Photo by Alex Drennan on Flickr

This is the first guest-post by Ana Silva, specialist in Enterprise 2.0 and social media, and scholarly on serendipitous matter (more on Ana at the end of the article).
Serendipity, the art of looking for something and ending up finding something else, at times more valuable than the thing you were looking for in the first place, is generally seen as something that happens in our personal lives, as portrayed in Hollywood movies.

Truth is that this interesting concept has been making its way into businesses, especially in the field of innovation (just think of “accidental discoveries” such as post-it notes) and has long been present in the world of the Web with services such as StumbleUpon. In fact, Eric Schmidt calls Google search a “serendipity engine”.

The Power of Pull

The notion that serendipity can be stimulated or facilitated is increasingly cited by authors and futurists such as Ross Dawson or John Hagel. In his latest book, The Power of Pull (Amazon), Hagel stated that “Serendipity can be shaped: We can make choices that will increase our ability to attract people and resources to us that we never knew existed, leading to serendipitous encounters that prove enormously valuable”.

Conferences and other events can be great places for increasing our probability of engaging into serendipitous encounters, with other people and also with new ideas, especially those in emerging arenas that attract a diverse set of participants and speakers.

While the participants should attend with a proactive mindset towards serendipitous happenings (it’s for their own benefit after all), it’s the organizer’s duty to design a conference experience that increases the possibility of serendipity happening.

Ideas for event organizers

• Strive for diversity in speakers: invite diversified speakers, offering different perspectives or experiences on a given topic (this can be of course easier for more broad events than very theme-focused conferences). E.g.: if your event caters to the academic world or a specific industry, invite non-academic speakers or people working in other fields/industries that can provide a radically different point of view, spark new ideas and collaborations or just enrich the content being shared at the conference

• Curate your audience: try as much as possible to appeal to a diverse crowd of attendees (don’t confuse this with trying to appeal to everybody) but also the “right” attendees. More than half of the value that your event will be providing comes from the new connections born during breaks and networking time, though these aren’t just any type of connections. You need participants from different walks of life that can provide useful to each other and be relevant for future collaborations. You should make the effort to have valuable people on and off stage alike

"Good conferences don't have 'same old faces' - Twitter exchange between @elsua (Luis Suarez) and @jobsworth (JP Rangaswami)

• Use Twitter as a serendipity engine: conversations on Twitter before, during and after your event can be a valid channel to connect with other community members (past/present/future participants), so make sure you have an “official” Twitter hashtag and that it’s present in all your communications. Stimulate its use by sharing interesting content (the kind that you would like to read yourself, not [just] marketing yada-yada). Ask questions, involve speakers (many of them are probably on twitter too), get involved in [useful] customer service but also listen to what your community is saying (and act accordingly). During the event provide Internet connection to make it easier for the conversation continue

• Design the physical space to favor encounters: provide coffee areas that are comfortable and attractive for people to hang out, not too spacious, not too small (coffee is a powerful link between people… alcohol too but that might be inconvenient). Create meeting points with appropriate signage for those that need a reference area to find each other. South by Southwest creates a huge “Lego pit”, an area with Lego building blocks, for people to meet each other… and entertain themselves or their kids if they arrive early. [more on the Lego pit here]

• Facilitate introductions: not everyone is a natural born networker. Sometimes having a searchable database of the attendees or suggesting 10 people to meet at the event (matching people by interests, activities, etc) can kickstart encounters. The best introductions though are made by humans. Have your community manager (or someone else from your team that knows the audience quite well) to work as a “Concierge” during the conference. Participants could tell her what kind of fellow attendees they want to meet and the concierge can make the appropriate introductions in situ

• Help break the ice: if the group is small enough consider changing the display of the room and having everyone presenting themselves. If this is not possible, simply imagine some ice breaking exercise that helps put people more at ease

