Expert conference facilitator Adrian Segar supplies a penetrating analysis of

the limitations of conventional conferences, a clear explanation of a

compelling alternative, and a complete road map to creating a meaningful
and memorable conference experience for every attendee-every time.

Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love

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Conferences
that WORK
CREATING EVENTS
THAT PEOPLE LOVE

A DR I A N SEGA R

Conferences That Work

Marlboro, VT 05344-0086
www.conferencesthatwork.com
Copyright © 2010 by Adrian Segar

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic
or mechanical means including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except by a reviewer,
who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN 978-1-60145-992-3

Library of Congress Control Number 2009909766

Library of Congress subject headings:
Congresses and conventions—Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Congresses and conventions—Planning
Meetings—Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Booklocker.com, Inc.
2010
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Cover design by James F. Brisson

Interior design by Jeff Miller
 Contents

About the Author vii Establishing and increasing professional

Acknowledgments viii status 16
Preface ix Maintaining professional certification 17
Introduction xiii Conferring legitimacy 17
Issue activism 18
Building community 18
PART I Reengineering the
Conference 1
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 1 What’s Wrong with Traditional
What Is a Conference? 3 Conferences? 19
How we got here 4 Four assumptions of a traditional
Face-to-face versus online 5 conference 19
Able Masters 6 Predetermined content 22
Education as gardening 7 Predicting what attendees want—and getting it
Conference process = Elementary school wrong 24
process 7 Uncovering the unexpected 25
Traditional conference = Training 8 Timeliness 25
Sponsorship distortion 8 Hot topics—that aren’t 26
Conference form 9 The case for predetermined content 27
The new kid on the block: making connections
CHAPTER 2 at a traditional conference 27
What Are Conferences For? 10 Beginnings and endings 29
Content 11 Passivity 31
Conferring 13 Size matters 32
Meeting and connecting with peers 14 Saving graces 34

iii
Contents

CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 6
Reengineering the Beginnings 73
Conference 38 Connections 73
Why is reengineering a traditional The roundtable 76
conference hard? 38 The end of the beginning 89
The program trap 39
Who’s in charge? 40
CHAPTER 7
How many attendees? 42
Satisfying the desire for connection with
Middles—the “Meat” of the
others 43 Peer Conference 90
Safety 43 Preparing for peer sessions 90
Opening to possibilities 44 Topic suggestion 91
De-emphasizing status 44 Peer session sign-up 93
Increasing transparency 45 Peer session determination and scheduling 94
Ensuring timeliness and relevance 46 Running peer sessions 96
Breaking down barriers between attendees 47
Publish-then-fi lter, not fi lter-then-publish 49
CHAPTER 8
Providing relevant content 50
Comparisons with other nontraditional
Endings 98
conference formats 51 How to end a conference? 98
Avoiding session conflicts 54 The personal introspective 101
Delivering relevant, accessible content with a The group spective 103
peer conference 55

CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 5 Wishes 106
The Peer Conference
Alternative 56
Definition, assumptions, end goals, and PART II Planning and
process goals 56 Preparing for Your
What subject and how long? 58
Peer Conference 107
An introduction to peer conference process 59
A community of learners 64
An environment for taking risks 65 CHAPTER 10
Ask, don’t tell 66 Overview 109
Rich interpersonal process 67
Flattening hierarchy 68
CHAPTER 11
Creating community 69
The key to getting important questions asked—
How to Start Making Your
answering attendee meta-questions 69 Conference a Reality 111
Synergy 70 Forming a steering committee 112
Combining peer and traditional conference Group culture, leadership, and your steering
sessions 71 committee 113
Novelty 71 Working with volunteers 115

iv
 Contents

CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 18
The Steering Committee in Budgeting and Accounting 185
Action 116 Budget building principles 185
How to meet? 116 Conference start-up funding 186
The first steering committee meeting 117 Building the expense side of your conference
Steering committee tasks 124 budget 187
Determining your audience 136 Evaluating your conference financial
Conference timing: start, end, and duration 138 feasibility 189
Fine-tuning your conference expense
budget 190
CHAPTER 13
Vendor exhibit budgeting 190
Choosing a Conference Site 142
Setting conference registration fees 192
Using a professional conference venue 142 Budget review and monitoring 193
Using a nontraditional conference venue 144 Accounting 194
Finding a nontraditional conference venue 146 Sample budgets 194
Timing 146
Minimum and desired site requirements 146
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 14 Vendor Exhibits 198
The Conference Site Visit 158 Should you include a vendor exhibit? 198
What to bring on a site visit 159 Overview of the vendor coordinator’s job 199
Soliciting vendors 199
CHAPTER 15 Organizing the vendor exhibit space 201
Program implications of a vendor exhibit 202
Food and Refreshments 161
Other pre-conference vendor exhibit
considerations 203
CHAPTER 16
Determining the Conference
CHAPTER 20
Program 163
Providing Attendee Information:
Peer conference programs 163
How long should sessions last? 164
Paper Versus Online 205
Getting from one session to the next 166
Traditional conference sessions 166 CHAPTER 21
Some thoughts about entertainment 167 Pre-Conference Tasks 207
Model conference schedules 168 Using wikis to plan and document your
conference 207
CHAPTER 17 Promotional conference items 210
Marketing Your Conference 176 Pre-conference registration 211
Marketing a peer conference 176 Preparing for the vendor exhibit 215
What’s in a name? 178 Pre-conference site preparation 216
How to reach potential attendees 178 Pre-conference attendee preparation 216
Promoting your conference 179 Assigning remaining conference tasks 217
Conference promotion considerations 179 Evaluations 218
Marketing materials examples 180 Take a breather! 220

v
Contents

PART III Running Your Peer CHAPTER 26

Conference 221 After the Conference 309
Post-conference tasks 309
CHAPTER 22 Preparing for the next conference 310
Introduction 223
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 23 Final Words 312
Pre-Conference Preparation 225
Timing 225 APPENDIX 1 The Four Freedoms 313
Preparing conference signage 226
Setting up on-site registration 226 APPENDIX 2 Peer Session Sign-up
The conference face book 228 Sheet 314
Preparing the vendor exhibit area 231 APPENDIX 3 Peer Session Sign-up
Initial conference seating 231 Instructions 315
Roundtable setup 231
Preparing for peer session sign-up 240
APPENDIX 4 Peer Session Primer
Preparing for peer sessions 241
Handout 316
Steering committee pre-conference meal 242 APPENDIX 5 Peer Session Facilitation
Handout 318
CHAPTER 24
APPENDIX 6 Roundtable Questions
Attendee Arrival 243
Card 320
Greeting arriving attendees 243
Running on-site registration 245 APPENDIX 7 Peer Session Attendance
Sheet (no permissions) 321
CHAPTER 25
APPENDIX 8 Peer Session Attendance
Running Your Conference 250 Sheet (with permissions) 322
Conference facilitation 250
Starting and staying on time 251
APPENDIX 9 Personal Introspective
Questions Card 323
The opening session—the big picture 253
Welcome 254 APPENDIX 10 Minimum Room
Housekeeping 254 Dimensions for Roundtable
Describing the conference format 256 and Closing Sessions 324
The roundtable session 258
APPENDIX 11 Sample Conference
Peer session sign-up 267
Evaluation Form for
Determining and scheduling peer sessions 272
Fixed Sessions 325
Running peer sessions 279
Other tasks during the conference 283 APPENDIX 12 Sample Conference
Care and feeding of vendors 284 Evaluation Form for
The personal introspective 286 Peer Sessions 328
Giving thanks 291
The group spective 294 Notes 330
Closure 308 Index 332

vi
 About the Author

ADRIAN SEGAR has organized and facilitated conferences for over 20 years. Realizing that he
loves to connect with people, and to create spaces for them to connect with each other, he
created the first peer conference in 1992, and has been refining peer conference process ever
since. Adrian was an independent information technology consultant for 23 years, taught
college computer science for 10 years, and co-owned and managed a solar domestic hot water
heating systems manufacturing company before that. He has an ancient Ph.D. in experimental
high-energy particle physics, lives in Marlboro, Vermont, and loves to sing and dance.

vii
 Acknowledgments

T
his book owes its existence to changes in my life inspired by my wife Celia Segar,
Jeannie Courtney, and Jerry Weinberg. People who contributed to the development
of the peer conference approach include Esther Derby, Cory Doctorow, Naomi
Karten, Kevin Kelly, Harrison Owen, Robert Putnam, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, and
the wonderful steering committee members, past and present, of edACCESS.

My editor, Anne Lezak, did a masterful job of keeping me on track, improving the clarity of
my writing, and correcting my Briticisms.

Manuscript reviewers Laura Berkowitz, Elizabeth Christie, Virginia Corbiere, Mark Gerrior,
Sherry Heinze, Leo Hepis, Naomi Karten, Pamela Livingston, Stuart Scott, and Celia Segar
made suggestions that improved this book immensely.

I particularly want to thank all edACCESS attendees for putting up with my experiments over
the years.

Finally, feedback from thousands of peer conference participants has proved invaluable for
fine-tuning my work. Thank you everyone!

viii
 Preface

T
here is a widespread and unexamined assumption that the core purpose of a confer-
ence is to transfer knowledge from the learned few to the relatively uneducated many,
and that this is best done through the familiar structures of pre-planned keynotes,
presentations, and panels. In this traditional model, attendees are assigned a largely passive,
secondary role with their spontaneous interactions relegated to mealtimes, socials, and per-
haps a few “birds of a feather” sessions. Information is imparted, some good meals are eaten,
perhaps some sightseeing occurs, and then attendees go home until next year, when the cycle
is repeated.

I think we can do better.

Conferring: Isn’t that what conferences should be about? Conferring: “To talk with somebody
in order to compare opinions or make a decision.” Traditional conferences attempt to dis-
seminate information from a small number of speakers to the attendees. But suppose there
was a conference where participants discovered and shared their collective body of knowledge
in a way that was relevant and useful to each individual, creating a conference that directly
responded to the needs and wishes of the participants; a conference where the attendees
themselves created the kind of conference they wanted?

Such conferences exist; I call them peer conferences. Peer conferences focus on effectively
exposing and sharing the vast body of knowledge that conference attendees collectively hold,
knowledge that they are eager to share and thirsty to receive. The goal of every peer conference
is to provide a meaningful and useful experience for each attendee. For this to happen, people

ix
Preface

need to learn about each other early in the conference. They need to discover the interests
they share and the experiences that they want to explore with other attendees. They need sup-
port for the resulting discussions, and they need a way to integrate their overall conference
experience into their lives.

A peer conference provides a safe and supportive framework for all this to happen.

This book describes and explains the process that I have developed to build interactive peer
conferences. It contains much of what I have learned through designing and facilitating
conferences for many years. Although the key elements have been central to my conferences
from the start, this is still a work in progress. I continue to learn from every conference I run.

Attendees’ evaluations of peer conferences are extremely positive. Participants comment on

how much they prefer the format. Peer sessions, the heart of the conference, are invariably
highly rated. Informal interactions, which this kind of conference encourages, are almost
always described as excellent.

A peer conference is appropriate for any group of people who have a common interest and
want to learn from and share with each other. There are hundreds of thousands of such groups
that could coalesce, meet, learn, and grow via the structure of a peer conference. My intention
is that this book both provides the practical details needed to hold a successful peer conference
and inspires you to create and participate in these powerful and rewarding events.

A peer conference community story

I still remember the last state consortium meeting I attended, back in 1991. The facilita-
tor asked us to share noteworthy events at our schools. Several attendees from a large
university described with pride how they had finally selected a vendor to provide a piece
of software for their school—for $250,000. Nancy, Mike, and I looked at each other.
We knew we were all thinking the same thing. This school was spending more money
on a software package—one that handled just a small part of the administrative needs
of the school—than the entire information technology budgets of our two small colleges
combined.

At that moment the three of us realized that we were living in a different world from
the other educational institutions at the meeting. Five years earlier, none of our jobs
had existed. There wasn’t anyone around who knew more about what we did than us.
Where could we find support for the problems that we faced?

x
 Preface

After the meeting I felt dispirited, but Mike was undaunted. “I think we should organize
a meeting for information technology directors at small schools like ours,” he said. Nancy
and I agreed to help.

Working together, we publicized a conference that was held June 3–5, 1992, at Marlboro
College, Vermont. Twenty-three people came. We didn’t know what participants wanted
to talk about, or what knowledge they might have, so we asked them to tell us at an initial
roundtable. The first evening, we set up a “topic board” where attendees could suggest
and review topics for breakout sessions during the following two days.

The conference was an immediate success, and we decided to hold it again the following
year. That year 45 people came. The following year, we held two conferences, one on the
west coast and one on the east, with more than 80 people showing up.

At the eighth annual conference, I was watching everything going on, and suddenly real-
ized that I had helped to create a community of genuine value, one that would endure for
the foreseeable future, even if I stepped away at that point.

As I write this, we are gearing up for our 18th year of conferences. I am no longer an
information technology director at a small college, but I still facilitate the annual confer-
ence. Each year, 20 to 40 percent of attendees are new, broadening our community ever
further.

It is indescribably satisfying to be intimately involved in the formation of a community

like this and to get to enjoy its success. May you be so fortunate.

xi
 Introduction

I
n October 2005, my wife and I were riding a hotel shuttle bus to San Francisco
International Airport. Two women, seated behind us, started talking:

Woman #1: “Did you go to the Austin conference last year?”

Woman #2: “Yes.”
[Pause]
Woman #2: “I don’t remember a thing about the Austin conference.”
[Long pause]
Woman #2: “Probably won’t remember a thing about this one either.”

As part of the research for this book, I interviewed numerous people about their conference
experiences. Although most of them had some positive things to say, a solid majority had
serious complaints about the quality and worth of the events they’d attended.

“We sit there like lumps, basically . . .”

“The conference turned out to be essentially the same as one I’d been to a
couple of years before.”

“. . . being locked in a room with someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking
about.”

“Most conferences I go to have the same format. They’re all pretty bad.”

xiii
Introduction

“You might as well read a book.”

“600 people, 450 vendors. Cattle call!”

—Some interviewee descriptions of less than desirable conference experiences

Over one hundred billion dollars is spent every year on conferences. And this figure does not
include the value of attendees’ time. With this level of expenditure of time and money you’d
think that significant efforts would have been made to create conferences that were effective
and memorable. I am not deprecating the significant work that creating a well-run conference
requires, but far too much energy is expended on the mechanics of organizing the conference,
while far too little energy is spent creating a conference that meets attendees’ needs. We are
informed about conferences by email, we arrive by airplane, and we gaze at fancy PowerPoint
presentations, but, year after year, over a hundred million people experience a conference
process that has changed very little since the 17th century.

What you’re about to read will show you a better way to design and run a conference. I’ve
divided the book into three parts. In Part I, Reengineering the Conference, I hope to convince
you of two things:

• Certain key assumptions made about the format and structure used in most
conferences today are fundamentally flawed; and
• There is a better way to structure what happens at a conference, a way that
significantly improves the conference experience for each individual attendee.

Once you’re convinced, naturally you’ll want to know how to put my ideas to work.

In Part II, Planning and Preparing for Your Peer Conference, I’ll take you step by step through
everything you need to know to prepare for your conference.

And in Part III, Running Your Peer Conference, I’ll cover conference setup and the nitty-gritty
details of running a successful conference, from start to finish.

I wrote this book because I’ve found that peer conferences offer a truly superior conference
experience that facilitates intimate connections, supports powerful peer-to-peer sharing and
learning, and generates lasting impact. I want to share what I’ve found with you.

xiv
 CHAP TER

1 What Is a Conference?

T
he people I interviewed about their conference experi-
ences had to satisfy the prerequisite of having attended “Welcome to the
at least five conferences in the last five years. On hear- Theater Parking
ing this, most prospective interviewees asked me how I defined Attendant
a conference. Did workshops or trainings count? How about Symposium.”
meetings over dinner with medical salespeople? Or one-day
—Title on a pamphlet being
community forums? I told them they could decide what they read by a woman sitting
considered to be a conference, and, as the interviews pro- next to me while flying
gressed, it became clear that the word conference means quite between Phoenix and
different things to different people. Chicago on August 22,
2005.
Thousands of books and articles have been written about con-
ducting business meetings. In contrast, fewer than 50 books
about conference organization are currently in print, and nearly all of these concentrate
exclusively on logistics—the nuts and bolts of planning and running a conference—rather
than what should actually happen during the event. Considering the massive expenditure of
money and time spent attending conferences today, it’s disconcerting to realize the lack of
critical thought about the group processes used during them.

While it’s true that any kind of conference can be improved by employing better logistics—
a nicer location, tastier food, smarter organization—improving the logistics of a mediocre
or downright poor conference will not make it great. This book is fundamentally about
conference process rather than logistics.

3
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

What I know is how to create great conferences of a certain type. I call them “peer confer-
ences.” In order to understand what a peer conference is, it’s first necessary to understand
what it is not. Let’s start by making some distinctions among the bewildering variety of
present-day conferences.

How we got here

The word conference was first used around the middle of the 16th century as a verb that
described the act of conferring with others in conversation, rather than a formal occasion
where people met and discussed a topic. Over time, the word’s meaning shifted to denoting
the meeting itself. The neighboring quote is an early, perhaps the earliest, written English
example that uses conference in the way we would today. Other words that are currently used
for conference-like activities, listed with the century they acquired this meaning, are: congress
and convention (17th), symposium (18th), and colloquium and workshop (20th).

In reality, conferences are arenas for many impor-

“These Conferences are held
tant activities not captured in these terms, such as
once in a Month by divers Able
maintaining and increasing professional status,
Masters making reflexions and
making useful connections, conferring legiti-
observations upon the rarest
macy, promoting issue activism, and building
pieces in the Cabinet of his
community.
Most Christian Majesty . . .”
Few of today’s conferences provide substantive —A Relation of the Conferences Held at
opportunities for consultation or discussion. Paris in the Academy Royal for the
They are instead primarily conduits for the Improvement of the Arts of Painting and
Sculpture, as ’tis Found in the Iournal Des
one-to-many transfer of information on the Scavans, A. E. H. Love in Philosophical
conference topic. Predetermined presentations Transactions (1665–1678), Vol. 4, 1669
dominate these conference programs.

In this book I refer to these conference formats as traditional or conventional conferences:

events built around pre-planned sessions where invited experts present to audiences of attend-
ees. Attendee interaction and conference contributions are secondary to the main purpose
of these events—imparting knowledge from those who hopefully have it to those who sup-
posedly haven’t. In general, traditional conferences provide little or no formal support for
attendee interaction, which is expected to occur by default at meals and social events, during
questions at the end of presentations, or via “birds-of-a-feather” sessions wedged into gaps in
the conference schedule.

Although most people still think of conferences primarily as a vehicle for pre-planned content,
the 1990s saw a rebellion against the rigid structure of traditional conferences, leading to the

4
 CHAPTER 1 • What Is a Conference?

birth of a number of alternative designs. All shared an emphasis on the development of fruit-
ful attendee interactions over the supply of predetermined material. Some of these approaches,
such as World Café, the Art of Hosting, and Everyday Democracy, concentrate on building
participant connections, conversations, and communities. Shared issues and concerns moti-
vate these events, but their focus is on specific group processes that lead to group outcomes.

Three other conference variants—peer conferences, Open Space Technology, and unconfer-
ences—are also attendee-driven, but steer a middle ground between content-driven and group
development process models. These conference formats, which I’ll cover in more detail later,
move the focus of the conference away from pre-planned sessions with fi xed presenters and
toward a more fluid program that is determined by the desires and interests of the conference
attendees. Such attendee-driven approaches have arisen as a response to the rigid structure of
traditional conferences.

Face-to-face versus online

I spent the summer of 1973 working for the Long-Range Studies Department of the British
Post Office, a long-defunct group that attempted to predict the exciting future that new tech-
nologies would surely bring about. The Post Office had just built a few hideously expensive
teleconferencing studios, connected by outrageously expensive telephone trunk lines, and one
of our jobs was to find out what they could be used for. Could businesspeople be persuaded to
stop traveling to meetings, to sit instead in comfortable local studios hundreds of miles apart,
handsomely equipped with cameras, microphones, screens, and speakers that magically
allowed them to meet as well as if they were all in the same room? Why yes, we concluded
brightly in our final report. “A substantial number of business meetings which now occur
face-to-face could be conducted effectively by some kind of group telemedia.”

Thirty years later, my Macintosh laptop contains all the components of those glossy studios,
and the Internet connects me, by both video and voice, to anyone who’s similarly equipped.
The technology is finally here for the masses, and video conferencing, web conferencing, and
virtual worlds are starting to change the ways we have communicated, met, and done business
for hundreds of years. And yet, face-to-face symposia, seminars, workshops, trainings, con-
gresses, conventions, colloquia, and conferences still abound. In-person conferences, despite
the significant expense and the explosion in other forms of communication, still apparently
fulfill attendees’ needs in ways that electronic alternatives do not.

Perhaps this will soon change; we may be at the beginning of a radical shift in the form and
structure of conferences—a change that will relegate the face-to-face conference, little
changed since its first blossoming over 400 years ago, to a quaint, old-fashioned technique,

5
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

made obsolete by the advent of cheap, ubiquitous, high-bandwidth telecommunications

available to every global citizen who wishes to connect with her peers.

