni and MD of Ogilvy’s PR wing), and their UK council is headed by another Like Minds alumni in the form of Molly Flatt from 1000heads.

It’s on Thursday 25th March, from 8:30am to 10:30am. We’ll be at Peter Novelli, 31 St Petersburgh Place, London, W2 4LA. More details from WOM UK’s site is available here.

Best of all: It’s FREE, breakfast is included, and it will be attended by people you want to meet. Make sure you come and say hi to me before or after.