Thank you to everyone who came along to the wonderful Madison St Paul’s on Thursday morning. Whether you made it to the breakfast or not, we thought it would be helpful to write up the topics and share some of the examples. The theme was Super Connectors and built on our ongoing series of reports.

Content that Connects

First up were Katie & Leonor. They showed how you can build conversation into your content, giving people stimulus to connect around. The added benefit of this approach being that we all retain more information when we’re actively involved rather than just passively listening.

Ideas included:

Scavenger Hunts – Audiences work together to uncover content and make connections

Lego Challenge – Get people collaborating around a behavioural change exercise

Paired Discussion – Break up presented content with periods of chat

Wonder Walks – Pair people up, give them a topic and send them off on a walk and talk

Solution Room – Small groups discuss people’s challenges using the wisdom of the crowd to generate new ideas

Human Spectrogram – Voting with your feet. People move to different parts of a room to indicate their opinions

Reverse Q&A – Put audience questions back to the audience. Bounce the topic around before going to your on-stage experts.

Spatial Design that Connects

Paul & Kat shared some tips for designing spaces that put people at ease and naturally help them network. These included:

Venues – be prepared to sacrifice practicality in order to have a space that sparks wonder and discussion

Bums on seats – think outside the box – stimulating, surprising and unconventional ways to seat your audience

Little things – sometimes it’s the tiny, quirky, left-field things that spark conversation

Big things – be bold, one big design statement is far more powerful than diluting ideas across many areas

Make it fun – the Sketch toilets are all we need to say on this point

Experiences that Connect

Conor & Emily reminded us how far what used to ambitiously be called ‘networking areas’ have come. Conor started with four activations, sure to spark conversation:

Thought Bubbles – these floating orbs are not only great for branding, by asking people to write their own content onto them they become a fun way to share content

Stitch School – embroidery is back! Customised printed looms are a visually stimulating way to get people chatting around a brand message

Scratch Walls – a great conversation building idea, courtesy of Marriott

Luster  – crowd sourced mosaic art piece, which sees delegates printing insta pictures using the event hashtag to add them to a giant mosaic board to reveal brand messaging

Emily reminded us that whilst all the above is great fun, what people really want is food! And, she showed that F&B can also be a spectacle that gets people talking.

Lick me I’m Delicious  – these guys provide experiential food installations such as nitrogen ice cream, tipsy fountains and their wonderful new invention edible balloons. Their contraptions are visually striking and create natural conversation points

Thirsty Thoughts– have designed a robot that allows people to pour a pint of beer or even a mocktail, through mind control

Ooho – are a driving force of sustainability. Their sustainably packaged liquid shots let people hydrate without using plastic and are sure to spark conversation

Robot barman – people can digitally order a cocktail and watch robots make them right before their eyes. Again, a fantastic conversation starter!

Bompas and Parr – create perfectly detailed moulded jellies of everything from famous landmarks, to the human body. A wonderful example of how your catering can be the spark that gets people connecting.

Technology that Connects

We all know that event technology makes big promises about helping people connect. Harriette cut through the hype. She encouraged us to start with our audience type and shared not only the solutions we should be thinking about but the behavioural tips that will ensure they’re embraced by your attendees.

Her four audience types were:

Large audience who do not know each other –  consider pre-event matching making such as Grip and Socio

Introverted audiences – proximity technology helps people continue conversations post-event by sending them details of the people they have connected with. Hiver and Loopd are great examples of this

Extroverts – to extend the number of conversations consider a digital speed networking tech. Mixalot offer just the thing

Competitive audiences – for groups such as sales teams gamified networking might be the ticket. Scavify and EventMobi can add the competitive edge to your event.

For more on this topic be sure to check out our latest Super Connectors report.

Joining the Dots

Finally, Jez tackled the million dollar question – can you demonstrate that creating Super Connectors actually generates real business value?

By building event technology into highly connecting experiences we can gain a detailed picture of audience behaviour. This data, on its own, only tells us about what happens within the event. In order to understand how the experience is moving clients or prospects through the consideration funnel or leading to sales we need integrate our event technology with our business’ wider CRM systems.

Jez drew on a recent study, the Event Marketing Evolution, to show how some of the world’s biggest brands are forensically demonstrating the ROI of their events.

If you’d like to chat about any these topics in more detail do drop us a line. And keep an eye out for our monthly That’s Interesting newsletter.