It’s true that online conferences offer a convenient and low-cost way to receive content, and
they can provide limited interactivity. Yet you can also abandon one with the click of a mouse.
Online conferences require little commitment, so it is harder to successfully engage partici-
pants when the cost of leaving is so low.

If you think of a conference primarily as a way of transferring content, then online confer-
ences seem attractive, inexpensive alternatives to face-to-face events. If, however, you value
conferences as opportunities to make meaningful connections with others, face-to-face
conferences offer a number of advantages.

I expect that the unique benefits of face-to-face conferences will continue to be valued. The
advantages of being physically present with other people, dining and socializing together,
the serendipity of human contact, the opportunity to meet new people in person rather than
hear a voice on the phone or see an image on a screen, the magic that can occur when a group
of people coalesces; all these combine into more than the sum of their parts, building the
potential to gain and grow long-term relationships and friendships. Anyone who has been to
a good face-to-face conference knows that these things can happen, and that, either in the
moment or in retrospect, they may even be seen as pivotal times in one’s life.

Able Masters
We don’t know much about the Able Masters of the Academy Royal who began holding their
art conferences in 1666, but given that the mid-17th century was the dawn of formal art criti-
cism, I don’t think the Able Masters sat in rows listening to Abler Masters. Instead, I visualize
a room of fledgling critics, magnificently gowned, standing around a Leonardo da Vinci
drawing while arguing about the role of perspective in painting, creating a witty salon of a
conference, full of arguments and opinions shared among peers.

This vision of mine is a fantasy—yet it illustrates an important point. When a new area of
human knowledge or interest blossoms, there are no experts—only a vanguard struggling to
see clearly, to understand more deeply, to learn. During this period a traditional conference
format can only offer an uneasy fit—if there are no experts yet, who will present? Today’s
explosion of knowledge and, hence, associated conference topics, implies an increasing need
for flexible conference approaches that can adapt to spontaneous, real-time discoveries of
directions and themes that attendees want to explore.

So, why do most contemporary conferences follow the traditional, prescheduled model?
There are several reasons.

6
 CHAPTER 1 • What Is a Conference?

Education as gardening
I was educated in England at a time when schools acted as master gardeners, with students
their plants. Our teachers sprinkled a rain of knowledge on us and expected us to soak it up,
with the successful students absorbing and growing the most. We were encouraged to com-
pete with each other; individual test scores were announced in class, and a ranked list of each
class’s students, from best to worst, was publicly posted every school term. At the tender age of
eleven, the infamous Eleven Plus exam weeded out the “second-rate” students; they went on
to second-class comprehensive schools while their top-scoring classmates enjoyed superior
opportunities available at prestigious grammar schools—just as gardeners weed less successful
seedlings from their faster growing companions.

Not surprisingly, we grew up feeling dominated by our teachers’ mastery of their subjects, and
we believed that our role was to compliantly learn what they told us, as quickly as possible.
In this environment, the idea that we students could contribute to each other’s learning was as
ridiculous as the idea that garden seedlings could help each other to grow.

Conference process = Elementary school process

In the main, traditional conferences have adopted this common and largely passive model of
education, a mode that still permeates society today. Take a moment to think about how you
were educated. How much of your time in school did you spend learning through interactions
with your peers, compared to sitting in a room listening to a teacher? Probably very little.

There are, of course, important times and situations in which one-to-many classroom instruc-
tion is completely appropriate. Much vital learning of basic information and techniques is
best imparted by teachers in the classroom. Elementary school students at the same level of
achievement, for example, are not going to spontaneously learn from each other how to read
and do arithmetic.

But conferences are for adults. By the time most of us reach adulthood, we are able to think
critically, to learn from experience and from others, and to be creative in our work and our
response to challenges. These abilities allow us to handle and contribute to much more com-
plex and nuanced forms of learning and achieving personal and group goals. And yet, the
traditional conferences we attend are still modeled on the classroom paradigm—sit still and
soak it up—that we experienced when we were in school.

We have forgotten that we are no longer children and have, unthinkingly, chosen the old,
comfortable classroom model for our conference process. As a result, our new adult abilities
are restricted to the times during the conference when the classrooms are not in session.

7
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Social events and meal breaks are the times assigned to peer interaction, just like when we
were in school and had playground recess and lunch. Yes, traditional conferences continue to
treat us as if we were still children.

Traditional conference = Training

One of my hopes for this book is that it will redefine your vision of the core function of con-
ferences, which I see as providing structure and support for a group of people so they can
effectively reflect, share, and learn about a common interest. Unfortunately, traditional
conferences do not do this well.

Instead, many “conferences” nowadays are primarily trainings: events whose foremost aim is
to transfer largely predetermined knowledge to the attendees via presentations and panels.
This lack of distinction between conferences and trainings is a natural consequence of carry-
ing over our early educational experience into adulthood—we instinctively fall back on the
educational modalities we encountered in our youth. Because the word training sounds
somewhat simplistic, such conferences are often promoted as “professional development”—
around 15 percent of my interviewees reported being required to attend conferences for their
“continuing education”—and in some professions, especially healthcare and primary and
secondary education, such events are often the only kind of conferences that people attend.

Sponsorship distortion
Training-centric conferences can also suffer from
an additional influence that further distorts their
content away from what attendees really want. “. . . in several dozen sympo-
Commercial interests that inject their own self- siums during the weeklong
promotion into the proceedings often financially meeting, companies paid the
underwrite these events. The effects of commercial APA [American Psychiatric
sponsorship can be relatively benign—for example, Association] about $50,000
displaying company logos on conference materials per session to control which
and in conference spaces. But sponsorship can also scientists and papers were
lead to serious distortion of the conference pro- presented and to help shape
gram. For example, sponsors may obtain prominent the presentations.”
placement in the presentation schedule, amounting —“Industry Role in Medical Meeting
effectively to a paid promotional opportunity for Decried,” Washington Post, May 25,
2002
the company, or they may be able to effectively
censor the inclusion of subjects or sentiments that
are at odds with their point of view.

8
 CHAPTER 1 • What Is a Conference?

Conference form
Currently, traditional conferences make up the vast majority of conferences held. A traditional
conference’s format is determined by its program and schedule, which are planned by the
conference organizers well in advance of the actual conference. The conference program
announces who will speak, on what subjects, when, and for how long. Potential participants
are so used to having this level of detail provided in advance that their decision to attend is
based principally on the contents of the advance conference program.

In contrast, alternative conference process models support attendee input into what happens
at the conference. This is usually done during the conference, though in some models partici-
pants suggest or offer topics of interest prior to the conference to provide a jumping-off place
at the start of the conference. Although there are many similarities and overlaps, as we’ll see,
each alternative conference model implements an attendee-driven conference in its own
unique way.

9
 CHAP TER
What’s Wrong
with Traditional
3 Conferences?

Four assumptions of a traditional conference

Four key assumptions lurk behind the traditional conference format—assumptions so deep-
seated that they go unquestioned by most conference organizers. These assumptions embody,
and consequently help perpetuate, a distorted and outdated way of thinking about conference
purpose and structure, leading to a conference model that, as reported by a majority of my
interviewees, does not well serve today’s conference attendees.

Let’s look at these assumptions.

Assumption #1. Conference session topics must be chosen and

scheduled in advance.
During my conference experience interviews, I asked the following question:

“Most conferences have a conference schedule and program decided in advance.

How would you feel about a conference where, at the start, through a careful
conference process, the attendees themselves determine what they want to
discuss, based on what each person wants to learn and the experience each
attendee has to share?”

Forty-five percent of my interviewees were unable to conceive of a conference that did not have
a schedule of conference sessions decided on and circulated in advance.

19
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

The most common response was that the interviewee wasn’t sure she’d want to go to such a
conference without knowing what was going to happen there.

The next most common response was that the idea sounded great/interesting/intriguing, but
the interviewee had no idea of how one would create a relevant conference program at the start
of the conference.

Suspend disbelief for a moment, and assume that at the start of a conference it is somehow
possible to use available resources to create a conference program that reflects actual attendee
needs. Imagine attending such a conference yourself, a conference tailored to your needs.
(You might want to reflect on how often this has happened for you.) Wouldn’t it be great?

The peer conference model described in this book does indeed build a conference program
that automatically adjusts to the actual needs of the people present—we’ll see how later.

What is the origin of the assumption that a conference program must be pre-planned? Perhaps
it arose from our experience of learning as children, from our teachers in school who knew or
were told what we were supposed to learn following a pre-planned curriculum. Certainly, if
one thinks of conferences as trainings by experts, a pre-planned schedule makes sense. But
conferences are for adult learners, and adults with critical thinking skills and relevant expe-
rience can learn from each other if they are given the opportunity. We’ll see that there are
ways of putting conference attendees in charge of what they wish to learn and discuss. But this
cannot be done effectively if a conference’s program is frozen before attendees arrive.

Assumption #2. Conference sessions are primarily for

transmitting pre-planned content.
The three communication modes used among a group of people are one-to-one (individual
conversations), one-to-many or broadcast (presentations and panels), and many-to-many or
conferring (discussions). Traditional conference sessions are predominantly one-to-many,
with perhaps a dash of many-to-many at question time.

One-to-one conversations are infinitely flexible; both participants have power to lead the
conversation along desired paths. Many-to-many conversations are powerful in a different
way—they expose the participating group to a wide range of experience and opinions.

In contrast, one-to-many communication is mostly pre-planned, and thus relatively inflexible

if the presentation involves a passive audience. At best, a presenter may ask questions of her
audience and vary her presentation appropriately, but she is unlikely to get accurate represen-
tative feedback when her audience is large. Some presenters are skilled at creating interactive
sessions with significant audience participation, but they are the exception.

20
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

Presentations and panels are appropriate when we are training, and have expert knowledge or
information to impart to others. But with the rise of alternative methods for adults to receive
training—reading books and articles, watching recordings of presentations, downloading
answers on the Web—what can’t be replicated at a face-to-face conference is the conversations
and discussions that occur. So why do we still cling to conference sessions that employ the one
communication mode for which a variety of alternatives can substitute?

Assumption #3. Supporting meaningful connections with other

attendees is not the conference organizers’ job; it’s something
that happens in the breaks between sessions.
People are impressed when I tell them that on arrival, peer conference attendees are imme-
diately given a face book that includes photographs, names and contact data, and additional
pertinent information about each participant. They tell me that it’s rare to receive such a docu-
ment at conferences. It’s sad that conference organizers don’t bother to provide this basic tool
for learning about fellow attendees. (Perhaps it’s not too surprising, since an attendee face
book is not mentioned in any book on conference management I’ve read.) The absence speaks
volumes about the lack of support for attendee interaction at traditional conferences.

Typically, support is limited to providing meals and social events where people can mingle.
Attendees are left to their own devices to learn who else is at the conference, to seek out inter-
esting people, and to introduce themselves to others. All these barriers must be surmounted
before conversations and discussions can occur. Consequently, attendees who are new to a
conference are disadvantaged compared to the old-timers who already know other partici-
pants, reinforcing the formation of cliques.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Actively supporting useful attendee connections is an integral
part of every peer conference. When the information, openings, and opportunities needed to
meet like-minded attendees are provided, not only during session breaks but also as part of
the formal conference structure, it becomes attendee-centered rather than session-centered,
greatly increasing the intimacy and enjoyment of the event.

Assumption #4. Conferences are best ended with some event

that will hopefully convince attendees to stay to the end.
How to end a conference? Trainings and conferences that professionals must attend to main-
tain certification can close with the triumphant presentation of certificates of completion or
attendance, but other traditional conferences have no such obvious conclusion. All too often,
the conference finale is manufactured: an awards ceremony, a closing keynote, a fancy dinner,
a raffle, a celebrity speaker, or some combination thereof.

21
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

The reason for this artificiality is simple:

Traditional conferences that are not training- “ ‘We know that people will be strong
oriented don’t provide any kind of progres- in the beginning of the conference,
sion through their theme. The sequence of so we anchor the keynote speaker at
session topics is guided by logistical, political, the end so attendees will stay,’ says
and speaker availability considerations, Karen Malone, Vice President of
rather than logical flow. One session doesn’t Meeting Services for the Chicago-
follow from another. Such a conference based Healthcare Information and
doesn’t have a beginning; how can we expect Management Systems Society.”
it to have an end? —Jennifer Nicole Dienst. Meetings and
Conventions Magazine, November 2007
Some conferences dispense with the pretense
of closure. This at least is honest, though the
effect of “transmit content, go home” is somewhat blunt.

In contrast, peer conferences provide a progression, not through content, but through
increased attendee connections as the conference proceeds. Two closing “spective” sessions
build on the generated intimacy to provide a powerful and appropriate conference ending.

Predetermined content
Sometimes a trusted colleague will tell you about a conference you’ve never attended. You
really should go—it’s a great fit for you. I’ve been the last five years and I wouldn’t miss it. Or,
I went once, never again. Badly organized, lousy location, sessions that weren’t as advertised,
and I didn’t meet anyone who does what we do. If you are lucky enough to get an evaluation
from someone whose judgment you trust, this may be all you need to determine whether
you should attend a conference.

Otherwise, how do you decide to attend a particular conference? Well, it seems obvious that
you’d want to know in detail what the conference is about before you decide to spend valuable
money and time on it. And what better way to find out than to obtain the pre-conference
program and scan the lists of scheduled sessions. The more detail the better. Aha, there’s a
presentation that sounds really appealing. And maybe I’ll like that one. Hmm, nothing of interest
on Monday afternoon, but perhaps I can do some sightseeing then. Eventually you decide to go,
or not. Simple. Reasonable. How else could you decide?

Access to this kind of information certainly makes sense when deciding whether you should
attend a traditional conference. Since it’s rare to find that dream conference where an appeal-
ing session is scheduled during every conference hour every day, perusing a pre-conference

22
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

Choice
For ten years I taught computer science at was at the right level, but they just weren’t
Marlboro College, a wonderful tiny liberal that interested in it.
arts college in southern Vermont. Unlike “So,” I asked, “why did you sign up?”
most schools, Marlboro has almost no And finally the truth came out. The school
course requirements (a demonstrated abil- had recently created a joint degree pro-
ity to write with clarity being a notable gram with another local college. This joint
exception), with students creating a “plan degree program had requirements, one of
of concentration” for their last two years. which could be satisfied by taking my class.
Students’ study culminates with an exami- Unlike any class I’d previously taught at
nation of their body of work by faculty Marlboro, about two thirds of the students
members and an outside examiner expert were in my class because they saw it as
in their chosen field, a process very similar the easiest way to satisfy a degree require-
to a master’s level thesis defense. Because ment. The dead atmosphere I’d experi-
of the school’s unusual learning format, enced was because a majority of my
students are essentially free to choose students didn’t want to be there.
freshman and sophomore courses based Unfortunately, this knowledge didn’t
on their interests rather than on degree make teaching the class any easier. But I did
requirements. realize how lucky I was to have students in
At the start of my seventh year of my college classes who, most of the time,
teaching, I thought I was finally becoming were there because they wanted to be.
a half-decent teacher. So I was surprised And I came to appreciate the dedication of
and depressed by the atmosphere in my the vast majority of teachers who don’t
larger-than-usual fall semester introduc- have this advantage.
tory class. Students seemed distracted, During my interviews, it became clear
homework was perfunctory, and getting that many traditional conferences are
classroom discussion going was like pulling “have-to’s” instead of “choose-to’s.” When
teeth. Every class has its own personality, people attend conferences to fulfill con-
but I’d never experienced a class like this tinuing education requirements or because
one. Was it me? Had I regressed to my the boss said so, all other things being
early years of bumbling teaching? I didn’t equal, the conference atmosphere suffers,
think so. Perhaps it was the students? just as my class environment suffered
I soldiered on for a few weeks; the class when students had to attend. One of the
environment stayed grim. So one day I reasons that peer conferences work well is
summoned up my courage and asked my that, with few exceptions, attendees have
students about the class. I extracted the chosen to be there. And that can make a big
information that they thought the content difference.

23
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

schedule helps you figure out what proportion of the conference program is likely to be of
interest. (Provided that the conference program doesn’t mislead, which, as we’ve seen, is not
uncommon.)

But behind this thinking hides a big assumption. To see it, let’s first go over how a traditional
conference program is developed. Usually, a program committee, representing (hopefully)
the conference constituency, convenes long before the conference and decides on the confer-
ence structure and content. Formal academic conference program committees often issue a
call for papers, with the conference content and presenters determined through who responds
with what content, filtered through some kind of review process. Other program committees
may decide on a list of hot topics and then go after big names who can present on them.
Slowly a raft of sessions is assembled and scheduled, gaps filled, and the conference program
takes shape.

Predicting what attendees want—and getting it wrong

For the last 15 years, I’ve been in a unique position to determine just how well the above pro-
cess predicts and serves up the content that attendees want. Because what happens at a peer
conference accurately reflects the participants’ needs and wants, it has been possible for me to
compare the pre-conference program predictions of the conference organizers with the actual
programs that were developed by attendees.

The results of this comparison are sobering. Although, as you’d expect, some conference com-
mittees are better predictors than others, when I’ve compared program committee forecasts
of hot topics with those that attendees actually chose, I’ve found that even the best program
committees predict less than half of the session topics chosen at the conference.

This dismal showing may surprise you. I suspect that the majority of conference organizers
will be dismayed by this finding, and will question its accuracy. After all, many traditional
conferences receive highly favorable attendee evaluations—how can favorable reviews be
reconciled with such a poor match between content offered and content desired?

One reason is that seasoned attendees’ expectations for a conventional conference are, sadly,
not very high. If they have never experienced getting more than half their concerns addressed,
attendees will set the bar at that level, and define as successful a conference that meets this
standard.

However, there are several other important reasons why peer conferences are so much more
successful than program committees at generating the best conference topics.

24
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

Uncovering the unexpected

At every peer conference I’ve facilitated, attendees suggest unexpectedly popular topics during
the conference roundtable that is the first step of the peer conference process. These are topics
that were off just about everyone’s radar, including the steering committee’s. Usually these
topics arise from expertise casually shared by an attendee, who often has no idea that others
would be interested in her experience and want to discuss it further. I have seen these topics
turn into informal presentations or panels attended by half or more of the attendees.

Although program committees sometimes make well-meaning attempts to poll attendees

about potentially appealing topics to incorporate into a traditional program, I’ve found in
practice that few attendees expend the time and energy to suggest subjects they’d like to see
covered at an upcoming conference. Even if a popular topic is uncovered in advance, it may
not be recognized as such by the program committee.

Timeliness
Conference programs developed in advance suffer from the curse of already being obsolete.
Typically a multiday conference program will be fi xed six months or more in advance. In some
fields, a lot can happen in six months. I’m reminded of a conference-planning meeting held
when legislation that affected our conference’s target audience had just been passed. Everyone
felt it was very important that we invite a legal expert to keynote the consequences for our
attendees’ organizations, so we found a suitable speaker and publicized our program. But by
the time the conference was held, eight months later, a host of articles in related trade journals
had thoroughly covered the issue, and our keynote covered what had now become familiar
ground.

What can you do to ensure that fi xed program topics are still relevant by the time your con-
ference rolls around? Not much. I’ve noticed that sessions on structural issues, like the conse-
quences of legal and accounting rule changes, are more likely to become dated than sessions
that cover new approaches or research. But I’ve had little success over the years in predicting
which topics will still be fresh and exciting when the presenter steps up on the stage.

A long lead time between the publication of a conference program and the conference itself
also impacts presenters, who are required to turn in session descriptions and handouts
months in advance without knowing yet either what their presentation will entail or what
might prove pertinent in the intervening months.

25
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Do conferences need to have keynotes?

It’s sad that so many conference organiz- interesting. In my experience, if you start
ers think that a keynote is an essential from the premise that you must have a
part of a conference; that if there is no keynote, there is a real danger of ending
keynote then the conference is incomplete up with a speaker who does not fulfill
in some way. This is why keynotes are these criteria.
often unnaturally grafted onto a confer- Finally, if you engage a keynote speaker,
ence, creating a kind of Frankenstein have a backup plan. Recently, some con-
mutant that roars around with great ference organizers with whom I was work-
sound and fury, but is forgotten by all ing had a traditional conference keynote
quickly soon after the conference is over. speaker cancel just one week before the
I think that a conference keynote event, because she was invited to the
is appropriate when you can snag a White House on the day she was scheduled
dynamic, engaging, and knowledgeable to speak. The ensuing last-minute effort
speaker on a relevant topic that a clear to find a substitute significantly increased
majority of your attendees will find the organizers’ pre-conference stress.

Hot topics—that aren’t

Besides worrying about scheduling topics that have passed their sell-by date by the time the
conference is held, you also need to worry about choosing topics that, while seemingly “hot,”
draw little attendee interest come the day of the presentation. How can this happen? Well,
sometimes a topic talked up as the “next big thing” just isn’t—it’s hype that attendees largely
reject, either before the conference or when they get there and discover, outside the formal
sessions, that no one else is really interested either.

Topics can also misfire at a conference when they’re too far ahead of audience needs or inter-
ests. For example, this can happen at information technology conferences when new operating
systems or software applications are first introduced. Sometimes these products are available
well before attendees are interested in or able to purchase or roll out the software for their
companies. The lead time required to put a program together further complicates the decision
whether to feature such topics at a conference. While an experienced and knowledgeable
program committee will help reduce this kind of audience-subject mismatch, it’s nearly
impossible to prevent entirely.