Hug ice breaking moment at Ignite Portugal - Photo by retorta_net on flickr

• Game serendipity: very much in line with the previous point, people love games and this can also help drive serendipity by stimulating interaction. E.g.: At UXLX, each attendee got a deck of cards with interesting info on one particular UX-related personality. There were different cards but everyone got a certain amount of the same one. In order to get the full deck of cards -a sort of souvenir of the event- participants needed to talk to each other to trade their cards, helping break the ice

Card trading at UXLX 2011 [Photo by UXLx in Flickr

• Give serendipity time: plan many session breaks that are long enough for attendees to have time to socialize & meet each other

Ideas for attendees

• Seek diversity: the world of conferences and events, once “dominated” by the same old events, is now much more varied. Meeting people from diverse backgrounds in a setting where different perspectives give rise to interesting conversations can be a powerful serendipity engine. Participate in new or different events which could provide content and connections that are complementary to your job or industry. Even attend events that are totally unrelated and could be a source of serendipitous inspiration!

• Prepare in advance: check if there is a Twitter hashtag for the event and browse through the tweets prior to attending. See if anyone in the tweetstream catches your attention and check their profile

• Turn the serendipity engine on: during the conference and in the days after continue checking the event’s Twitter hashtag and other online streams for interesting connections

• Step out of your comfort zone: avoid sticking the whole event with your familiar group of acquaintances and instead go speak to strangers during the coffee breaks and other pauses

• Change seats: in a long event with different sessions try seating in different parts of the venue for each session, preferably close to strangers

• Get social: to facilitate serendipity you’ll need to get social! This means taking advantage of all opportunities to engage into conversations with other attendees: mingle during the breaks and go to the dinner and after-party events

Ana Silva (twitter, blog, linkedin) divides her time between strategizing collaboration and social media initiatives for a large manufacturing company, teaching Enterprise 2.0 at the Oporto Business School, and organizing conferences on the impact of social media on areas such as citizenship and the future of work.

An event produces a lot of ephemeral tidbits of valuable content that resonates in real time but then fades (e.g.: tweeted quotes the speaker currently on stage). How can you highlight that content not only to the attendees but also to their connections on social media and a broader audience that might not be aware of your conference? Professional illustrator Chris Shipton (twitter, web, company: Livescribes) might have a solution for you.

Chris picked up a tweet from the event Silicon Valley Comes To The UK that had quite resonated with the audience and made a beautiful cartoon out of it: Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman  said on stage that “Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff & assembling a plane on the way down.” The quote was tweeted by Tim Bradshaw and bounced around for a few hours.

Illustration by Chris Shipton

Making the action more valuable

1. Have an illustrator working in real time
2. She will appreciate if you point out the most relevant tweets to be illustrated (have someone track the conversation around your event by monitoring the hashtag)
3. Include the event’s name and date/year in the illustration (for brand recognition)
4. Offer good quality prints at the end of the event, so attendees can take them back home as a memento of the event. Postcard format would be perfect
5. Offer high quality handmade copies for sale (to be mailed after the event) This becomes an income source for the illustrator (if she makes enough money from your event, it could justify the organizer not paying for the services… which helps to contain the costs of the event)
6. Send a high quality print to the speaker being quoted. It would be a way to show your love for them speaking (the organizer should pay for it)
7. Share the images on social media asap like twitter, facebook, google+, storify or whatever you use (including flickr too, so other people can download it in hi-res)
8. Include the illustrations in the post-event email you send to the attendees with the event’s highlights
9. Show off the illustrations in your website
10. Consider including branded illustrations in your sponsor package as an extra item/benefit to sell
11. Allow the illustrator to add his signature and an url

How does innovation firm frog (web, twitter) create a more cohesive team between new hires and the old boys and prevent fellow frogs (they call themselves like that and their offices are known as “ponds”) having to introduce each other during client meetings? Solution: they organize internal Speed-Dating sessions!

frog has been growing quite some during the last year (from 600 to 1,500 employees) and one of the drawbacks of this was that it’s staff was not always able to catch up with the newbies joining the team . This issue was particularly felt at their New York studio and one of their creative directors –Dino Sanchez– decided to take matters into his own hands (together with general manager of the NY studio Carsten Wierwille) and created SpeedMe, an internal speed-dating session among frogs.