26
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

The case for predetermined content

Predetermined conference content has its place, and there are several situations in which it’s
entirely appropriate. For example, marketing of a conventional conference often is anchored
around one or more big-name presenters. Their presentations, which are often complex multi-
media affairs, require plenty of time to prepare—they can’t be created on demand at a confer-
ence. Speakers with a proven reputation for visionary, dynamic keynotes are usually able to
provide a relevant, up-to-the-minute, topical presentation, despite the delay between the time
they were booked and the time they speak.

Similarly, conference sessions that provide a well-presented, comprehensive overview of a topic

can be very valuable to attendees. Such sessions also need careful preparation, and must be
solicited and scheduled in advance.

Some professional and amateur groups would not think of holding a conference where the
acknowledged leaders in the field or topic were not given pride of place in the conference
program. (Politics is one area that comes to mind; you can probably think of others.) A con-
ference that lacked a program defined in advance is obviously not the best choice here.

Sometimes conferences are organized by a group with a strong agenda of conference activities
and outcomes. Political and social activism conferences are obvious examples. In addition,
company conferences are often tightly controlled affairs, focused on firing up a sales team or
bringing employees up to speed on management’s upcoming agenda. Events with such pre-
planned, action-oriented goals require predetermined content.

Finally, conferences that are clearly marketed as trainings obviously need to provide a com-
prehensive description of the material to be covered in advance.

However, the fact that so much traditional conference time is taken up with content that is a
poor fit to attendee desires is a depressing reality that program committees need to bear in mind.
It’s my hope that the approach to conference design described in this book will lessen our reli-
ance on predetermined content, and encourage us to create conferences that are designed to
respond to actual attendee needs rather than our best guesses as to what they might be.

The new kid on the block: making connections

at a traditional conference
Just about everyone who’s attended a conference has at one time or another walked into a
room full of strangers. Unless you’re an extreme extrovert, this can be a daunting experience.
Think for a moment about how you like to meet new people. It’s easier if you have some kind
of opening to start up a conversation. The more people in the room you know, the more

27
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Together, yet alone

In October 1984 I was one of 700 attend- struck up conversations with my seat-
ees at EDUCOM ’84, a conference on infor- mates as we were shuttled to campus
mation technology in higher education. tours and off-site demos. I scanned the
I had recently started to teach computer directory of attendees for people from
science at Marlboro College, a tiny New small schools like mine, and then scanned
England liberal arts college, and was look- name badges, hoping to spot them. But I
ing for professional support and ideas. didn’t meet a single kindred soul during the
Unfortunately, EDUCOM ’84 turned entire four-day conference.
out to be a depressing experience for me. Do I blame the folks at EDUCOM for my
The conference sessions focused on the miserable experience? No. They organized
needs of large institutions. Hundreds of a traditional conference that may have
people sat around me as we listened to served many attendees well. However, it
talks on subjects that left me cold, or solu- certainly didn’t work for me.
tions requiring equipment and staff that I But one good thing came out of my
couldn’t begin to afford. And there was a time at EDUCOM ’84. I began to wonder
strong whiff of “look at all the cool stuff whether I could create a conference that
we’re doing, bet you can’t match this” better met what I felt attendees needed.
that I didn’t like. I wanted a conference that was responsive
I was sure that there were other to the needs of attendees, encouraged
attendees like me at EDUCOM ’84. But positive attendee interactions, and fos-
how was I to find them? I tried talking to tered a spirit of community among those
the people I sat next to at mealtimes. I who came.

possibilities exist for you to meet others through your acquaintances’ existing connections.
When you know no one, you’re completely cut off from the connections that already exist in
the room.

It’s even worse when no one in the room knows anyone else. Everyone then needs to build his
or her connections from scratch.

A traditional conference lacks formal opportunities, opportunities that are part of the confer-
ence process, for these kinds of introductions to occur. It’s hard to go up to a complete stranger
and start talking to him. And, with many potential people to talk to, and not enough time to
talk to them all, how do we pick whom we’ll approach?

Because making connections at traditional conferences can be so inefficient, it’s common for
people to spend significant time preparing for upcoming potential conference interactions. As

28
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

the quote at the start of this section recommends, people research in advance other attendees
they want to meet, looking for the commonalities that they can use to engineer an introduc-
tion and subsequent conversation. Seasoned conference-goers advise new attendees to perfect
their “elevator pitch,” a 30-second introduction to their work and selves, so that when that
all-important person is within range, they are ready to make their best attempt to create a
connection.

This is all very well if you enjoy this kind of competitive behavior. In my experience, most
attendees don’t. Consequently, people make new connections at a traditional conference
largely via the combination of chance and a slow increase in familiarity with other attendees.
This is a pretty inefficient process.

Sadly, most of my interviewees seemed resigned to the session-centric format of conventional

conferences. Although all indicated, one way or another, that making new, significant con-
nections was important, expectations that this would happen were low. People saw making
valuable connections as a relatively rare bonus, rather than expecting it as a matter of course.

So how can you find out about people at a conference? How can you discover attendees’ back-
grounds, interests, and personalities that provide points of connection for you? And how can
you bring to light others’ experiences that are valuable to you if shared? Read on, and you’ll
discover how peer conferences actively support all of these attendee needs!

Beginnings and endings

We have come to expect that stories we read
will have well-crafted beginnings and endings.
If the beginning is poor, we probably won’t
“The reader is by no means obliged
continue, and if the ending is unsatisfactory we
to read any story—is seduced,
feel profoundly let down. Given that attending
so to speak, into doing so; and,
conferences may require as much commitment
unless he can sense an entertain-
of time and attention as reading a story, why do
ing half-hour within the first two
we accept token beginnings and endings at
or three paragraphs, then it is all
these events?
over with the author . . .
. . . the story ending should have
just as critical and painstaking
Beginnings
preparation as the introduction
At a minimum, the welcome at a conference or the climax.”
should cover the formalities of introducing one —Elinor Glyn. Beginning and Ending Your
or more of the conference organizers or hosts, Story
and sharing necessary logistical information

29
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

with attendees. Ideally, a welcome should also foster a

comfortable atmosphere that reassures people that practi- “Once upon a time . . .
cal, conference-related needs can and will be taken care of. . . . and they all lived
Once these items are out of the way, a traditional confer- happily ever after.”
ence starts and sessions begin. — Start and end of innumerable
fairy tales
Unfortunately, such a beginning does nothing to support
forming connections among attendees. Consequently,
people go to sessions not knowing other attendees, unless they knew them previously. Initially
participants are isolated, at best slowly building a network of connections as the conference
proceeds, but missing out on the benefits of finding simpatico peers early on.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Later, we’ll see how peer conferences use an initial roundtable to
facilitate attendee connections in ways that minimize attendee isolation.

Endings
There will always be logistical reasons—like planes to catch, families to feed, or traffic to
avoid—for people leaving events before their formal conclusion. However, a surprising finding
from my interviews was the extent to which people either left or wanted to leave a traditional
conference before it was over—not for practical reasons but because they had come to the
conclusion that it wasn’t worth their while to stay. Though personality certainly played a part
in the variability of interviewees’ responses—several
people said that they were incapable of leaving before the
end due to the way they had been brought up—the median
“I usually leave when
answer to the interview question “What is the percentage of
they have that canned
the conferences you’ve attended where you either left before
stuff at the end.”
the end (for other than practical reasons) or wished you —Interviewee
had?” was 25 percent!

Perhaps this high level of premature abandonment is not so surprising. First, traditional con-
ferences are disjointed events; unless they are trainings or workshops, sessions tend to lurch
from one topic to another with little coherence or progression. As a result, participants tend
to decide whether to go to a session based purely on their interest in its subject, rather than
considering its contribution to their experience of the conference as a whole. If they decide
that the last session holds little interest, they may decide (or wish) to leave early. Second, a
majority of my interviewees reported that the subject matter and/or perspective of traditional
conferences are frequently misrepresented in conference marketing. This commonly leads to
attendees chafing to abandon conferences that they belatedly find not meeting their expecta-
tions and needs.

30
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

Professional conference planners worry about keeping attendees until the end, and usually
suggest scheduling some kind of climactic event to tempt people to stay. When the formal
sessions of a conference fail to create an environment where people want to stay to the end,
such manufactured closing events can be effective, but that they’re used so often is a sad
commentary on the level of event commitment generated by traditional conferences.

Read on to learn how peer conferences, by building an environment in which attendees

actively participate, create a conference experience so compelling that attendees stay to the
end because they don’t want to miss a minute!

Passivity
As the home-schooling proponent John
Holt pointed out, learning is not a passive
process. And yet, the principal advertised “The most important thing any teacher
activity at conventional conferences is has to learn, not to be learned in any
largely passive—namely, sitting and lis- school of education I ever heard of,
tening to one or more speakers for the can be expressed in seven words:
majority of each conference session. Even Learning is not the product of teaching.
if we put aside attendees’ needs for con- Learning is the product of the activity
nection at conferences and concentrate on of learners.”
thinking of conferences as an event for —John Holt. Growing Without Schooling Magazine,
learning, a traditional conference assumes No. 40, 1984
this nonparticipative knowledge acquisi-
tion model.

Think about how you learned vocabulary “Recent investigations of learning,

as a child. It was primarily through active however, challenge this separating of
immersion in an environment where lan- what is learned from how it is learned
guage was used (typically tens of thou- and used. The activity in which
sands of words), rather than through knowledge is developed and deployed,
vocabulary enrichment lessons at school it is now argued, is not separable from
(typically a few hundred words). In this or ancillary to learning and cognition.
case, active, interactive learning was far Nor is it neutral. Rather, it is an
more effective than passive reception of a integral part of what is learned.”
teacher’s lessons. Like learning a living
—John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, and Paul Duguid.
language, social knowledge acquisition Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning.
requires active interaction with others, Educational Researcher, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1989
not passive reception of information.

31
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Nothing is required from an attendee at a traditional conference beyond payment of the con-
ference entrance fee. Even conferences created to maintain professional certification rarely
require more from attendees than their physical presence. Conventional conference sessions,
by tacitly endorsing passivity, drain energy from people who attend conferences with a desire
for connection and social learning. We can’t force anyone to actively engage at a conference,
but I believe that it’s possible to provide a structure that encourages and supports participa-
tion, and to offer an environment where active involvement is the norm, rather than some-
thing for attendees to attempt unaided outside conference sessions.

Size matters
Try this quick experiment. Think of an
interesting short topic you’d like to share
“As the size of a group increases, the
with other people.
connectedness among members
Now imagine sharing your topic with decreases, which can lead to increases
someone and what that would be like. in social loafing, bystander apathy, and
How might the sharing develop? even deindividuation. Larger groups
also promote more conformity, since
Next imagine sharing the same subject there are more peers to exert pressure
with 10 people simultaneously. What on any individual to conform.
would that be like? On the other side of the coin, the
Finally, imagine the same sharing, but
effects of social facilitation increase
with 300 people simultaneously. What
with group size, and having more
would that be like?
members means that there are more
opportunities during group discussions
Notice any differences? to consider more perspectives and more
knowledge. Thus, the real issue is not
You probably found that changing the group size per se, but whether a group
number of people involved in this simple is managed well enough that its size is
thought experiment greatly affected an asset rather than a liability.”
your imagined experience. In all three
—Linda K. Stroh, Gregory B. Northcraft, and Margaret
cases you started the same way—with A. Neale. Organizational Behavior: A Management
an audience. But as we all know, with Challenge. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001
another person or a small group, ques-
tions can be asked and conversations
entered, conversations that can involve everyone present. In other words, the majority of
conversations with another person or a small group are interactive, and any initial audience
quickly dissolves into a discussion.

32
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

In contrast, sharing with a thousand people is, fundamentally, a one-way experience. There
simply isn’t the possibility of significant two-way interaction when a thousand people are lis-
tening to you—at best a few questions can supply interaction with a miniscule percentage of
your audience. There is no possibility that your audience and you can have a discussion.

These scale-generated differences are large enough that we have separate words for these
forms of communication. With a small group, we have a conversation. With a larger group,
we call our sharing a discussion. And with a thousand people, we talk about a lecture or
presentation.

So, how humans communicate varies radically with the size of the group involved. At a con-
ventional conference, the emphasis is on the presentation sessions, where one or two people
speak to many. Unless the conference is small, its sessions will be one-way—any conferring
will be relegated to the hallways and social events.

How big is big?

How big is the average conference? It depends, of course, on your definition of “conference,”
but in 2007, according to Meetings and Conventions Magazine, an average of 1,440 people
attended “association conventions,”
while “association meetings” had an
average attendance of 146. “The downside of going for size and scale
above all else is that the dense, inter-
I am a confirmed small conference- connected pattern that drives group
goer, and my interviewees indicated conversation and collaboration isn’t
a clear preference for small confer- supportable at any large scale. Less is
ences too. Although I didn’t ask different—small groups of people can
specifically about conference size engage in kinds of interaction that large
during my interviews, 35 percent of groups can’t. . . . You have to find a way
my interviewees indicated a prefer- to spare the group from scale. Scale alone
ence for attending conferences with kills conversations, because conversations
fewer than around 100 attendees. require dense two-way conversations. . . .
The fact that the amount of two-way
As you might expect, interviewees
connections you have to support goes up
who saw conferences primarily as
with the square of the users means that the
training opportunities seemed
density of conversation falls off very fast as
unfazed by attending large confer-
the system scales even a little bit.”
ences, while those who looked for
— Clay Shirky. A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.
connections with other attendees
Speech at O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference,
showed a clear preference for small April, 2003
events.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

What’s good about big?

What are the benefits of a big conference? The crucial question is whether these
Here are a few. advantages compensate for the drawbacks
Big conferences can attract big-name of large conferences: the increased diffi-
presenters, people you wouldn’t otherwise culty in making meaningful connections,
get to see. the prevalence of one-to-many sessions
Big conferences can include sessions on with limited opportunities for interaction,
a wide range of topics, covering anything and the de-emphasis on developing and
you might be interested in. transmitting social knowledge. If these
Big conferences, if you already know deficits become increasingly important
many of the attendees, give you the to attendees, we can perhaps expect a
opportunity to get together with lots of move toward smaller conferences in the
colleagues or friends at one event. future.
Big conferences can conjure up big
trade shows—all the exhibitors you might
want to visit will be in one place.

Meeting interesting people at conferences

When I attend a traditional conference, I’m fretting about who I’m missing. No, not my family
at home; I’m fretting about missing meeting conference attendees who would be interesting
for me to meet, who I’d love to get to know if only I could figure out who they were. Even if I can
figure out who would be interesting to meet, I then have to find a time and place to meet them,
and I also have to come up with a way to introduce myself.

Each of these concerns—who interests me, when can I meet them, where can I meet them,
and how do I introduce myself—are obstacles to connecting with interesting people at a con-
ference. Unfortunately, as the size of a conference increases, our ability to meet more people
doesn’t improve proportionately. As a result, trying to find new people who share specific
interests at a large general conference is a daunting task.

Saving graces
Over time, many organizers have become aware of the limitations and frustrations of the
traditional conference format, and have, to their credit, attempted to add ways for attendees
to propose sessions and interact outside standard predetermined conference sessions. Three
common formats are poster sessions, birds-of-a-feather sessions, and facilitated small group

34
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

discussions. Although these approaches often appear to be uneasily grafted onto the confer-
ence, they are worth discussing for two reasons: First, they demonstrate the desire of partici-
pants for more control over their conference experience, and second, they show the limitations
of attempting to provide what attendees want while clinging to traditional conference process.
I’ve also added a description of the Gordon Research Conferences, which are designed to min-
imize some of the difficulties posed by the conventional conference format.

Poster sessions
Poster sessions originated at academic conferences as an opportunity for individual attendees
to present their research to other attendees. Presenters stand next to a poster summarizing
their work and present to any interested attendees. Nowadays, poster sessions are frequently
used informally to display general information and invite viewers to ask more detailed ques-
tions of the person who created the poster. Because posters are prepared before the conference,
poster sessions provide a somewhat makeshift method of broadening available content, fol-
lowing the usual teacher-to-student(s) model. Control over content can range from requiring
preapproval for each session to an “anything goes” philosophy. The sessions are often held
during meal breaks, though they sometimes merit their own conference time slot.

Adding a poster session to a conference program is a tacit acknowledgment that attendees

possess potentially useful expertise and experience not available through the traditional con-
ference sessions. A poster session offers participants a genuine opportunity to contribute,
reducing the customary distinction between presenters and audience. Because the session
supplies an intimate, usually one-to-one, interactive format, it provides useful feedback to the
poster presenters: Are conference-goers interested in what I have to say, and, if so, what do
they think about it? At a large conference, poster sessions may be the most practical method
to expand the available content beyond the fi xed program.

Unfortunately, poster sessions are a fairly crude way to democratize and extend a conference.
They require would-be presenters to create session materials and dedicate conference time to
standing by their display with no guarantee of interaction with other attendees. It can be dis-
concerting to make this commitment and receive limited attention. Even when like-minded
souls appear, they may well arrive at different times, offering little opportunity for a group
discussion on the topic. Given these limitations, it’s not surprising that poster sessions have a
reputation as second-class presentation opportunities for lower status attendees.

Birds-of-a-feather sessions
Birds-of-a-feather sessions, commonly known as BOFs, offer attendees an opportunity to cre-
ate their own session on a topic of their choosing. Typically, the conference organizers supply a

35
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Gordon Research Conferences

The Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) • Presentations are short (15–20 minutes)
started in 1931 as a way to “bring together with time scheduled for discussion, and
a group of scientists working at the frontier discussant leaders provided.
of research of a particular area and permit • Invited speakers are encouraged to stay
them to discuss in depth all aspects of the for discussions after their presentation.
most recent advances in the field and to (They don’t receive expense reimburse-
stimulate new directions for research.” ment unless they stay for at least 24
Currently the organization holds 150–200 hours after their talk!)
conferences annually. The GRC model
These features promote active involve-
has several attractive aspects that mini-
ment by attendees, confidentiality (through
mize some of the unwelcome effects of
the privacy requirement), and the flatten-
traditional conference process that I’ve
ing of hierarchy (by keeping speakers
described in this chapter:
around and offering plenty of time for
• Conferences are small (generally fewer informal discussions).
than a hundred participants). Peer conferences, by contrast, provide
• Attendees are expected to participate a more flexible conference format, and are
actively and meaningfully in discussions. less narrowly focused and more tolerant
• All information presented and discussed of a wide range of attendee experience.
at the conference is considered private. Nevertheless, the GRC conferences, now
• Presentations are held in the mornings in existence for over 75 years, provide an
and evenings, with afternoons available excellent strategy to address weaknesses
for informal discussions. of conventional conference process.

time or place for attendees to announce or post discussion subjects. The resulting sessions are
usually scheduled during meals or evening free time.

BOFs are valuable additions to traditional conferences. Because they normally use a discussion
format, they provide relevant, small group, interactive experiences. BOFs allow people to find
and informally connect with others who share their interests, broadening their circle of con-
ference acquaintances in the process.

Although BOFs appear to offer a conference format that is responsive to real-time attendee
needs, like poster sessions they sometimes provide an inferior and frequently frustrating
experience. Crucially, apart from providing a way for BOFs to self-announce, they are not
otherwise supported by conference staff. As a result, it’s hard to know how well attended a
proposed BOF will be. Sign-up sheets are a useful but not reliable indicator of popularity.

36
 CHAPTER 3 • What’s Wrong with Traditional Conferences?

More than once I’ve had to decide between attending an evening BOF or going out to dinner
with a group of friends, chosen the BOF, and waited around only to have one other person
turn up. Another consequence of keeping BOFs outside the traditional conference support
structure is that any facilitation is strictly ad hoc. This can lead to BOFs being hijacked by a
minority of vocal extroverts who may take over or steer the discussion in ways that a majority
present don’t want.

As we’ll see later in Chapter 7, the peer conference process optimizes the BOF experience, provid-
ing time, space, and support for relevant, interactive conference sessions.

Small group discussions

My interviewees often cited the inclusion of small group discussions, usually called discussant
or breakout sessions, as the saving grace or highlight of traditional conferences. It’s clear that
many participants hunger for small, focused group discussions of pertinent topics, and it’s sad
that most traditional conferences don’t set aside time for such sessions. Small group discus-
sions, usually run by a panel of experts or conference speakers, are interactive sessions where
the central goal is to promote and support discussion between attendees. These sessions may
be tightly focused around a set of papers or presentations, or loosely structured around one or
more introductory themes.

For small group discussions to be successful, they must be well facilitated, and the topics and
questions must excite and be pertinent to the people present. When these conditions occur,
small group discussions are like peer sessions, the core of a peer conference. But when a small
group discussion’s predetermined topic or focus does not match attendees’ needs, the resulting
session disappoints. As we’ll see, a peer conference avoids this outcome by generating the best
topics to spark attendee interest and involvement.

37
 CHAP TER
The Peer Conference
5 Alternative

S
o far in this book I’ve supplied a steady stream of tantalizing hints and imputed claims
about this thing I call a peer conference. In this chapter I’ll explain in general terms
how peer conferences overcome the deficiencies of traditional conferences that I’ve
previously cataloged. The following three chapters cover peer conference process in more detail.

Definition, assumptions, end goals, and process goals

Let’s start with the definition and basic premises of peer conferences.

Defi nition
A peer conference is a set of process tools used by a group of people with a common interest
who want the experience of a conference that’s intimate, meaningful, and useful to each per-
son who attends.

Assumptions
We attendees collectively:

• Possess a tremendous variety of experience and expertise;

• Create the conference during the conference;
• Own the conference; and
• Value reflecting as a group on our conference experience.

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 CHAPTER 5 • The Peer Conference Alternative

Each of us:

• Affects what happens at our conference, for ourselves and for others;
• Is responsible for our own conference experience;
• Needs to share why we came and what we want to have happen;
• May have experience or expertise that is valuable to other attendees;
• Has something to learn from other attendees;
• Longs to invest our energy in things that matter; and
• Values reflecting personally on our conference experience.

Sharing our experience, expertise, and stories with our peers feels good.

When the right process is provided, the right content and the right way to share it will
emerge.

End goals
The primary goal of a peer conference is to create the best possible conference for each
individual attendee.

A peer conference maximizes participant interaction and connectedness.

Community-building and future group initiatives are not primary goals of a peer confer-
ence; rather, they are welcome potential outcomes.

Process goals
We create the best possible conference for each individual attendee by:

• Creating an environment:
– where attendees get introduced to one another;
– where it is safe for attendees to share experience, expertise, and stories;
– that encourages interaction, despite differences in individuals’ experience and
expertise;
– that encourages attendees to stretch and grow; and
– that encourages and supports fun.
• Providing flexible structure that allows:
– learning about other attendees;
– uncovering individual attendee needs;
– uncovering available experience and expertise; and
– matching discovered needs with discovered experience and expertise.

57
PART I • Reengineering the Conference

• Offering appropriately sized sessions to support conferring as well as presenting.

• Providing facilities, time, a schedule, and facilitation for the sessions that attendees
want.
• Holding our conference in enjoyable surroundings.
• Providing supported opportunities for individual and group reflection, introspec-
tion, and looking forward.
• Supporting group growth and the appropriate creation of new activities and events.

A peer conference provides just the right amount of process, structure, and support, and then
gets out of the way.

What subject and how long?

Here are some broad answers to basic questions about the scope of peer conferences.

A peer conference can be about anything—a specific subject, a broad topic, an issue—that
captures the interest of a group of people. Many peer conferences focus on professional
themes, but peer conference process works just as well with community-based issues or
personal interests. Here are a few examples of peer conference topics:

• Municipality facilities maintenance

• Building sustainability in our community
• Beer brewing
• Pharmacy management
• Providing childcare ser vices
• Credit counseling using volunteers
• Amateur photography
• Working to reduce discrimination and prejudice in XYZ county

While some go to traditional conferences because it’s expected of them or required, peer con-
ferences are for people with a personal interest in the conference topic. Peer conference process
encourages and supports engagement, guiding formerly passive attendees into active partici-
pation. As with any conference, an attendee who is disengaged or distracted may receive little
benefit from the event, but a peer conference has a much higher likelihood of capturing the
interest of even the most jaded conferee.

Peer conferences are small by traditional standards, with between 20 and 100 attendees. The
initial roundtable process is practicable with up to 60 participants per roundtable session.
When necessary, two simultaneous roundtables can be used without significantly impacting
the intimacy and interactivity that exists at the center of a successful peer conference.

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 CHAPTER 5 • The Peer Conference Alternative

Developing the necessary trust, knowledge of other participants, and resulting connectedness,
as well as supplying adequate opportunities for introspection and reflection at a conference
takes time. Although I have held peer conferences in a single day, such events invariably feel
rushed. Using a schedule that starts in the afternoon and lasts at least until the end of the fol-
lowing day provides the right amount of time for a short conference. At the upper end, peer
conferences can run as long as three and a half days, providing ample time for attendees to
explore multiple issues around the central topic.

An introduction to peer conference process

While peer conference process is certainly not infallible, I’ve found it offers a much better
chance than a traditional conference of turning a conference attendee into a conference
participant. Here’s the big picture.

Think of a peer conference as a process, not an event—the how of a peer conference generates
the what. Out of the process comes relevant learning, meaningful connections and inter-
actions, and, sometimes, the creation or strengthening of a community.

A peer conference is a way for people to connect with each other around a common topic, face
to face, in ways that are maximally useful and meaningful for each person. Peer conference
process facilitates participants’ connections by providing a supportive framework in which
they can occur, leaving the nature and details of the connections to the people involved.

Providing a supportive framework without encroaching on the specifics of the interactions is

important because people have such a wide variety of reasons for wanting connection. They
may want to:

• Learn
• Meet other people who share their interests
• Get answers to questions
• Share useful or important information with others
• Build a community of people with whom they have something in common
• Build community around social or political action
• Grow
• Have fun
• Reflect on what they have learned and shared

By focusing on process that facilitates these reasons for connections, rather than a prescribed
set of content-driven sessions, peer conferences free participants to ask for and get what they
want from the event.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Peer conference process components

Peer conference process is divided into three phases, which I’ve imaginatively labeled “Begin-
nings,” “Middles,” and “Endings.”

Beginnings
The beginnings of a peer conference are rooted in its opening session, the roundtable, which
early on establishes a common framework for a safe and intimate conference environment,
and then provides equal time for each attendee in turn to share his answers to three questions:
how he came to the conference, what he wants to have happen during the event, and what
experience or expertise he has that others might find useful.

Feeling safe is a prerequisite for attendees to be open to intimate sharing and making connec-
tions. So a peer conference starts by supplying a set of ground rules that define a supportive
and safe environment. After these rules are explained, attendees commit to them, establishing
a secure and comfortable environment for what is to come.

The roundtable is the only time when each attendee is asked and expected to share publicly.
Roundtable sharing sets up the necessary conditions for subsequent interactions and connec-
tions between participants, and is important for many reasons. It makes a clean break with
the convention that at conferences most people listen and few speak, setting up an alternative
paradigm for the rest of the conference. It gives everyone the experience of speaking to the
group, allowing people who might rarely or never open their mouths discover that it’s not as
bad as they feared (hey, they think, at least everyone has to share). It provides participants with
the rich stew of ideas, themes, desires, and questions that is bubbling in peoples’ minds. And
it exposes the collective resources of the group—the expertise and experience that may be
brought to bear on the concerns and issues that have been expressed.

As you might expect, during the sharing at a roundtable, participants pick up a great deal of
useful information about other attendees, as well as the range and intensity of topics and
questions on peoples’ minds. What is less obvious is what happens as attendees experience
and practice sharing while supported by the framework of the conference ground rules—the
intimacy, respect, comfort, and excitement that develops as they begin to make meaningful
connections with the people they are with.

Middles
Most of the time that attendees are together is spent in the Middles of a peer conference. The
Middles include a set of short processes that turn the information and connections gleaned
from the roundtable into a schedule of appropriate conference sessions, which are followed by
the sessions themselves.

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 CHAPTER 5 • The Peer Conference Alternative

Peer conferences use a publish-and-filter model to determine conference sessions. First,

attendees suggest session topics, posting them on blank sign-up sheets displayed in a common
area. Second, people sign their names under titles of sessions they are interested in attending.
They also indicate whether they could potentially help with a session, perhaps as a facilitator,
presenter, or scribe.

Finally, a group of volunteers uses the sign-up sheets to determine the most popular viable
topics and the appropriate session form. The chosen sessions are then scheduled, and the
resulting conference program circulated to attendees.

Unlike traditional conference sessions, peer conference sessions are informal. Because session
topics are determined at the conference, subsequent presentations or panels are nearly always
ad hoc events. But informal doesn’t mean disorganized. To support good process at peer con-
ference sessions, all attendees receive a concise handout that explains how sessions work, and
every session is assigned a facilitator.

Endings
Traditional conferences rarely provide useful closure, at best offering a symbolic dinner or a
hopeful-incentive-to-stay-to-the-end keynote speaker. In contrast, peer conferences offer two
closing sessions that build seamlessly on what happened during the conference.

The personal introspective closing session has two parts, the first private, the second public. To
start, attendees answer five questions that encourage individual reflection on their conference
experience and the development of plans for consequent action. Then, attendees are given the
option to share some or all of their realizations and plans with the other attendees. An intro-
spective’s personal work fashions a natural bridge between attendees’ conference experiences
and their post-conference life and work, while the subsequent public sharing further enriches
and deepens group bonds.

The second closing section, the group spective, gives participants an opportunity to discuss the
conference and explore appropriate options for future group activities. Because every group of
people has unique needs, desires, and energy, group spectives vary between events more than
any other peer conference session, requiring careful facilitation using a toolbox of group pro-
cess techniques described in detail in Part III of this book. Group spectives offer participants
the chance to create their own collective future, extending the reach of the conference beyond
the moment when people leave.

Unlike the close of a traditional conference, these two sessions provide support for building a
coherent transition from the formal end of the peer conference to individual and collective
future actions and events.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Graduate student story

I’ve been a teacher at various times in my life, including a 10-year spell teaching college-
level computer science. I’ve never had any teacher training. I was a poor teacher when I
started; I’ve gotten better over the years, though there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

Conferences are one of the principal conduits for adult continuing education and learn-
ing. I’m talking about teaching in this chapter because, not surprisingly, there’s significant
carryover between the way we’ve been taught in school and the way we expect to receive
knowledge at traditional conferences.

Sitting on a bookshelf in my office is a large blue cloth hardcover book. I wrote every word
in it, and painstakingly hand-lettered every mathematical equation it contains with a
Rapidograph pen. On the basis of this book, and a two-hour thesis defense, at the age of
25 I was considered fit to be awarded a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics.

I have a confession to make.

When I wrote that book I didn’t understand everything I wrote.

How did this happen?

During my first two years as a postgraduate student I attended various particle physics
courses. These classes were small, with fewer than 10 students, even though they included
graduates from several London universities. Because I had transferred from another
school, I didn’t know any of the other students, and didn’t socialize with them much. We
sat in tiny classrooms, while a harried professor took us through what we were supposed
to know in order to be awarded an advanced degree.

We’ve all had the experience of listening to a teacher in class and not understanding
something he has said. Perhaps the teacher asks if there are any questions. At the moment
you have to decide—do you admit that you’re lost and ask the teacher to explain again,
or do you say nothing? If you say nothing, is it because you are convinced that you will
never understand what is going on, or are you hoping that all will become clear shortly,
when the lesson continues?

In those days it was rare for me to give up on anything I was being taught. On the other
hand, I was reluctant to display my apparent ignorance when I couldn’t understand
something during a class. In my experience, I would either “get it” later on, or nobody
would understand and the teacher would eventually discover this and assume he hadn’t
been clear himself. For over 20 years this approach had worked for me. But toward the
end of my second year I was understanding less and less of a mathematics course I was

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 CHAPTER 5 • The Peer Conference Alternative

taking. The professor seemed to be going through the motions—he asked few questions,
and there was no homework. Elementary particle physicists are either mathematicians or
experimentalists, and I was the latter, working on a large-scale neutrino experiment at
CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, so my lack of mathematical under-
standing was not affecting my research work. But the experience was disconcerting. And,
as the semester went on, the percentage of class material I understood gradually declined.

One day, our teacher announced that we would be studying Green’s Functions, a tech-
nique used to solve certain kinds of equations. After the first 20 minutes of the class I
realized that I understood nothing of what was being said, and that I was at a crucial
turning point. If I kept quiet, it would be too late to claim ignorance later, and it was
likely I would not understand anything taught for the remainder of the semester. If I
spoke up, however, I was likely to display my weak comprehension of everything that had
been covered so far.

Looking around, I noticed that the other students seemed to be having a similar experi-
ence. Everyone looked worried. No one said a word.

The class ended and the professor left. I plucked up my courage and asked my classmates
if they were having trouble. We quickly discovered, to our general relief, that none of us
understood the class. What should we do? Somehow, without much discussion, we
decided to say nothing to the teacher.

The class only ran a few more weeks, and the remaining time became a pro forma ritual.
Did our teacher know he had lost us? I think he probably did. I think he remained quiet
for his own reasons, perhaps uncaring about his success at educating us, perhaps ashamed
that he had lost us.

When I didn’t speak up, I chose to enter a world where I hid my lack of understanding
from others, a world where I was faking it.

For the next two years I analyzed experimental results and compared our findings with
theoretical physicists’ predictions. I understood the experiments, but not all the mathe-
matics. And that’s why I didn’t understand some of those laboriously scribed equations
in my thesis.

This confession of mine doesn’t affect the scientific significance of the work I did. The
mathematicians who supplied me the equations understood them, and I was comparing
their predictions to experimental results that I understood. What is significant is that
I chose to sit through meaningless classes rather than admitting my ignorance. That
(continued on following page)

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

mathematics course failed to provide me with a workable learning environment, not

because it didn’t contain useful content, but because its structure and context made it
easier and safer for me to be silent.

Probably you’ve had a similar experience; a sinking feeling as you realize that you don’t
understand something that you’re apparently expected to understand, in a context,
perhaps a traditional conference, where nonresponsiveness is the norm. It’s a brave
soul indeed who will speak out, who is prepared to admit to her classmates, teacher, or
conference presenter that she doesn’t get what’s going on. Did you? Do you?

A community of learners
At a well-planned traditional conference, conference planners invest significant time and
effort before the conference attempting to determine who can potentially provide an “above
average” contribution on the conference subject. These people are asked to be presenters and
panelists. Everyone else who attends becomes the audience. By the time the conference starts,
this distinction between the knowledge “haves” and
the “have-nots” has been locked into the conference “Communities of practice
program. are groups of people who
In contrast, peer conferences make no such a priori share a concern or a
assumptions about who is a teacher and who is a learner. passion for something
Rather, they promote an environment in which teaching they do and learn how
and learning are ever-fluid activities; the teacher at one to do it better as they
moment is a learner the next. Sometimes, everyone in interact regularly.”
an interaction is learning simultaneously as social —Etienne Wenger
knowledge is discovered, constructed, and shared.

Peer conferences aren’t built on the expectation that every attendee will significantly contrib-
ute to the event. There are always participants who have much to offer, intermingled with
those who, for whatever reason, add little to the communal pool of relevant knowledge and
experience. Rather, peer conference process provides the opportunity for anyone to contrib-
ute, perhaps unexpectedly, but ultimately, usefully.

Peer conferences are tools for what educational theorist Etienne Wenger calls communities of
practice, as defined by three key elements: a shared domain of interest; a group whose mem-
bers interact and learn together; and the development of a shared body of practice, knowledge,
and resources. Such entities can take many forms: artists who rent a communal space to work

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 CHAPTER 5 • The Peer Conference Alternative

and grow together, programmers linked online for the purpose of creating or improving
public domain software, or a group of people with a common professional interest meeting
regularly over lunch to swap ideas and experiences.

In my experience, peer conferences are high-quality incubators for communities of practice—

they provide a wonderful way for a group of people to explore the potential for creating an
ongoing community. The majority of peer conferences that I have facilitated have turned into
regular events, but, even when this does not happen, a conference inevitably leads to new long-
term relationships and communal projects of one kind or another. Conversely, communities
of practice can use regular peer conferences to effectively explore and deepen their collective
learning and intragroup relationships.

An environment for taking risks

Think of the last time you were with a group of people and made a stretch to learn something.
Perhaps you admitted you didn’t understand something someone said, wondering as you did
whether it was obvious to the others present. Perhaps you challenged a viewpoint held by a
majority of the people present. Perhaps you proposed a ten-
tative solution to a problem, laying yourself open to poten-
“Only those who will
tially making a mistake in front of others. These are all
risk going too far can
examples of what I call risky learning.
possibly find out how
Whatever happened, was the learning opportunity greater far one can go.”
compared to safe learning—the passive absorption of pre- —T. S. Eliot. Preface to Transit
sented information? of Venus: Poems by Harry
Crosby. Black Sun Press, 1931
Traditional conferences discourage risky learning. Who but
a supremely confident person (or that rare iconoclast)
stands up at the end of a presentation to several hundred people and says they don’t under-
stand or disagree with something that was said? Who will ask a controversial question, share a
problem, or state a controversial point of view, fearing it may affect their professional status,
job prospects, or current employment with others in the audience? People who brave these
concerns are more likely to be exhibiting risky behavior than practicing risky learning.

Peer conferences provide a safe and supportive environment for risky learning in several ways.

First, and perhaps most important, is the commitment attendees make at the very beginning
of the conference to keep confidential what is shared. This simple communal promise gener-
ates a level of group intimacy and revelation seldom experienced at a conventional conference.
As a result, participants are comfortable speaking what’s on their minds, unencumbered by
worries that their sharing may be made public outside the event.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Second, because peer conferences are small, there

is an increased chance that attendees will be the “Learning is also a risk-taking
sole representatives of their organizations and business since as we learn we
will feel comfortable fruitfully sharing sensitive question our past knowledge
personal information to their peers, knowing that and even our previous attitudes,
what is revealed won’t filter back to coworkers. beliefs, values and emotions so
Even when others are present from the same that teachers need to provide a
institution, the intimacy of a peer conference safe environment for risks to be
usually helps to develop amity and increased taken. It is crucial to all adult
understanding between them. learners that they feel safe and
supported as they launch out
Third, peer conference process makes no presup- into the deep and learn new
positions about who will act in traditional teacher things.”
or student roles during the event, leading to fluid —Peter Jarvis. Adult Education and
roles and learning driven by group and individ- Lifelong Learning: Theory and Practice.
ual desires and abilities to satisfy real attendee Routledge, 2004
needs and wishes. In an environment where it’s
expected that anyone may be a teacher or learner
from moment to moment, participants overcome inhibitions about asking naive questions or
sharing controversial opinions.

Finally, peer conference facilitators model peer conference behavior. When they don’t know
the answer to a question they say “I don’t know.” When they need help they ask for it. When
they make mistakes they are accountable rather than defensive. Consistently modeling appro-
priate conduct fosters a conference environment conducive to engaged, risky learning.

Ultimately, each attendee decides whether to stretch. But peer conferences, by supplying opti-
mum conditions for risky learning, make it easier for participants to learn effectively.

Ask, don’t tell

Right before each one of my early peer conferences, the same disturbing thought ran through
my mind. What if everyone came expecting a traditional conference program to be given to
them, just like every other conference they’d ever attended, and no one volunteered topics they
wanted to talk or hear about? I was concerned enough about this embarrassing possibility to
ask steering committee members to think of presentations they could give if attendees failed to
have any ideas of their own.

After a few years I stopped worrying. No one showed difficulty coming up with a list of topics
they’d like to learn about or discuss. In fact, just about everybody seemed to be surprised

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 CHAPTER 5 • The Peer Conference Alternative

and pleased to be asked. And what’s more, even when their desires
were not fulfilled at the subsequent conference (no, you really can’t “Many times
please everyone), their disappointment was clearly mollified by the people do not
information they received about why their coveted session(s) didn’t voice their
take place. expectations.”
—Virginia Satir et al.
It’s not surprising that giving attendees the opportunity to ask for The Satir Model.
what they want to have happen is an option conspicuously absent Science and
from traditional conferences, which have no way to follow up on Behavior Books,
1991
the suggestions and requests that would be made. Sadly, instead,
conference organizers tell attendees what they will be getting. In
contrast, a peer conference encourages attendees to share what they want to have happen, and
then provides a supportive process that generates appropriate sessions on the popular topics.

In my experience, Virginia Satir was right—people often don’t express their expectations. But
we needn’t make it any harder for them by not even asking what they want.

Rich interpersonal process

Here’s what happens interpersonally officially at a peer conference: Participants discover
and share the interests, needs, and knowledge of each attendee; the conference supplies tools
for people to determine via a shared public space what will happen during the conference;
attendees generate, staff, and participate in the resulting sessions; and finally, the conference
provides group sessions for private and public individual and group reflection and future
initiatives.

Imagine what happens unofficially! “Conversation is king.

Content is just something
I am fascinated with how much interactive richness to talk about.”
evolves out of the right amount of structure. Business — Cory Doctorow. boingboing.
visionary David Weinberger, in his thought-provoking
book Everything Is Miscellaneous, describes Wikipedia
as a “pragmatic utopian community that begins with a minimum of structure, out of which
emerge social structures as needed.” Like Wikipedia, where a majority of edits are done by
less than two percent of the contributors, but most of the content is created by unregistered
occasional contributors, a peer conference is not pure bottom-up, but contains a mixture of
top-down structure, and bottom-up attendee-driven content.

Similarly, too much structure at a conference leads to excessive formality that gets in the way
of conversations, while too little structure fails to generate the necessary level of personal
information that attendees need to quickly engage in meaningful interactions. I’ve worked on

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

observing and tuning this balance at peer conferences for years. Getting the mix right, sus-
taining it throughout the conference, and ending with sessions that integrate and enrich indi-
vidual and group understanding creates a rich, productive stew of interaction and discovery
that is largely absent from traditional conferences.

Flattening hierarchy
In the previous chapter, I described the benefits of de-emphasizing attendee status at the start
of a conference. Following this intent, a peer conference works to flatten perceived and pro-
claimed hierarchy throughout the event. Ground rules, roundtable process, methods for deter-
mining session topics, even the closing sessions formats are all designed to minimize overt and
covert preconceptions about whether some attendees are more important than others.

Peer conference ground rules fashion a confidential environment where freedom to ask
questions, be they specific or fundamental, is made clear and agreed to by all participants.
Confidentiality removes the fear of extra-conference repercussions, making it easier for the
unconfident attendee to ask questions. Specifically agreeing that everyone has the freedom to
talk about what they want to talk about, including feelings, and that everyone can ask about
anything puzzling, lowers self-imposed barriers to bringing up “stupid” questions and topics
(which, it frequently turns out, many of the attendees want to ask or discuss).

The roundtable reinforces this initial message. By allocating the same amount of time for each
attendee to speak to everyone present, and by having people speak in no particular order, the
roundtable implies that everybody’s needs, desires, experience, and expertise are important,
and that the conference is about learning and sharing, things of which we are all capable,
whether newcomers to or 30-year veterans of the conference’s subject.

When it comes to suggesting session topics at a peer conference, everyone has an equal oppor-
tunity to publish their ideas for all to see. Democratic voting, tempered only by feasibility,
drives the selection of sessions. Anyone can volunteer to help analyze the votes and organize
and schedule the resulting peer sessions.

Peer conference sessions are rarely large, and are invariably informal, with questions wel-
comed. Small sessions do much to reduce conversational barriers between attendees with
different levels of knowledge and understanding.

Finally, sharing at the personal introspective provides a surprisingly intimate window on

attendees’ realizations, conclusions, and plans. When, in a single session, a seasoned CEO
states that he hasn’t been treating his staff well and needs to change his behavior in some
areas; an industry veteran announces that the conference has helped her decide to take a whole
new direction in her professional life; and a novice communicates his touching new-found

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 CHAPTER 5 • The Peer Conference Alternative

excitement about the conference, attendees are drawn closer and status is the last thing on
anyone’s mind.

Creating community
Creating community is not a primary goal of peer conferences, but rather a delightful bonus
outcome. Peer conferences usually evoke intimate communities-of-the-moment, but they also
often lead to the formation of long-term associations. While there’s no guarantee that a peer
conference will be the initial seed that blossoms into a lasting community, about half of the
peer conferences I’ve facilitated have led to some kind of repeat engagements for a significant
percentage of the original group.

Because peer conferences de-emphasize attendee status, the nature of any resulting commu-
nity is likely to be more inclusive and less cliquish than communities that form around tradi-
tional conferences. The peer conference atmosphere permeates attendee interactions outside
the conference, making it easier for people to ask other participants for advice and support.

The key to getting important questions asked—

answering attendee meta-questions
For a conference to be able to answer attendee questions effectively, attendees must feel com-
fortable asking questions in the first place. There are a couple of conditions that, if satisfied,
will greatly increase the likelihood of this occurring.

First, the conference has to create an environment that encourages attendee questions and
supplies ample opportunity for asking them. The opening session of a peer conference, the
roundtable, explicitly gives attendees permission to ask any questions they have and offers a
safe environment that encourages them to do so.

Second, we can help attendees overcome one of the biggest obstacles to making meaningful
connections with others—getting started. To make it easy to strike up conversations with
the right people, we can supply attendees with the answers to meta-questions about the other
participants and the conference environment. Here are some examples of early conference
meta-questions:

• Who else is here?

• Who might I be interested in talking to?
• How can I start a conversation with them?
• Who here may be able to answer my questions?
• What are other people interested in talking about?

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

TABLE 5.1 • Meta-questions and the Corresponding Peer Conference Session(s)

META-QUESTION PEER CONFERENCE SESSION

Who else is here? Roundtable

Who might I be interested in talking to? Roundtable and peer sessions

How can I start a conversation with them? Roundtable

Who here may be able to answer my questions? Roundtable and peer sessions

What are other people interested in talking about? Roundtable and peer session sign-up

Where can I talk about what I want to talk about? Peer sessions

What have I learned? Personal introspective

What might I want to change in the future? Personal introspective

What might we want to do in the future? Group spective

Unlike traditional conferences, peer conferences offer unique opportunities for attendees to
get these questions answered. Table 5.1 lists attendee meta-questions, paired with the peer
conference session or sessions that provide corresponding meta-answers.

Answers to these meta-questions give attendees the information they need—the right people
to talk to, interests in common, and conversational openers—for asking their specific, topic-
related questions during the peer sessions. At every peer conference I’ve run, attendees have
commented on the ease of getting to know the participants they find interesting and reward-
ing to meet.

Synergy
It’s difficult to convey the cumulative effect of the peer
conference components. A safe and welcoming environ- “They speak only of
ment, introductions to the other attendees, discovering such a Synergie, or
what people want to talk about and what they know cooperation, as makes
about, the ability to create a conference that fits personal men differ from a
needs, and the opportunities to reflect on what happened sensless stock . . .”
individually and as a group—the combination of all these —Peter Heylin. Historia quinqu-
factors creates the conditions where wonderful things articularis. London, 1660
happen for attendees.

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A peer conference is synergistic; greater than the sum of its parts. In the same way that a good
book’s plot, characters, and writing draw in and engage readers, a peer conference contains
just the right ingredients to draw in and engage attendees. When people are given the permis-
sion, tools, and support to fashion a conference that is just right for them, they quickly become
immersed in a flow of ideas, learning, and connection that builds on itself, creating not only
fruitful personal experience but also an infectious group energy. Such is the power of synergy
that permeates a peer conference—my wish for you is that you get to experience it for yourself.

Combining peer and traditional conference sessions

I’m pragmatic, not a purist. Including peer and traditional sessions can combine the best fea-
tures of both conference models into one event. The trick is to restrict your traditional sessions
to presenters and topics that you are confident will be dynamite for your conference.

This requires a willingness to scrutinize proposed conventional presentations or keynotes for

excellence, and avoiding any quota for conventional sessions. If you can get a fantastic keynote
speaker who can address a hot topic at your conference, book her. If no choices for a keynote
excite you, don’t have one. Similarly, review proposals for traditional presentations or panels,
and don’t worry about not having enough fi xed sessions. A peer conference will soak up the
time available—more time means there’s time for another round of peer sessions.

The advantages of this approach are twofold: First, advertising specific speakers and presenta-
tions will attract attendees who prefer to know in advance that at least some of the conference
program will be of interest, and, second, taking comfort in knowing that the fixed sessions
you offer are of high quality and likely to be enjoyed by participants.

Novelty
I have been scared of doing new things for most of my life. When I first started college teach-
ing, I was a nervous wreck, preparing every lesson meticulously for hours. I was scared I would
not know the answer to some question, scared that I would get confused and look like an idiot,
scared that my students would discover that I didn’t know everything about my subject. It
took about five years before I started to relax, discovering that I could make mistakes and not
know all the answers, and still feel okay about myself.

The same thing happened when I first started facilitating conferences. I was anxious in front
of the assembled attendees—would I be able to explain the conference process clearly and
facilitate effectively, or would people be baffled and frustrated, and leave?

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

These days I’m relaxed about teaching and conference facilitation. It’s not because I have mas-
tered my subject and approach—on the contrary, I learn every time I teach, train, or facilitate.
Rather, time has built familiarity with my self-knowledge and self-confidence. I know, more
or less, my strengths and weaknesses and am comfortable with them.

But this has taken me years.

When you go to a conference that you haven’t attended before, you’ll usually feel anxious on
arrival. It’s normal to feel somewhat awkward or embarrassed to be among a bunch of strang-
ers, some of whom are gaily chatting away with each other while you, knowing no one, wonder
how to strike up a conversation. People suppress these feelings at conventional conferences,
because they believe they should project a “professional” appearance that avoids the display
of emotions considered negative, like fear or anger.

People come to conferences with questions. A traditional conference provides, primarily, a

framework for answering attendees’ questions about content, the topics covered at the confer-
ence. By reading the published conference program, people can get some idea of what topics
are, ostensibly, going to be covered. But, as we’ve seen, attendees have many other kinds of
questions, and a traditional conference has no direct means to provide the answers they need.

A peer conference allows novelty, in both structure and content. If attendees want to hold a
session with an unusual format—a performance, say, or an impromptu simulation, or a three-
hour presentation—then conference organizers will make every effort to “make it so.” Creat-
ing such a conference schedule is challenging, but the work is made easier by the knowledge
that this is what attendees want.

The culture of a peer conference embodies flexibility, which in turn makes it easy for attendees
to suggest and carry out novel ideas. Sometimes, one year’s amusing novelty turns into a
quirky and beloved annual tradition—the annual softball game or the midnight swim in the
nearest available body of water. I like it when that happens.

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 CHAP TER

6 Beginnings

Connections
Since 1978 I have lived in Marlboro, Vermont, a town of sixty square miles and about a thou-
sand residents. Today I drove eight miles to downtown Brattleboro to help run a raffle booth
for the local United Way during the monthly
Gallery Walk, an evening for artists to display
their work. Standing at the intersection of Main
“Of all the domains in which I
and High Streets, I saw a continual stream of
have traced the consequences
acquaintances. As they passed by we exchanged
of social capital, in none is the
smiles, nods, sometimes a hand raised in greet-
importance of social connected-
ing or a few words exchanged. Some people
ness so well established as in the
stopped and we talked for a while. The weather
case of health and well-being.”
was warm and pleasant, and no one seemed in —Robert Putnam. Bowling Alone.
Simon & Schuster, 2000
any kind of hurry. Much of my enjoyment came
from the serendipity of whom I might next see.

When I moved to Marlboro 30 years ago I knew no one in this part of Vermont. My connec-
tions with the people I greeted today spring from many different facets of my life. Some live in
Marlboro, where I met them over the years through town functions, or because their kids went
to school with mine. Others I ran into through my consulting work, or via community events
my family attended or helped to organize. A few I knew through parties at friends’ houses, or
perhaps a chance conversation at the local food coop. These days it’s unusual for me to go any-
where locally and not bump into people I know.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

My experience of community is very important to me. Meeting other people nourishes an

essential need I have, the need for human connection. My existing connections, the common-
alities we have already discovered, give me an opening, an introduction to possibilities that
may follow. I am comfortable being alone; in fact I need regular solitude for thinking, work-
ing, learning, and relaxation. But I am rejuvenated, stretched, and sparked by the people
connections, whether casual or deep, that I have made and that I continue to delightedly
explore.

Most of us have chance encounters with others every day, especially in a big city where
you’re perpetually surrounded by hundreds of people whenever you’re in a public space. But
in a city it’s rare to ever meet again the stranger whose eyes met yours yesterday in a crowded
bookstore. One of the reasons I love living in a rural community is that it’s very likely I’ll run
into acquaintances when I go into town, pick up my mail at the local post office, or join a
yoga class.

I believe that the great majority of people, like me, hunger for connection with others. Without
it, our lives suffer. Indeed, Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, his sobering opus on social
change in America, states that about half the observed decline in life satisfaction among adult
Americans over the last 50 years “is associated with declines in social capital: lower marriage
rates and decreasing connectedness to friends and community.” And the sociologist James
House tells us that “the magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with
that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors.”

Traditional conferences—content over connection

So, why, when we hold a conference in our culture—an occasion when we bring together
people with a common interest in a subject—do we place such little emphasis on the potential
for connection with our fellow conferees? After all, we have the ideal requisite for enjoying
each other’s company—we all share a common interest! Why, then, are traditional conference
sessions structured to fill us with content from the few, limiting interaction with our peers?
Why are the opportunities for developing connections relegated to the gaps in the conference
schedule, the “informal” time when we are not in sessions together?

I can think of a couple of reasons for this sad state of affairs, and I’m sure there are others.
First, as Jerry Weinberg reminds us: “Things are the way they are because they got that way.”
It’s my observation that conferences mirror the structure of their professional origins. As orga-
nizations or professions develop hierarchies of power and status—consultants/practitioners/
interns in medicine, or professors/lecturers/postdocs/postgrads in academia, or president/
vice-president/manager/staff in business, for example—conferences for these groups tend to
reflect these hierarchies. How do we publicly display the status of a profession’s heads? By
singling them out as presenters at the profession’s conferences.

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 CHAPTER 6 • Beginnings

I am not making a value judgment about the worth of publicly recognizing or taking advan-
tage of anyone’s mastery of a topic or field. Clearly, attendees benefit when they are presented
with cutting-edge information, unavailable elsewhere, from leading experts. But when confer-
ence sessions are used to announce or confirm status of individuals in the profession, this
leads to session formats—predetermined keynotes, presentations, or panels—designed to
emphasize the contributions of the folks at the top. Such formats highlight what a few have to
say at the expense of session formats that can strengthen connections between all attendees.

There’s another reason why we cling to one-to-many session formats at traditional confer-
ences. Unless you’ve been attending the same annual conference for years, you probably won’t
know much, if anything, about most of the other attendees. Unfortunately, a traditional con-
ference gives you little if any opportunity to readily discover kindred spirits. So when a con-
ventional conference attempts to use more inclusive session formats, like discussion groups
where people have opportunities to make individual connections, participants don’t have the
information they need—either to decide whether it’s worth joining a particular discussion
group or to easily make connections with attendees at the session. This makes such sessions
difficult to carry off successfully.

Building meaningful connections into the conference process

Unlike traditional conferences, creating an environment that encourages and supports the
building of meaningful connections between attendees is a key goal of every peer conference.
How can we do this?

Think about the conditions I needed to build my web of local connections over the past 30
years. There were two fundamental requirements. I needed opportunities to discover and meet
like-minded people, and I needed reasons or excuses to fall into conversation with them.

We don’t have 30 years to build connections at a conference. We have, at most, a few days
together, perhaps a few minutes of potential interaction with each attendee. So how can we
best build the above requirements into our conference process?

Whatever we do, it should happen quickly, and at the beginning of the conference. No waiting
to try to meet people during session breaks. If we’re going to be proactive about fostering con-
nection, let’s start right at the beginning of the conference to maximize the opportunity.

How do we discover like-minded people? We need an opportunity to ask them what we want
to know and hear their answers. Their answers inform us about interests and experiences we
share, commonalities that will provide openings for us to engage with them.

Suppose we could create an initial conference session where we could ask everyone present
what we wanted to know about them. What kind of questions should we ask?

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

We need open-ended questions, questions that are appropriate for any attendee to answer.

We need questions that can be answered safely by an anxious participant, questions for which
there are no wrong answers.

We need questions that cover the past, the present, and the future. Hearing where someone is
coming from tells us about their context and their experience; it gives us baseline information.
Hearing about what they want to do now, at the conference, and in the future, their wishes for
their professional or personal life, tells us about the interests we may share and where their
energy is focused. All of this is valuable information.

We also need to ask about people’s experience or expertise that might be useful to other
attendees. There’s no guarantee that what people tell us will be useful, but if we don’t ask, how
will we know?

It turns out that we can satisfy all of the above requirements with just three questions. These
are the questions we ask every attendee to answer publicly at the first session of a peer confer-
ence—the roundtable, which is the next topic of this book.

The roundtable
By now, you’re probably curious about what happens at a
roundtable and why. This chapter will answer your questions! “How did I get here?”
“What do I want to
Roundtable overview have happen?”
To introduce you to what happens at a roundtable, let’s start
“What experience do
with an overview of the roundtable process, as shown in
I have that others
Figure 6.1.
might find useful?”
Before the actual roundtable starts, the roundtable facilitator: —The three questions that
each attendee answers
publicly at a peer
• Explains the conference ground rules and asks
conference
attendees to commit to them.
• Describes how the roundtable works.
• Explains the three questions listed on a card given to each attendee.

The conference ground rules consist of the Four Freedoms, described below, and rules about
safety and staying on time. Attendees are asked to display their commitment to these ground
rules by standing.

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 CHAPTER 6 • Beginnings

FIGURE 6.1 • Roundtable Process

Explain
the ground
rules

Describe how
the roundtable
works

Explain
the three
questions

Run the
roundtable

Each attendee is given a card printed with the following three questions:

“How did I get here?”

“What do I want to have happen?”
“What experience do I have that others might find useful?”

The roundtable facilitator explains that each attendee in turn will have the opportunity to
answer these questions, gives some examples of answers attendees might provide, and explains
that everyone will get an equal amount of time to share. Attendees are then given a few min-
utes to think about their answers.

After the facilitator provides the guidelines, sharing begins. A timekeeper provides an audible
warning before each person’s time is about to expire, and a second warning when time is up.
As topics and themes emerge, two scribes record them on flip charts or whiteboards.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

History
The first time I used a roundtable at a conference was in 1992 at the first ACCESS (later
edACCESS) conference, held at Marlboro College. I remember that we sat around a solid block
of rectangular tables, in the room the school used for faculty meetings. Hardly anyone present
knew anybody else, so it seemed natural to go around the room and have everyone introduce
themselves, say a little about why they had come, and describe what they were interested in
talking about at the conference. There were only 23 attendees, and we didn’t really have any-
where else to meet, so we ended up running the conference as a series of whole-group discus-
sions that were based on the popular topics brought up during the initial roundtable.

For a number of years, my conference roundtables continued to be structured as a relatively

informal way for attendees to introduce themselves to each other as they saw fit. I let people
take as much or little time as they wanted; this occasionally proved annoying when some
people spoke too long. So I added a fi xed time duration for each attendee, using a roundtable
timekeeper who gave an audible signal when an attendee’s time was up. Later, I found it was
helpful to have the timekeeper provide a second warning signal 30 seconds before an attend-
ee’s time expired.

In 1995, I came up with the idea of providing questions for each attendee to answer during
the roundtable; questions that would both elicit the kind of information needed to build
connections as well as uncover the topics and themes that participants wanted to explore.
I’ll say more about these questions later in this chapter. Initially, I used two questions—
“How did I get here?” and “What do I want to have happen?”—adding a third question,
“What experience do I have that others might find useful?” in 1999.

The value of a roundtable

The first session of a peer conference, the roundtable, serves three broad purposes. First, it
defines and models an active, interactive, and safe conference environment. Second, the
roundtable provides a structured forum for attendees to meet and learn about each other’s
affiliations, interests, experience, and expertise. And third, the session uncovers the topics
that people want to discuss and share, as well as indicating the level of interest in each topic.

A roundtable always begins with a description and explanation of conference ground rules
and then asks attendees to commit to them. I began providing explicit ground rules at the
start of a peer conference when I discovered it led to increased sharing, intimacy, and sense of
connection among participants. These ground rules, which are detailed later in this chapter,
send participants the following powerful messages:

“While you are here, you have the right and opportunity to be heard.”
“Your individual needs and desires are important here.”

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 CHAPTER 6 • Beginnings

“You will help to determine what happens at this conference.”

“At this conference, you can create, together with others, opportunities to learn and to share.”
“What happens here will be kept confidential. You can feel safe here.”

Roundtables provide a structured, nonthreatening way for attendees to learn about each other
early in the conference. During the session, people discover topics that interest others. They
get a sense of the depth of interest in these topics, and they find out who has experiences that
they want to connect with and explore further.

At a conventional conference, people meet and learn about each other slowly, mostly outside
the programmed sessions. A peer conference roundtable introduces every attendee to every
other participant, right at the start of the event. Hearing a little about each person makes it
much easier to introduce yourself to anyone with whom you share a particular interest.

At a roundtable, every person has the same amount of time to share with other attendees. This
flattens the initial conference hierarchy: Any attendee may possess something of value for her
peers, allowing the conference process itself to uncover what experiences are of value to the
people present.

By not making assumptions, either about what content is of value or about who has valuable
content to share, a peer conference roundtable provides a safe environment for participants
to express and explore what is truly of value to them. The practical result of this approach is
remarkable: Valuable topics are uncovered and valuable participants are discovered that were
simply unknown to the conference organizers. This occurs at every roundtable I have facilitated.

Finally, I’ve found that the simple act of starting a conference with structured group sharing
has a profound effect. It provides a powerful, infectious model of interaction and creates an
intimate atmosphere that attendees rarely experience at a traditional conference.

These are some of the benefits of a peer conference roundtable. Let’s go over the details now,
so you can see how a roundtable works, and understand how these benefits arise.

The shape of a roundtable

When I started with roundtables, I didn’t especially care where people sat. As long as we were
all roughly facing each other the setup seemed good to me. Sometimes people came in late,
took a chair and formed a second row around the assembled group. I recall one conference
where people arranged themselves in an irregular shape several rows deep, principally because
the room was too small to hold everyone in a single closed loop of chairs.

Roundtables where people were arranged haphazardly seemed less intense, less focused, than
those where people sat in a more regular fashion. Where people couldn’t see each other, the

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

sense of intimacy in the group was reduced. People were more likely to fidget, side talk with
their neighbors, and simply be less involved in the process.

Eventually I began to insist on using a circle of chairs for the peer conference roundtable. In a
circle, everyone can see everyone else—people are more exposed—which creates a group ten-
sion that encourages alertness and concentration on what the speaker in the circle is saying at
each moment. The circle of chairs provides a ritual space, a space in which each person in the
group can meet, however briefly, every other person present.

Ground rules
Facilitators of a group that plans to work together for an extended period of time will normally
have the group establish its own ground rules, not only because group-developed ground
rules will handle the specific needs of the group, but also because the process of development
creates buy-in for the rules that are chosen. Unfortunately, it takes up too much time to brain-
storm and negotiate ground rules for a single conference. Consequently, I’ve chosen to use
the following rules, developed over many years, at peer conferences. I’ve found they work
extremely well.

I provide the peer conference ground rules in a handout to attendees describing the Four Free-
doms, a rule about confidentiality, and a rule about staying on time. The facilitator explains
the rules at the start of the roundtable, and attendees are asked to commit to them for the
duration of the conference.

Four Freedoms
All of us have a comfort zone for our interactions with others, a social space inside which we
feel comfortable. The boundaries of this zone vary, depending on who we are interacting with,
our context (home, professional, social, etc.), and the level of safety we feel in a specific
situation.

The Four Freedoms are important ground rules, derived from the work of family therapist
Virginia Satir and further refined by Gerald Weinberg and Donald Gause and Norman Kerth.
I provide a copy, printed on a card, for each attendee. Here they are:

• You have the freedom to talk about the way you see things, rather than the way
others want you to see.
• You have the freedom to ask about anything puzzling.
• You have the freedom to talk about whatever is coming up for you, especially your
own reactions.

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• You have the freedom to say that you don’t really feel you have one or more of the
preceding three freedoms.

The Four Freedoms invite attendees to be fully present with each other.

The first offers the gift of talking freely about what a person sees and understands, despite
what others may think or say.

The second offers the gift of asking freely about what a person does not understand.

The third offers the gift of freely expressing feelings in response to what is happening.

The fourth offers the gift of freely discussing the lack of any of the other three freedoms.

In my early peer conferences I did not offer Four Freedoms to attendees. Since I started in-
cluding them, my roundtables have felt more intimate and empowering. The Four Freedoms
create a supportive, safe environment for people to take risks and speak about subjects, beliefs,
questions, and feelings that they would not normally share. This environment encourages
attendees to commit to and engage in the conference experience, rather than remaining
passive observers and occasional contributors.

I end my introduction to the Four Freedoms by asking each attendee to help all of us by exer-
cising their four freedoms while we are together.

In my experience, offering these Four Freedoms at the start of a conference encourages attendees
to interact beyond their normal comfort zone. This is a heady experience for many attendees
who have never before felt empowered to be either proactive or revelatory at a conference.

There are three conditions that enable these freedoms to become an integral part of the con-
ference culture.

1. The Four Freedoms have to be clearly communicated. Participants must under-

stand up front that they are free to express their point of view, it’s okay to ask any
question, it’s fine to talk about how they’re feeling, and they can speak up at any
time they feel these freedoms aren’t available to them.
2. The conference facilitator(s) and organizers must model using the Four Freedoms
during the conference. (I frequently invoke the second freedom: “I’m sorry, I don’t
understand XYZ.”) If you don’t do this, attendees will rightly conclude that the
Four Freedoms are empty words, and the conference environment will suffer
greatly.
3. Attendees must actively commit to the Four Freedoms (and the two other ground
rules.) How this is done is described below.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

Confidentiality
The confidentiality ground rule further enhances attendee safety:

What we discuss at this conference will remain confidential. What we share here,
stays here.

When attendees adopt this rule, it frees them to talk about many intimate topics. Difficult sit-
uations and associated feelings, relationships at work, questions unasked for fear of revealing
incompetence, even the simple enjoyment in meeting kindred souls are common examples of
what may be shared at peer conferences.

It surprises and saddens me how rare it is for such a ground rule to be adopted at conferences.
Providing and committing to confidentiality encourages much more sharing among attend-
ees. Being able to safely share and be heard is often of the greatest importance to attendees,
sometimes far more important than even conference content. This ground rule provides an
environment for attendees who may have no other avenue to communicate confidentially and
safely with their peers.

Staying on time
How many conferences have you been to where sessions started late or ran late, wasting the
time of the people who were punctual, and cutting into later sessions? Too many, according to
a majority of my interviewees. Breaking the tacit agreements promised by a published sched-
ule irritates attendees, and reduces their trust in the value of the conference. When schedule
times prove unreliable, people are more likely to arrive late or leave early. This causes further
problems—arriving late at a session is disruptive in itself, and latecomers may want to ask
time-wasting questions about content they missed.

We can’t prevent people from arriving late to a session. But we can publicly request that ses-
sions start and end on time, and ask the people who are organizing sessions to honor this
desire. (A conference can also support staying on time by having someone available to remind
session organizers, if necessary, to begin and end at the times when their sessions are sched-
uled to start and end.) I’ve found that simply providing the following ground rule:

We ask that you start and end all sessions on time.

together with appropriate reminders during the conference, ensures a punctual conference.

Committing to ground rules

Imposing ground rules on attendees, no matter how well chosen, is an empty gesture unless
there is attendee buy-in. Providing a list of ground rules, asking whether anyone has any

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objections, taking silence as assent, and hastily rushing on to the next agenda item implies
that the rules are just a formality and needn’t be taken seriously. But, given that we have little
time to spare, how can we get some kind of commitment from participants?

I like to use a brief ritual requiring active attendee participation. (Don’t worry, no animal
sacrifice is involved.) I say:

“I would like all of you who commit to using Four Freedoms, maintaining confi-
dentiality, and staying on time to stand.”

(People who have difficulty standing can raise their hand instead.) Simply asking attendees to
change their physical stance to demonstrate their commitment to the conference ground rules
may not seem like a big deal, but it’s an unusual enough request to get everyone to think, if
only for a moment, about what they are committing to and to help cement the ground rules in
their minds. (If anyone didn’t stand, I’d say “Everyone standing sit, everyone sitting stand,”
ask those standing to explain what they feel they can’t commit to, and, if necessary, work on
an agreement as to how to proceed. It hasn’t happened yet.)

The Three Questions

Each attendee receives a copy of the Three Questions, printed on a card. Having each attendee
publicly answer these questions comprises the core activity of the roundtable. Everything up
to this point has laid the groundwork for the novel concept of everyone participating actively
in the conference, a participation that will lead to rich dividends for all attendees.

This point in the conference is the only time when every attendee is expected to speak publicly.
Some people have a hard time speaking to a group. By providing a supportive environment
and requiring each attendee to speak, however briefly, a peer conference gives reluctant attend-
ees a relatively safe opportunity to discover that sharing a little about themselves in public
may not be as scary an ordeal as they thought. Expecting each attendee to say something at
the roundtable gently reinforces the notion that the conference’s culture embraces active par-
ticipation, and once they’ve had this experience, they are more likely to contribute during the
conference.

Before sharing starts, the roundtable facilitator points out that there are no wrong answers to
the three questions. This helps attendees who are nervous about sharing in public to relax, and
gives people permission to share as much or as little as they wish, depending on their comfort
level. The facilitator then explains the three questions to everyone and gives a few minutes for
attendees to reflect on what they want to say.

Let’s look at each question in turn.

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PART I • Reengineering the Conference

How Did I Get Here?

Most group introductions, when they occur, are of the form “My name is John Smith and I
work at MegaCorp.” In contrast, the question How did I get here? provides a safe way to
uncover whatever each attendee chooses to reveal about his connections to the other partici-
pants. An attendee might say “I drove from Springfield on I-89” or “Fred, who I work with and
who came last year, told me this was a great conference” or “When I came to this conference
two years ago, I discovered I was not alone.” Often, attendees say a great deal more. This ques-
tion allows participants to learn more about their fellow attendees, and, in the process, begin
to form ideas about who they may want to spend time with during the rest of the conference.

What Do I Want to Have Happen?

This question invites attendees to share what they would like to experience at the conference.
What do they want to learn more about, what questions do they want answered, and what top-
ics do they want to discuss? The facilitator encourages attendees to answer this question as if
the conference could provide everything attendees asks for—as long as they ask! Attendees are
told they can ask for general topics, the answers to highly specific questions, technical issues,
“people” issues; what’s important is that attendees ask for what they want. Some examples:

• “I want to talk about marketing with anyone who has experience with community
supported agriculture.”
• “I need to find out how to configure X widgets so they will frambolize successfully.”
• “How has your organization decided on Acceptable Use Policies?”
• “My division head often rejects my professional opinion—I’d like to know how I
can be more credible with her.”

Two roundtable scribes record topics mentioned by attendees onto flip charts or whiteboards.
The resulting lists are displayed at peer session sign-up; they also serve the purpose of reassur-
ing each attendee that his concerns and interests have been heard and captured for the group.

What Experience Do I Have That Others May Find Useful?

When I added this question in 1999, I had no inkling how valuable it would turn out to be. In
every conference I’ve facilitated since, the responses have uncovered experiences or expertise
unknown to the conference organizers, experience that has been of great worth to attendees.

I have seen casually mentioned topics evolve into rave conference sessions (in one case, a
session that everyone at the conference attended). And at a more intimate level, I have seen
someone discover the one other person at the conference who understands exactly what she
is talking about, with the resulting blooming of a fast friendship. The only thing that’s pre-
dictable about this question is that the responses will uncover unexpected topics and unan-
ticipated interest in some of these topics.

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There is another benefit from this question that I did not expect. Often, the people who describe
their experience have no idea that others would find it valuable! What has been warming for
me is to see how this discovery empowers these individuals. To discover that your peers value
and admire your work in an area validates you professionally and personally. What a gift to
receive! At a peer conference, such gifts are easily and frequently given.

Sharing answers
Before sharing begins, the roundtable facilitator provides four guidelines to attendees.

1. The facilitator encourages people to share what they want to have happen, even if
others have already mentioned the same topics. This helps reveal to everyone pres-
ent the degree of interest in specific subjects.
2. The facilitator tells attendees that if they hear a request for help on a specific issue
and they can help, they can stick up their hand, say their name and a brief “I can
help with that.” This connects attendees on specific issues right at the start of the
conference, issues that might be too specialized to attract enough interest for a
conference session.
3. The facilitator asks those who can’t stay for the entire conference to mention when
they’re leaving. This helps avoid scheduling a session involving someone’s expertise
after they have left.
4. The facilitator recommends that attendees use the draft copy of the conference face
book to record information of interest that is shared during the roundtable. The face
book is a printed list of attendees with their affiliations and other pertinent infor-
mation, including attendee photographs, which is provided to each attendee before
the roundtable begins.

The facilitator’s final task is to explain how timekeeping works. Each attendee receives the
same amount of time, though no one has to use all of it. The amount assigned, normally
between 90 and 150 seconds, depends on the number of attendees and the conference dura-
tion, as explained in the third part of this book. The timekeeper demonstrates the signals,
playing the warning sound heard when an attendee has 30 seconds left, and then the “time’s
up” sound.

Finally, it’s time to share! The facilitator can start with a prearranged volunteer, perhaps one of
the conference organizers who can model good answers for attendees to follow, or ask for a
volunteer to start, or go alphabetically, using the face book order as a guide. By not employing
any special expertise-based order for sharing, the roundtable reinforces the message that
everyone’s sharing is equally important.

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 CHAP TER
How to Start Making
Your Conference
11 a Reality

I
’ve never organized a peer conference by myself. I’ve run a small one-day conference by
myself (and that was tough), but I’d never dream of doing the pre-conference design,
planning, and marketing work solo. Here’s why.

First of all, organizing a conference is a lot of work. Unless you’re working full time at it, you’re
going to need and appreciate some help. But there’s another important reason not to go it
alone.

In my experience, a successful conference flows from a diverse steering committee that repre-
sents the variety of individuals, organizations, and viewpoints that are the target audience.
A steering committee is a group of people who take responsibility for making a conference
happen; they organize and run the conference. Although other people may do significant
tasks, the steering committee is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the conference takes
place and is successful.

Besides the benefit of sharing the workload, a well-chosen steering committee will supply
multiple viewpoints on the conference design, and a variety of personalities and skill sets for
the various conference tasks. One person happily handles conference registrations and con-
ference fee deposits, another enjoys creating marketing materials, while a third is skilled at
updating the conference website. You’ll also have more resources for the external contacts you
may need to develop any conventional parts of your program. And, perhaps most important,
is the pleasure and excitement of sharing with your committee in creating an event that can
meaningfully touch attendees’ lives.

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PART II • Planning and Preparing for Your Peer Conference

How do you start? Looking back at the conferences I’ve helped organize, there’s always been an
existing group that formed a starting point for the conference steering committee. It doesn’t
need to be a large group, maybe just three or four people. Typically, someone in the group sug-
gests the idea of a conference and the others respond enthusiastically. You’re on your way!

I’m not saying it’s impossible for a single charismatic individual to inspire a conference and
persuade volunteers to help, but I haven’t seen it done, and I’d be wary of a peer conference
that was largely the product of a single person’s vision.

If you can’t easily find people who will volunteer to help you, that’s a strong indication that you
need to think twice about creating the conference in the first place. There needs to be a certain
level of energy for the conference to happen and for people to attend, and ease in finding
people willing to serve on the steering committee is a good predictor of your readiness to
organize a successful conference.

So, you and some members of an existing group decide you want to hold a conference. Perhaps
there are three of you. What do you do next?

Forming a steering committee

I have organized peer conferences with steering committees as small as three and as many as
a dozen people. In my experience, 5 to 10 volunteers is a good size for a conference steering
committee. With fewer than five, the workload starts to become excessive for a typical volun-
teer. Committees with more than 10 people tend to become unwieldy and decision making
slows down, but I would not reject a couple of extra members if everyone has useful skills and
enthusiasm for the work.

Try to form your conference steering committee from the members of an existing group. Sug-
gest the idea of a conference to the group and, if there’s sufficient interest, explore the time com-
mitment and work involved and ask for volunteers to help organize and run the conference.

Even if there isn’t an existing group to approach, it’s often possible to create a conference steer-
ing committee by contacting appropriate individuals who you expect may be interested and
who have the energy and time to commit.

When you’re talking to potential committee members, have in mind the variety of work you’ll
need to make your conference a reality. Use the list of jobs in Table 12.1 as a guide. Provide this
list of conference tasks to the people you approach, so they can think about how they might
best contribute and make a preliminary commitment to one or more areas. As people volun-
teer to help out, keep track of what remains as you assemble a committee that can, collectively,
take responsibility for everything that needs to be done.

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Group culture, leadership, and your steering

committee
The quality of your peer conference and your pleasure, or lack of it, while you are planning
and running the event can be greatly affected by how well your steering committee members
work together. Over 100,000 books have been written about group dynamics, management,
and leadership, and I doubt I have any-
thing new to say on these subjects. Even “I believe organizations are successful
so, I hope that the following comments when they have shared values, a clear
provide some useful advice on the many vision of success, motivation to succeed
subtleties of working with a group of together, and respect for the various roles
people toward a common goal. required to succeed. Shared values help
There are many models of how people avoid irreconcilable differences. . . .
behave in groups, and each of them is While the vision must be clear, the
useful in certain contexts. In the con- leadership needs to be flexible. The world
text of organizing and running a peer changes, and successful organizations
conference, I tend to employ an organic need leaders who can guide them through
model, in which group members are those changes. Every member of the
seen in terms of their uniqueness, team must be motivated to participate
rather than categorized by their roles. in the team’s success, although different
An organic point of view allows and people may have different motivations.
encourages people to find ways to work One of a leader’s roles is to understand
together in a variety of complex situa- those motivations and address the needs
tions, and leads toward problem- of the people on the team. One critical
solving that benefits everyone. shared value is recognition of the impor-
tance of every person’s role on the team.
For example a steering committee I When people don’t feel valued, they lose
coordinated was offered the option of motivation to support the success of the
engaging a well-known, desired keynote team.”
speaker for a conference to be held in —Ken Flowers
six months. Initially, his appearance
fee was more than our budget could
handle, but at the last minute he suggested appearing virtually, giving his presentation on a
large video screen, at an affordable fee. We needed to quickly find out whether the conference
site could support a virtual presentation.

If we had been using a linear approach to group organization, we would have already chosen
the steering committee member responsible for technical issues and it would be her job to
resolve this issue. If she were busy or sick, I’d have had to poll the other committee members

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PART II • Planning and Preparing for Your Peer Conference

for help and ask someone to take on additional work. In this case, our committee was com-
fortable with an organic approach, so I sent a request for help to all the steering committee
members, most of whom had some technical expertise.

Because the committee culture was one of staying flexible in the face of unexpected circum-
stances, cooperatively working together to solve problems, and respecting each member’s
unique constraints and contributions, I didn’t worry about treading on anyone’s toes by send-
ing out a general request for help. The outcome: One of the committee members had some
free time and immediately offered his expertise, while another, the speaker liaison, told us he
thought the speaker would have the information we needed and would check with him.

How do you build this kind of culture for your steering committee? This brings us to the ques-
tion of what leadership means in the context of organizing and running a peer conference.
Every book on leadership has a different approach; here’s what fits for me.

Author and polymath Jerry Weinberg describes organic leadership as leading the process rather
than people. “Leading people requires that they relinquish control over their lives. Leading the
process is responsive to people, giving them choices and leaving them in control.” Jerry’s
resulting definition of leadership is “the process of creating an environment in which people
become empowered.” This is what I try to elicit when working with a peer conference steering
committee.

I also find Dale Emery’s definition of leadership helpful. Dale describes leadership as “the art
of influencing people to freely serve shared purposes.” Bear this definition in mind as you
work with steering committee members. It ties your interactions with them to your shared
goal of realizing a vision, in this case organizing and running of a conference.

Who on the steering committee leads in this way? Unlike the traditional, role-based version
of leadership, any member can help build a committee atmosphere that supports this kind of
leadership. Once the seeds of this culture are established, I’ve found that it tends to become
self-perpetuating. People like working together in this way. Experiencing a steering committee
coming together, with the members enjoying their interactions while creating a great confer-
ence, is one of the most satisfying aspects of my work.

Although the impetus for an organic approach can come from any committee member, the
conference coordinator is the natural initiator of these flavors of leadership. She is responsible
for keeping the conference planning on track and avoiding planning and execution snafus. She
does this, not by ordering people around, but through a respectful flow of timely reminders,
check-ins, questions, requests for assistance, and appropriate redirections.

Some people have little experience working organically. They may join your committee with
the expectation that their responsibilities will be determined by others, that a committee

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leader will give them well-defined jobs to do. Often, given a relaxed and open environment
where their ideas are encouraged, they will grow into a more active role as they become more
confident in their ability to contribute creatively and flexibly to the needs of organizing and
running the conference.

Jerry Weinberg suggests you assume that everyone you’re working with wants to feel useful
and make a contribution. He quotes Stan Gross’s device for dealing with his feelings that
people are not trying to contribute: “They’re all doing the best they can, under the circum-
stances. If I don’t think they are doing the best they can, then I don’t understand the
circumstances.”

Such a mindset will help you focus on finding solutions to people problems that inevitably
arise in any group working together on something they care about.

Working with volunteers

Some peer conference steering committee members are paid by their organizations, but the
majority, in my experience, are volunteers. When peer conference organization goes well,
there’s no significant distinction between these two groups. All organizers get paid in intan-
gible ways. Volunteer motivations, usually shared by those receiving a paycheck, are numer-
ous—altruism, the joy of ser vice, giving back to a community that has benefited the volunteer,
social opportunities, and many other reasons.

But the flip side of working with volunteers is the very lack of that paycheck. Interests and
enthusiasm change with time, for both internal and external reasons, and there’s no financial
cost to bailing out from a committee if a volunteer’s child or parent falls sick, he discovers a
new passion, or finds that organizing the vendor exhibit takes more time than he thought it
would.

As a result, volunteers sometimes are unable to follow through on their commitments. When
this happens, don’t take it personally. The reasons probably have nothing to do with you. Find
out, with respect, what’s going on, renegotiate responsibilities if possible, and ask committee
members for help with any unassigned tasks.

Treating steering committee volunteers as individuals with unique motivations, and under-
standing and respecting these motivations, whatever they may be, is key to creating an envi-
ronment for committee members to be effective and enjoy their work, thereby contributing to
a positive and rewarding conference planning effort for all involved.

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 CHAP TER
Pre-Conference
23 Preparation

Timing
Allocate ample time in your pre-conference schedule for site preparation. If you don’t, you’re
likely to find yourself rushing around trying to get everything ready at the last minute. I much
prefer to arrive on-site early, finish site preparation, and have a few hours to relax before regis-
tration starts, than arrive at the conference site half a day later and be running about trying to
borrow a digital camera that works or installing signs in the rain as the first attendees drive up.

In general, the shorter the conference the harder it is to prepare the site. If you’ve paid to use a
facility for a single day, you may need to pay extra for access the previous afternoon or evening
so you can set up. It may even be impossible to get access the day before, because the space is
booked by another event. Under these circumstances, a morning start may require your steer-
ing committee to rise at an early hour and participate in a somewhat frantic, but hopefully
disciplined, rush to get everything ready on time. If you’re running a short conference, metic-
ulously plan how you’ll accomplish your site preparation in the time available.

If I’m running a multiday conference I like to arrive on-site, together with a few steering com-
mittee members, about 24 hours before the conference starts. This gives us plenty of time to
complete the site preparation described in the following sections, and allows for a leisurely
steering committee dinner or lunch before the conference starts.

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PART III • Running Your Peer Conference

Preparing conference signage

There are two kinds of signs you’ll need for your conference site, navigational and informa-
tional. Make sure signs are easily readable and that outdoor signs will withstand wind and rain.

When creating navigational conference signs, put yourself in the position of an attendee who
has never visited the conference site. Start with the directions to the conference site you dis-
tributed to registrants. As they drive through the school gates, turn into the churchyard, or
pull up to the hotel entrance, where should you place signs and directional arrows so attendees
know they’ve arrived at the conference site and can see where to go next? Once they’ve parked
their cars in the correct parking lot, are there signs pointing to the conference registration
location? From registration, they’ll need directions and appropriate signage so they can find
their rooms and make their way to the conference welcome and roundtable. Finally, attendees
will need signs that direct them, in either direction, between any two conference session
locations.

Some informational signs remain fi xed throughout the conference, like signs showing the
name of a session location (“Vendor Exhibit Area,” “Dining Hall,” “Peer Session Room A”).
Others, like the schedule and location of peer sessions being run on a given day, should be
posted in a timely fashion once their content is determined. Planning in advance where and
when signs need to be posted, with a steering committee member responsible for carrying out
the plan, will greatly reduce attendee confusion, questions, and annoyance.

Setting up on-site registration

First impressions
On-site registration can be a hectic time. You have no control over when attendees show up,
and invariably there will be times when there are people waiting in line to register. A one-day
conference, when most people show up at the last minute, is particularly challenging.

On-site registration involves many tasks:

• Welcoming attendees as they arrive

• Providing refreshments
• Verifying attendee registration information
• Handing out the conference folder and name badges
• Registering “at the door” attendees
• Collecting unpaid registration fees

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• Taking attendee photographs for face book

• Distributing swag
• Providing directions to on-site accommodations
• Answering attendee questions

Once on-site, an attendee’s first experience is invariably the conference registration process.
Following the suggestions in this section will help you provide a welcoming and pleasant reg-
istration experience to incoming attendees, and will minimize your stress and mistakes.

Physical setup
During your site visit you decided on a suitable place to hold on-site registration. Now it’s time
for setup. First think about the traffic pattern for the registration area. You want a layout that
promotes a smooth flow for incoming attendees, as shown in Figure 23.1.

FIGURE 23.1 • On-site Registration Flow

Greeters
and
refreshments

Registration
station

Computer and
face book
photo station

Conference
handouts and
badge station

Promotional
items station

Directions to
accommodations
and roundtable

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PART III • Running Your Peer Conference

Make sure there’s room for a few steering committee members to meet and greet incoming
attendees—this is very important. There should also be a place for attendees to relax while
waiting to register. Set up some seating there and arrange a refreshment table nearby.

If you’re holding a one-day, wintertime conference in a single building, provide a place for
people to hang their coats.

Provided you have scheduled enough time for on-site registration (see Table 16.1), you’ll only
need one registration station. A registration station includes:

• Computer loaded with the registration database and any necessary camera picture
transfer software;
• Attached local printer, for printing registration reports;
• Attached digital camera, for taking face book photographs;
• Blank, light-colored wall or other vertical background suitable for posing face book
headshots; and
• One or more staffers with the necessary skills and training to run registration.

In addition, you’ll need access to a laser printer to print copies of your face book. A copying
machine will not produce acceptable reproductions of attendee photographs and an ink jet printer
will be too slow.

The conference face book

In my view, a conference face book is an essential peer conference tool. Few people have a pho-
tographic memory that can infallibly associate faces with names or organizations, especially
when meeting a large number of people in a short period of time. The face book provides an
invaluable reference to conference participants, both during the conference and afterwards.
I can’t tell you how many times I have referred to a conference face book to find the name of
the person who was so knowledgeable about a subject during an earlier session, or, six months
later, to retrieve contact information for an attendee to whom I needed to talk again.

A conference face book contains a photo of each attendee, plus associated relevant informa-
tion. At a minimum, this should include each participant’s name, organization, address,
phone, and email. Other items appropriate to the theme of the conference can be added, but
only include information that is likely to be of interest to a significant number of attendees.
Figure 23.2 shows a sample face book entry.

Because the face book is so useful, it should be completed, printed, and distributed at the con-
ference as quickly as possible. This requires careful organization. I suggest you have at least

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FIGURE 23.2 • Sample Face Book Entry

one person, preferably two people, whose sole job during the conference is to complete, print,
and distribute the face book.

Capture face book information from pre-conference registration. There’s enough going on at
on-site registration without the additional work of entering information. If you do this, you’ll
only need to take participants’ photos at registration time. I say only, but getting an acceptable
photo of every participant requires careful preparation and a certain amount of persistent
follow-up to capture photos of the one or two attendees who have yet to face the camera.

It’s important to plan the printing of your face book before the conference, because most
copying machines will not create a decent copy of a laser-printed photograph. Such copies are
usually very unflattering and seriously detract from the value of the face book. I once made
the mistake of relying on the conference hotel to make copies of the face book. The resulting
reproduction was so poor, it would have been better to skip the photos entirely. Do a test run
of any copier that you plan to use. If a high-resolution copier isn’t available, you will need to
print the entire face book on a laser printer. Printing at an off-site print shop might be an
option, but it hasn’t worked for me because of the need to get printed face books into attend-
ees’ hands as quickly as possible.

If you print the face book on a laser printer, make sure that you print the book uncollated
(i.e., with the software set to print multiple copies of each page before starting the next). This

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is usually a checkbox option “Collate” in the print dialog that appears right before printing;
make sure the box is unchecked. If you print a collated face book, your printer will have to
download new photographs for each page printed, and your printing speed will slow to a
crawl. I’ve made this mistake too!

Include a footnote on each page stating that the information contained is confidential and
may only be distributed to conference attendees.

If a significant number of your attendees have laptops with them, you can offer them a PDF
file of the face book to store on their computer. To avoid creating a very large file, make sure
that the digital photos used aren’t too large. JPEG images that are 50–100KB in size work well
and the resulting PDF file will be a few MB. The PDF file can be made available on the confer-
ence wiki or shared storage space. Paper copies can be printed only for those attendees who
request one. A PDF file can display attendee photos in color, something that may not other-
wise be possible unless you have a color laser printer to make your printed copies.

Create at least two versions of the face book. A paper copy of the first draft must be given to
attendees before the start of the roundtable session, so they can make notes about what they
hear directly onto the relevant person’s face book page. If printing the copies with photographs
will take too long, omit photographs from the first draft. To be sure that you’ll get copies of
the first draft printed in time, testing face book printing and copying times in advance is
essential.

At a one-day conference, immediately after the roundtable post a paper copy, including
photos, of the first draft of the face book in a central spot. Pin up every sheet separately,
with attendees sorted in alphabetical order. Ask attendees to check their face book informa-
tion by 30 minutes before lunch ends, and legibly make any corrections or additions or write
a check mark if it’s complete. Announce when missing photos will be taken. Before lunch
ends, chase down those who haven’t signed off on their face book information or been
photographed.

At a longer conference, use a similar procedure, adding the printing and display of a second
draft of the face book and asking attendees for a final review to catch errors and omissions.

As soon as the face book is finalized, print and distribute copies as necessary to attendees.
Create a PDF of the finalized face book and post it on the conference wiki and/or shared net-
work space.

Once you have paper copies of the face book available, don’t leave them in a pile in a public
space. Make every effort to limit distribution of face books to conference attendees. If you are
holding a vendor exhibit, take special care to keep face books out of vendors’ hands.

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Preparing the vendor exhibit area

Preparing the vendor exhibit area involves obtaining and setting up any and all of the follow-
ing items: tables, drapes, chairs, power, and Internet access, as per the floor plan you’ve already
prepared. If at all possible, it’s best to do this the day before the conference starts, though the
morning of a conference that starts after lunch may offer enough time.

Transporting furniture and setting it up in the right place is an exhausting job that seems to
take forever if the vendor coordinator tries to do it all himself, and relatively easy if he has a
few people to help. Don’t be a martyr; make sure that you get the help you need for this task.

If you need to run power or wired Internet connections to vendor tabletops or booths, install
extension cords and cables in zero- or low-traffic areas and use gaffer tape to secure them to
the floor.

Post navigational signs to guide attendees between the vendor exhibit area and the rooms
where vendor presentations will be held. Also post copies of the vendor presentation schedule
around the exhibit area and on the doors of the presentation rooms.

Initial conference seating

At the conference welcome and introduction, two or three people speak, one at a time, to the
audience. This is a standard scenario for using a classroom-seating format, and with 60 or
more attendees that’s how you should set up your opening session.

If you have fewer than 60 attendees, and will be running a single roundtable session, start
your conference with people seated in the roundtable circle. This avoids having attendees
move around after the opening session, breaking the conference flow, and emphasizes that
the roundtable is the key session at the start of the conference.

Roundtable setup
The roundtable setup you use depends on the number of attendees at your peer conference. At
most peer conferences a single roundtable is all you need. But if you have more than 60 attend-
ees you should run two simultaneous roundtables. If your pre-conference registration count is
around 60, prepare for both possibilities, since at-the-door registrations may increase your
roundtable attendance, while no-shows and/or late arrivals may reduce it.

If for some reason you cannot hold your roundtable in a room that is large enough for a circle
of chairs for the roundtable, the next best alternative is a single block of square or rectangular

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tables around which everyone sits. Everyone can easily see at least the people on the other
three sides with this arrangement, and it has the advantage of giving each attendee a writing
surface for making face book notes. In my experience, this arrangement creates a more infor-
mal roundtable atmosphere, which can be successful with a small group, particularly if most
people already know each other.

You’ll need:

For every attendee:

• A chair
• A 5 × 8 card listing the three roundtable questions (see Appendix 6)
• A draft copy of the conference face book (produced right before the conference
starts)

For each roundtable session:

• Two flip chart stands and pads. Masking tape, if the flip chart sheets aren’t the kind
with a self-adhesive strip OR a plentiful amount of wall-mounted whiteboard space
• Two roundtable scribes and a timekeeper
• A place to hang completed flip chart sheets
• Two boxes of pens
• A timing device (see below)
• A digital camera (optional but recommended)

Roundtable layout
When I started running conferences I paid little attention to the configuration of the rooms
in which we met. Eventually I noticed that seating arrangements had a subtle yet profound
influence on the intimacy and effectiveness of group sessions. For traditional sessions with a
speaker or panel, classroom seating was fine.

But for peer conference sessions, where everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute, I
realized how important it was that everyone could see everyone else’s face, and that individu-
als weren’t emphasized or de-emphasized by virtue of where they sat. Multiple rows, wavering
lines of chairs, or chairs scrunched into a too-small room all significantly reduced the inti-
macy and power of peer sessions. For the roundtable, I discovered that a circle of chairs
worked best.

To prepare for a roundtable session, set out a circle of chairs, with a few gaps so people can
arrive and depart. If the space in which you’re holding the roundtable is much larger than the
circle of chairs, position one point of the circle near a wall where flip chart sheets can be hung.

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FIGURE 23.3 • Classroom Seating

FIGURE 23.4 • Roundtable Seating

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Set out one chair for each registrant, and make the resulting circle as tight as possible. Take time
to make the circle as round as possible.

You want the smallest comfortable circle, with as few empty chairs as possible. I like to leave
gaps in the circle and put out slightly too few chairs, with a pile of extras nearby. Then, late-
comers can take a chair from the pile and put it in one of the gaps. This way, the circle is
complete during the session, with no empty chairs at any time.

Unless you have a large expanse of nearby wall-mounted whiteboard available, place two flip
chart stands near each other, just outside the circle. The flip charts should be near a wall where
completed chart sheets can be hung.

Print enough roundtable questions cards to give one to each attendee. Give the cards and the
pens to the roundtable scribes, for distribution at the end of the Four Freedoms introduction.
If you’re using masking tape to hang the flip chart sheets, tear off short strips and store them
on the flip chart stands.

Use a digital camera to photograph the flip chart or whiteboard topics recorded during the
session. The digital photographs, or a PDF containing them, can be posted on the conference
wiki or on the conference file server, easily available for reference during the conference.

Capturing topics and themes

At each roundtable session you’ll need two scribes who stand at the flip charts or whiteboards
and alternatively record shared conference topics and ideas. Choose people who have some
conference subject expertise so they can summarize attendee responses accurately and
concisely.

Provide each attendee with a draft copy of the conference face book at the start of the round-
table session. Attendees can use their copy to make notes as the roundtable progresses.

Timekeeping
It’s important to share the time allocated to a roundtable session equitably between attendees.
This is the timekeeper’s job. She does this by sounding up to two alerts; the first, 30 seconds
before each attendee’s allocated time expires, the second when the time is up.

Table 23.1 shows the duration of the roundtable session (minutes) and Table 23.2 shows the
amount of time (minutes and seconds) available for each attendee’s sharing. So, for example,
at a one-day conference with 40 attendees you would sound an alert for each attendee after 60
and 90 seconds.

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TABLE 23.1 • Total Roundtable Session Time (minutes)

NUMBER OF ATTENDEES

30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
CONFERENCE

1 day 60 75 90
DURATION

1½–2 days 75 95 115 135 115 125 135 145

> 2 days 90 115 140 150 132.5 145 150 150

1 roundtable 2 roundtables

TABLE 23.2 • Roundtable Time Allocated to Each Attendee (minutes and seconds)

NUMBER OF ATTENDEES

30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
CONFERENCE

1 day 1:30 1:30 1:30

DURATION

1½–2 days 2:00 2:00 2:00 2:00 2:00 2:00 2:00 2:00

> 2 days 2:30 2:30 2:30 2:15 2:30 2:30 2:20 2:00

1 roundtable 2 roundtables

When I decided to use timekeeping for roundtables it seemed, at first glance, to be a simple
affair—something that any attendee given a watch or an inexpensive digital timer could easily
do. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that attendees using such equipment found it very dif-
ficult to do the job well while simultaneously maintaining close attention to what the attend-
ees in the roundtable were saying. Eventually I came up with three strategies that enable an
attendee to be the timekeeper and still concentrate on the roundtable proceedings: (1) a small
high-end digital timer that is convenient to use, though limited in minor ways; (2) Macintosh
computer-based timing software that provides straightforward and flexible roundtable time-
keeping; and (3) prerecorded alert tracks played on a digital music player.

The ideal timer for our purposes has the following characteristics:

• Provides the two roundtable time warnings needed in a single unit;

• Can be quickly set up to signal the passing of any desired time periods;
• Automatically resets to the original countdown times after it has counted down
to zero;

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How to use FlexTime for roundtable timekeeping

FlexTime, version 1.2.2 at time of writing, sounds from http://freesound.iua.upf.edu
is available for download from Red (registration is required).
Sweater Software (www.red-sweater.com/ Use a different sound for the warning
flextime/), requires Macintosh OSX 10.4 sound and the “time’s up” sound, so
or above, and works on both PowerPC attendees can know whether they need
and Intel Macintoshes. You can try out to wind up their answers, or stop.
FlexTime free for 30 days, after which you I use FlexTime with two scripts, one
will need to register the program, at a that I use to demonstrate the sounds when
cost of $18.95 (in 2009), for it to continue introducing the roundtable, and one to
to run. play the sounds at the right times for each
Because FlexTime can play any attendee. It’s easy to create two alerts by
Macintosh alert sound, you can use any adding a second timer after the first.
sounds you like for your roundtable alerts, The first script, Demo sounds, plays the
as long as they are in AIFF format and warning sound when started, waits ten
installed correctly. The Apple article avail- seconds and plays the “time’s up” sound.
able at http://docs.info.apple.com/article. To use the second script, Roundtable
html?artnum=106409 describes how to timer, the first timer is set to the time
convert a sound to the AIFF format using required before the 30-second warning.
iTunes, and explains how to add the sound When started, the timer waits for this time
as an alert to OS X. There are many sources before sounding the warning sound, and
of suitable sounds available on the Inter- then plays the “time’s up” sound 30 sec-
net. You can obtain chimes and other onds later.

FIGURE 23.5 • FlexTime Demo Sounds

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The scripts are available from If you create a set of Roundtable timer
www.conferencesthatwork.com, or can audio tracks, each using a different
be quickly constructed by viewing the attendee speaking time, you can use an
three screenshots in Figures 23.5–23.7. iPod and small portable speakers to pro-
You can export the audio from these vide timed chimes for your roundtable.
two scripts to iTunes and then transfer A set of these audio recordings is also avail-
the audio to an iPod or other music player. able on www.conferencesthatwork.com.

FIGURE 23.6 • FlexTime Roundtable Timer Window 1

FIGURE 23.7 • FlexTime Roundtable Timer Window 2

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• Easily resets to the original countdown times at any point;

• Makes no noise when being set or reset for the next attendee;
• Provides pleasant and appropriate warning sounds that can be changed in nature
and volume as desired; and
• Is easy to use, so that it doesn’t distract the timekeeper from the roundtable
sharing.

The high-end digital timer and the computer-based timer I currently use satisfy these criteria.
Because you may not have access to either of these, I’ll also outline the older approaches that
use a watch or two digital timers, and describe a method of roundtable timing using prere-
corded chimes on a digital music player.

A watch with a seconds hand plus manually made warning and “time’s up” sounds. This is the
simplest method, but requires the most attention, and so should be given to a conference staff
member who doesn’t have a direct interest in the conference topic. As an attendee starts to
talk, the timekeeper notes the position of the second hand and figures out when the two alerts
should be given. Because the timekeeper must keep looking at her watch, it’s hard for her to
concentrate on what attendees are saying.

You can use small Tibetan hand cymbals or a struck chime to make the alert sounds. I prefer a
chime, since it can be sounded with one hand, while the cymbals need two. If you don’t have
anything available to make a sound, an extrovert timekeeper can usually be found to say
“beep” or something similar.

Two inexpensive digital timers. You can use two inexpensive digital timers to provide audible
alerts. Both must have the capability to count down in minutes and seconds (some timers can
only count down minutes). Timer A is set to count down the time until the first attendee
warning. Timer B can either be started at the same time as Timer A and count down the full
attendee time, or it can be set to 30 seconds and started when Timer A sounds. I prefer the
second approach, with only one timer running at any moment.

Managing two digital timers is less distracting than using a watch, since once a timekeeper
sees that a timer is counting down she doesn’t have to keep checking to see whether an attend-
ee’s time is up. Unfortunately, most digital timers beep annoyingly while being reset and do
not reset themselves to the original countdown time if they are stopped before the time period
has expired. This can lead to a lot of distracting beeping whenever an attendee does not use
his full time.

A multiple event digital timer. There are a number of digital timers that provide timing of
multiple events in a single unit. Most are not well suited to timing a roundtable. Common
problems include: having to press multiple buttons to start and reset two event timers, a small

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display, buttons that become unreliable after a short time, and timers that start to count up
after time is up. One unit that can provide the timing flexibility needed is the Invisible Clock II
from the Time Now Corporation. This small unit, which costs about $40, has a countdown
timer mode that includes alerts that can be set to go off at any time during the countdown.
Its display is tiny, the unit is very complicated to set up, and it has a limited number of alert
sounds that it can produce, but it does provide all the timing functionality needed in a com-
pact package.

A computer-based timer. If you have access to a computer, preferably a laptop, you can use it to
run timing software that provides all the ideal functionality I listed above. There are plenty
of timer programs available for computers running the Macintosh and Windows operating
systems, but few provide exactly what we need for roundtable timekeeping. An exception is
the Macintosh program FlexTime from Red Sweater Software. FlexTime, which costs $18.95
and can be evaluated for free for 30 days, allows you to quickly create a custom sequence of a
30-second warning sound and a “time’s up” sound. You can use any sound sources you want
for the sounds. See the FlexTime sidebar for more details on how to use this program.

I’m not aware of a comparable program for Windows computers. Please contact me if you find
one (or write one)!

Digital music player and pre-built audio timing recordings. I have used the FlexTime timer to
create a series of audio tracks, available on www.conferencesthatwork.com, that can be played
on an iPod or other digital music player through some small portable speakers. This is a con-
venient way to provide correctly timed alerts for your roundtable. If you are using an iPod,
once you have chosen the correct timing track, I suggest you place it in an On-The-Go playlist
by itself (highlight the track and press and hold the Select button until the title flashes) so you
don’t play other neighboring tracks by mistake during the roundtable.

Preparing for two simultaneous roundtables

If you have more than 60 attendees, it’s best to hold two simultaneous roundtable sessions.
Although this means that each attendee will be able to hear directly from just half of the
attendees, the alternative is either a marathon session lasting three hours or more, or unac-
ceptably abbreviated sharing time for each attendee. Short pre- and post-roundtable pair ses-
sions, as outlined here and described in detail in Chapter 25, allow attendees to gain most of
the benefits of a single roundtable without being overwhelmed with information.

The ideal setup for running two simultaneous roundtable sessions is to have three rooms,
one with classroom seating for the whole group, and two each containing a circle of chairs
for half the group. If you don’t have this much space available, two rooms will suffice but
you’ll need to move chairs about in the initial room, changing the seating arrangement from

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classroom to circle. Don’t hold both roundtables in the same space, no matter how large; it’s
too distracting.

At the end of the conference welcome and introduction, attendees will still be arranged in
classroom seating. Use the following outline to prepare for the seating and room changes that
will be needed.

• Once attendees have written their answers to the three questions, explain the
process for two simultaneous roundtables.
• Pair up people from the same organization and remove them from the classroom
seating. Have each pair decide who will be in Group One and Two.
• Split the remaining group into pairs by counting off “A-B.” If you have movable
seating, the pairs can spread out around the room.
• Have pair members share with their buddy their answers to the three roundtable
questions (6 minutes).
• Have the two roundtable groups, A and B, move to separate rooms with circle
seating.
• Hold separate roundtables, during which each attendee adds a very brief summary
of their pair buddy’s answers to questions 2 and 3.
• Return to the initial room and have the pairs get together again.
• Have each pair member summarize for their buddy their roundtable’s responses,
especially those relevant to their buddy’s interests and experience, and share any
topics of special interest (8 minutes).

After the roundtable session

The roundtable is usually the longest conference session. When it’s over, attendees need a
break! If you’re holding a morning roundtable, make sure that refreshments are available
immediately following the roundtable. Follow an afternoon roundtable with a break and a
social with appropriate refreshments.

Preparing for peer session sign-up

The timing and location of peer session sign-up are linked. If sign-up is scheduled during a
conference activity, such as lunch, dinner, or an evening social break, the topic sign-up sheets
must be posted near the physical location of the session, preferably in the same room or space.

If you’re planning to hold peer session sign-up during an outdoor social, you can use free-
standing notice boards placed close to where people are gathered. Be prepared to switch to an
appropriate indoor location if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

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Keeping a conference logbook

Maintaining a simple logbook during your timings, protocols and procedures used,
conference creates a valuable resource if problems, ideas for improvements, and
attendees decide to repeat the conference what worked, what didn’t, and why. Some-
or you plan to organize more conferences how, my memories of such things fade
in the future. The logbook needn’t be elab- faster than I anticipate, and my conference
orate; a simple ruled notebook will work logbook provides me a way to capture
just fine. For each conference, paste in the fleeting, and often, in retrospect, impor-
conference schedule, and note session tant learnings for later review.

Decide how you’re going to display the 8.5 × 11 topic sheets. They can be:

• thumbtacked to wall-mounted or freestanding notice boards

• taped to smooth walls
• laid on tables

You’ll need at least five horizontal inches of notice board or ten inches of tabletop width for
each attendee. This provides space for one topic sheet for each attendee, which is usually
enough. I prefer to play it safe and put out two sheets for each attendee.

Sign-up tables and notice boards should have at least 10 feet of open space in front of them to
allow attendees to mingle and see topics easily. With notice boards, pin up two rows of topic
sheets with the dividing line between them about five feet from the ground so they’re easily
accessible. For tables, remove any surrounding chairs and lay out a single row of sheets around
the accessible perimeter of the tables.

Put out plenty of pens, at least one for every two attendees. When using notice boards, hang-
ing the pens from strings keeps them conveniently at hand during sign-up.

Preparing for peer sessions

During the site visit you chose four rooms for holding peer sessions. I’ve never needed more
than four, but, if for some reason you do, you can always use the main roundtable/spective
space for an additional group. Setting up these spaces for peer sessions is a matter of making
sure that there’s adequate seating and a blackboard/whiteboard/flip chart with appropriate
working markers. If some of your peer sessions might benefit from computer, overhead, or
video projection, set up and test any such equipment that you’ve arranged to have available.

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Set up the initial peer session room seating to encourage discussion. Use chairs set in a circle
or rounded square, or around one or more tables in the middle of the room. If a peer session is
a presentation or panel, attendees can always rearrange their chairs to support this format.

Also figure out where you’ll post peer session schedules once they’ve been established. Posting
locations should include the door of each peer session room, plus refreshment and other gath-
ering areas where attendees may want to know which session is being held in which room.

Steering committee pre-conference meal

The steering committee pre-conference meal—dinner the night before for a morning-start
conference, or lunch on the day of an afternoon-start conference—is a time for steering com-
mittee members to enjoy good food, drink, and conversation while making any last-minute
arrangements and decisions. Take everyone out to the nicest place your budget can afford.
This pre-conference time is one of the few perks you can offer steering committee members.
Providing a fine meal in pleasant surroundings and good company is small compensation for
all the preparatory work and tasks your committee will perform during the conference.

The conference coordinator should create an informal agenda. During the meal:

• Confirm that everyone understands their conference jobs, and that all jobs have
people assigned. In particular, determine who will greet incoming attendees at
on-site registration.
• Decide whether you’ll use a volunteer to start your roundtable session(s), to provide
a good model for attendees to follow.
• Make any last-minute practical arrangements.
• Ask and answer any outstanding questions.
• Remind committee members who are facilitating and convening sessions of the
importance of starting and keeping the conference on schedule.
• Relax and have fun!

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 Index

A/V equipment, 147, 188 photographs, 21, 85, 213, 227–28, Churchill, Winston, 89
Able Masters, 4, 6 230, 246–48, 255 classroom seating, 232, 239–40, 263
Academy Royal, 4, 6 preparation, 208, 216 cleanup, 216, 284, 309
accommodations, 120, 122, 134, attendee-driven conferences, 42, 52 closure, 22, 61, 99, 294, 296
142–43, 145, 147–48, 153–54, audio recordings, 237, 282 communication modes, 20
156, 172, 188–89, 192, 195, 197, audiovisual equipment, 155 communities of practice, 64
214, 227, 247, 311 community-building, 53–54
accounting, 121, 134, 179, 186, 194, badges, 126, 188, 213–14, 226, 245, computers, 147, 155–56, 205, 239, 289
310–11 248–49, 254–55, 283 conference
acknowledgment letter, 214–15 dots, 249, 255 announcer, 122, 217, 251
ad hoc events, 61 birds-of-a-feather sessions, 34 coordinator, 114, 121–22, 125–27,
affinity grouping, 105, 295–97, bottom-up, 41–42, 67 133, 135, 158, 193–94, 200, 214,
300–305, 331 breakout sessions, xi, 37 216–17, 242, 245, 251, 280, 282,
Allen, Christopher, 42–43, 330 Briggs, Katharine, 267 317
Allen, David, 125 British Post Office, 5 duration, 85, 117, 119, 137–38,
Amplifying Your Effectiveness, buddy system, 15, 88–89, 240, 140–41, 164–65
101, 331 262–66 facilitation, 72
announcements, 122, 135, 176, budget review, 193 fee, 179–80, 190, 193, 213, 245, 249
251–56, 259, 280, 283 budgeting, 118, 121, 133, 180, format, 6, 17–19, 34–36, 43, 101,
appreciations, 218, 291–92 185–90, 193–97, 208 117, 256, 294, 300
private, 293 building community, 4, 18 hierarchy, 45, 48, 79
public, 293 business meeting, 147, 152, 218, host, 121, 126–27, 180, 200–1,
Art of Hosting, 5, 18, 330 220, 248, 293, 311 213–14, 216
assumptions, xiv, 19, 64, 79, 301–2 logbook, 241
attendance sheet, 97, 280, 283, 318, café tables, 15 marketing, 30, 50, 117, 119, 121,
321–22 catering manager, 152 132–33, 135, 154, 156–57, 176,
attendee cell phone coverage, 147 178, 208
database, 125–26, 212–14, 246–48, CERN, 63 marketing materials, 16, 119, 121,
311 Chaucer, 105 127, 133, 152, 156, 158, 163,
pairs, 88, 262 chime, 236–38, 251, 255, 287, 290 167, 176–80, 192, 199–200

332
 Index

preparation, 52, 117 Eleven Plus, 7 greeting attendees, 243

roles, 47 Eliot, T. S., 65 Gross, Stan, 115
site facilities, 147, 152 Emery, Dale, 114, 331 ground rules, 43, 60, 68, 76, 78,
size, 33, 135–36, 164–65 entertainment, 122, 135, 147, 156, 80–83, 258–59
tasks, 111–12, 117, 119–20, 216–17, 167, 189, 204 group decision making, 49
309 evaluations, x, 24, 89, 103, 122, 161, group spective, 52, 61, 70, 101–5,
theme, 94, 117–18, 127, 136–37, 208, 218–19, 278, 284, 309, 311, 135, 139–40, 164–65, 220, 257,
178 325, 328 287, 294–97, 300, 305–7
trance, 167, 253 Everyday Democracy, 5, 15, 53, 330
venue, 121, 127, 142–44, 146, 148, everyone standing sit, everyone hand cymbals, 238, 251
158 sitting stand, 83, 256, 260 handouts, 10, 25, 155, 217, 247–49,
welcome, 164, 226, 231, 240 Everything Is Miscellaneous, 11, 255, 271, 280, 311
when to end, 139–40 44, 67 Heylin, Peter, 70
when to start, 138 exhibit space, 151, 199, 201–3, 285 Holt, John, 31
conferring, ix, 13–14 expense budget, 189–90 House, James, 74, 330
conferring legitimacy, 4, 10, 17 expenses checklist, 188 housekeeping information, 253
confidentiality, 36, 44, 80, 82–83, extrovert, 27, 53, 238, 267
259, 282–83 icebreakers, 15
consensus, 40, 54, 123, 304–5, 318 face book, 21, 85, 126, 135, 156, 205, ice-cream social, 204, 267
consensus-building, 104 208, 212–13, 227–34, 246, 248, informal discussion. See discussion,
continuing education, 8, 23 265–66 informal
Continuing Education Units, 17, draft, 205, 248, 255, 262, 265 insurance, 147, 157, 188
39, 177 headshots, 228 Internet availability, 147, 154
Corrigan, Chris, 96, 331 notes, 230, 232, 234, 248, 255, 262 introvert, 267, 297
creating community, 69 photographs. See attendee, Invisible Clock, 239, 331
credit card payments, 193 photographs iPod, 237, 239, 282
printing, 230 issue activism, 4, 18
database. See attendee, database or FileMaker Pro, 126, 204, 212–13,
vendors, database 247 Jarvis, Peter, 66
de-emphasizing status, 45 fi lter-then-publish, 49
Derby, Esther, viii, 101, 123 finance committee, 121, 133, 200, Karten, Naomi, viii
determining your audience, 136 216 Kelly, Kevin, viii, 41–42, 330
digital music player, 235, 238–39 FlexTime, 236–37, 239 Kerth, Norman, 80, 104, 294–96,
digital recordings, 282–83 floor plan, 201, 216, 231 313, 331
digital timer, 235, 238 focused discussion. See discussion, keynote trap, 124
directions, 147, 155, 157, 180, 200, focused keynotes, ix, 26–27, 71, 75, 140, 166,
214–15, 220, 226–27, 255, 266 food and refreshments, 121, 132, 177, 189, 219
discounts for early registration, 147, 151–53, 161, 189, 195–97
180, 191 food service, 121, 132, 145, 154, 161, leadership, 40–41, 113–14, 331
discussion 202 letter to myself, 290
focused, 105, 295–97, 305–7 Four Freedoms, 76, 80–81, 83, 234, listservs, 178
informal, 36, 100, 105, 220, 248, 258–59, 313, 331 Long-Range Studies Department, 5
295–97, 299, 301, 306–7 frustrated peer sessions, 275
questions, 298–99 furnishings, 188, 215 Main Room, 149–50
Doctorow, Cory, viii, 67, 330 Future Search, 18, 53–54, 330 Mann, Merlin, 96, 331
Drucker, Peter, 102 marketing materials. See conference,
Gause, Donald, 80, 313, 331 marketing materials
early registration discount, 180 gifts, 122, 135, 140, 151, 293 Marlboro College, xi, 23, 28, 78
edACCESS, viii, 51, 78, 178, 276, giving thanks, 291, 293 MBTI, 267
325, 328 go-around, 105, 295–301, 318–19 meals and refreshments. See food
EDUCOM, 28 Gordon Research Conferences, and refreshments
elevator pitch, 29, 38 35–36, 330 meta-questions, 69–70

333
Index

microphones, 122, 147, 155, 188 facilitator, 61, 93–94, 97, 218, 252, program, 4–5, 8–9, 13–14, 20, 22,
Mill, John Stuart, 49 268, 270–71, 275, 278, 279, 280, 24–27, 35, 55, 61, 64, 66, 71–72,
minimum room dimensions, 149, 282–83, 286, 316, 318 90–91, 93–94, 96, 117–18, 121,
324 notes coordinator, 282 127, 141, 156, 163, 166, 176–77,
model conference schedules, 168 Primer handout, 96, 248, 255, 202, 209, 252, 256
modeling appropriate conduct, 66 280, 316 development, 121, 127
multiple event digital timers. room seating, 242 tracks, 55, 96, 276–77
See digital timer running, 96, 279 program trap, 39
Myers, Isabel, 267 schedule, 208, 242, 278 promotional items, 120, 122, 135,
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 267 scribe, 61, 93, 97, 135, 218, 268, 151, 188–90, 210–11, 227, 245,
270–71, 278, 280, 282, 314–18 249, 293
nontraditional conference venue. sign-up, 48, 70, 84, 89–91, 93–94, promotional materials. See confer-
See conference, venue 96, 98, 138, 140, 147, 150, 155, ence, marketing materials
notice boards, 147, 150, 155, 240–41, 163–65, 168, 217, 240, 266–67, prospective, 105
269 269–72, 274, 281 publicity, 121, 126, 177
novelty, 71–72, 145 sign-up instructions, 315 publish-then-fi lter, 49–50
sign-up sheet, 36, 50, 61, 91–94, Putnam, Robert, viii, 73–74, 330
On Liberty, 49 96, 150, 155, 205, 240–41, 267,
online 268–72, 274–78, 281, 314, 317 questions. See roundtable, questions;
conferences, 6 staffing, 278 personal introspective, ques-
evaluations, 218–19, 309 topic recap, 165, 281 tions; discussion, questions
registration, 200, 212, 214 permissions, 283, 321–22 getting answers, 12
on-site registration. See registration, personal introspective, 61, 68, 70,
on-site 100–3, 135, 139–40, 164–65, raffle, 21, 139, 165, 204, 307
Open Space Technology, 5, 48, 218, 220, 257, 286–91 Red Sweater Software, 236, 239
50–53, 96, 330 questions, 102–3, 287, 290–91, refreshment break, 132, 147, 150,
openers, 15, 70 323 152, 165, 175, 278, 283
organic model, 113 photographs. See attendee, refund policy, 179, 191, 193, 200, 216
Osborn, Alex, 49 photographs registration
photography, 217, 255 attendee form, 211–13
pair/triad interviews, 15 plus/delta, 105, 295–99 fee, 190–92, 195
panelist, 16, 47, 64, 93, 96, 166, 188, post-conference tasks, 309 online. See online, registration
211, 268, 270–71, 314–15, 317 poster sessions, 34–36 on-site, 122, 147, 150, 164, 215,
parking, 147, 154, 226 posting peer session notes, 282 226–29, 242–43, 245, 248
peer conference pre-conference vendor form, 191, 200–1, 203
assumptions, 56 meal, 188, 225, 242 registration database. See attendee,
definition, 56 registrar, 121–22, 125, 135 database
end goals, 57 registration, 121, 125, 211, 229, repeat conferences, 194, 261
process, 59–61 231 retrospective, 104
process goals, 57 pre-conference tasks, 207, 216, 331 risky learning, 65–66
scope, 58 pre-planned sessions, 4–5, 47, 119, Roman voting, 123
peer session, 37, 55, 68–71, 90–91, 177 roundtable, xi, 15, 25, 30, 43, 51–53,
93–94, 96–98, 118, 129, 133, presenter, 5, 10, 12–13, 16, 20, 60, 68–69, 76, 78–80, 83–91, 96,
138, 140, 147, 150, 152, 155, 24–25, 27, 34–35, 40–42, 45–48, 98, 122, 135, 138, 140, 146–47,
158, 164–66, 177, 205, 218, 61, 64, 71, 74, 93, 96–97, 119, 149–50, 155, 163–65, 177, 205,
220, 226, 232, 241, 252, 255, 141, 166, 268, 270–71, 275, 214, 219, 226, 230–42, 248,
257, 267, 269, 270–72, 274, 277–79, 311, 314–15, 317–18 254–58, 260–67, 269, 274–75,
276–78, 280, 282, 289, 316–19 price structure, 180, 200 287, 290, 299
determination, 90–91, 93–96, printing, 155–56, 178, 186, 188, facilitator, 76–77, 83, 85, 217, 256
273–76 195–97, 211, 228–30 layout, 232
Facilitation handout, 97, 248, 255, privacy, 36, 43, 285 length, 164–65, 235
280, 318 professional development, 8, 17 process, 48, 58, 68, 76–77

334
 Index

questions, 60, 76–77, 83, 89, 232, spective. See group spective treasurer, 121, 125, 134, 187, 193,
234, 240, 248, 258, 260–62, speed dating, 86–87 213–14
264–65, 267 sponsorship, 8, 133–34, 178, 180, two roundtables. See roundtable:
questions card, 260, 267, 320 186, 189, 192–93, 195, 204, 210, simultaneous
scribes, 77, 84, 135, 217, 232, 234, 213, 248, 253–54
260–62, 265 start-up funding, 186 unconference, 5, 48, 50, 52–53
seating, 232 staying on time, 76, 80, 82–83, 251, unpaid registrations, 214
setup, 231 255, 258–59
simultaneous, 58, 88–89, 149, steering committee, 25, 51, 66, vendor registration form. See
165, 231, 239–40, 258, 260, 111–15, 124–27, 132–36, registration, vendor form
262–63, 265–66 154–55, 158–59, 166, 175, vendors
size, 88 178–79, 186–87, 191, 193–94, coordinator, 122, 126, 151, 158,
wrap-up, 266 197, 199–201, 207–10, 213–14, 191, 199–201, 203, 215, 218,
216, 218, 225–26, 228, 242–43, 231, 282, 284–86, 310–11
safe learning, 65 249, 252, 254–56, 272, 282, database, 204
safety, 76, 80, 82, 102, 258–59, 289 284, 286–87, 293, 309–10 exhibit, 126, 134, 140, 147, 151,
sample budgets, 194–97 meetings, 116–24 155, 158, 166, 178, 188–91,
sample conference evaluation form, study circles, 15 198–204, 209, 213, 215, 230–31,
325, 328 SurveyMonkey, 218, 331 248, 285, 310, 319
Satir, Virginia, 14–15, 67, 80, 313, swag. See promotional items fees, 187, 191, 198, 200, 216
331 synergy, 70–71 introduction, 202, 215, 218,
scheduling peer session topics, 284–85
276–78 Talking Stick Ceremony, 52 mailing, 200
schwag. See promotional items target audience, 25, 111–19, 127, presentations, 151, 202–3, 220,
seed questions, 54 136–38, 143, 176, 179, 211 231, 285
Shirky, Clay, viii, 33, 49, 90, 330 Three Questions. See roundtable, registration, 151, 191, 200–1
signage, 151, 226, 309 questions rules for, 286
sign-up sheet. See peer session, Time Now Corporation, 239 soliciting, 122, 134, 199–201
sign-up sheet timekeeper, 77–78, 85, 122, 217, volunteers, 61, 93–94, 112, 115, 120,
simultaneous roundtables. See 232, 234–35, 238, 251–52, 254, 125, 132, 179, 194, 198, 218,
roundtable, simultaneous 265, 287 271–72, 278, 287, 305, 317
site timekeeping, 85, 234–36, 239, 262,
coordinator, 121, 125–27, 132, 264 website, 97, 178–79, 188, 200, 207,
211, 214, 216 timeliness, 25, 46–47 212, 283, 310
map, 147, 247, 255, 311 Timsha Bells, 251 committee, 133, 208–9
preparation, 122, 134–35, 188, top-down organization, 40–41 management, 120–21, 133
209, 216, 225 topic Weinberg, Gerald, viii, 80, 114–15,
requirements, 142, 146 degree of interest, 85, 93, 267, 313, 331
selection, 121, 126, 209 269–71 Weinberg, Jerry. See Weinberg,
visit, 121, 124, 126, 132–33, 148, suggestion, 90, 91, 93, 270, 274 Gerald
151–55, 158–59, 201, 208–9, topic sheets. See peer session: Weinberger, David, viii, 11, 44, 67
227, 241 sign-up sheet Wenger, Etienne, 64, 330
small group discussions, 35, 37 topic sign-up. See peer session: wiki, 12, 50, 97, 121, 127, 133, 155,
SMART goals, 102 sign-up 179, 188, 196, 200, 205, 207–9,
social knowledge, 12, 31, 34, 42, 64 traditional conference sessions, 35, 214, 219, 230, 234, 247, 266, 282,
socializing, 6, 91, 132, 147, 151, 167, 61, 71, 74, 120, 147, 151, 163, 310–11, 331
192, 272 166–67 management, 120–21, 133
speakers, ix, 27, 31, 36–37, 47, 71, trainings, 3, 5, 8, 20–21, 27, 30 re-factoring, 209
98, 124, 134, 141, 166, 176–77, transparency, 45 wikifarm, 179, 208
188–89, 211 travel arrangements, 157, 180 World Café, 5, 15, 18, 53, 330

335
Expert conference facilitator Adrian Segar supplies a penetrating analysis of
the limitations of conventional conferences, a clear explanation of a
compelling alternative, and a complete road map to creating a meaningful
and memorable conference experience for every attendee-every time.

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