In Dino Sanchez’s own words:

“frog has grown quite a bit over the past year and with all our busy schedules it’s been a bit difficult to keep up with new hires. Creativity is something that hinges on critique and in some cases brutal honesty, so knowing your colleagues and being comfortable with them is essential to a productive process.” 

SpeedMe: Speed-dating session at frog's NY studio

“We wanted to avoid a situation where we were passing business cards to fellow frogs during client meetings. Really at the base of all this was simply the need to get to know one another a bit more, what projects we were working on and maybe even make some new friends.”

“Carsten and I briefly discussed the idea of this on the way to playing soccer one night. We didn’t really discuss it all that much, because it seemed like an obvious thing to do. The structure of “speed-dating” was really a means to get through as many base level introductions as we could in an hour, so we took some of the questions and reappropriated them for a professional environment.” 

“Of course we were not able to introduce ourselves across the 100 or so employees in an hour, so I see this as an on-going process. I think it was a way to get things going and let all the employees know that there was an effort to bring us all together. We received a pretty positive reaction across the office and have even been getting interest across our other studios. Hopefully we can figure out a way to get to know all 1500 frogs!”

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If you haven’t yet, watch the following genius campaign that British retailer TESCO implemented in the South-Korean subway. Their local branch called Homeplus had the goal of becoming the n.1 grocery without increasing the number of stores. It was a win-win proposition because TESCO increased its business by offering a service that people waiting at the metro station find useful.

Now how could this be applied to conferences?

Transforming “Waiting Time” During Registration Into “Useful Time”

TESCO studied the market and found that koreans were the “second most hard-working” people in the world and for them doing grocery-shopping once a week was a “dreaded task”. Through the campaign, and with the idea of letting “the store come to the people”, TESCO realized that “we could change their waiting time into shopping time”, which had the practical outcome of increasing online sales by 130%.

Watching the crowds waiting for the next train reminded me of a typical scene during most conferences’ opening: the registration area. Not only most people don’t like to wait for picking up their badge, but often they also stress-up and start generating bad rep/buzz (e.g. through social media) and enter your event with a negative feeling.

These are a few ideas that came to mind to make shift that painful waiting time into something [more] useful to the attendees:

1. Improv-Networking: have staff-moderators stimulate those in the queue to introduce themselves to the person in front and behind of them. Benefit: you now know two people at the conference!
2. Program Info: deliver the printed program  (if you have one) as soon as people enter the queue so they can catch up on what will happen during the event. Benefit: they will be busy checking out who’s speaking when, where are the rooms located, etc
3. Useful Info: provide useful information like wi-fi user/password so participants can setup their mobiles/tablets while waiting. This could be done through self-standing computer screens that rotate the useful information. Benefit: attendees will spend a few of the waiting time in configuring their phone and won’t have to ask later on for this info
4. Mobile Coat-Room: instead of having people queueing twice (once to pick up their badge, twice to check-in their coat or luggage), have mobile hanging structures near to the queue so that the staff of the coat room can already pick up coats and luggage that will be then carried to the “real” coat room. Benefit: after they pick up their badge, participants will be ready to enter the event and don’t have to queue twice
5. Self-Service Coffee: place tall tables with coffee, cups (a la Starbucks, with the appropriate lid), sugar, spoons, etc so that attendees can pour themselves coffee while waiting in line. Benefit: make the wait more pleasurable by bringing the breakfast to the participants where they actually are

Can you think of any other tactics to transform boring waiting time into useful attendee-friendly time? Please share it in the comments below!

Hat tip to Ines for showing me the Homeplus Korea video.

A stunning and well executed example of 3D projection used as the opening act for Adobe’s MAX conference (I previously wrote about 3D projections here).

[via @SmashingMag and @MarcelloMerlo]

Photo by Kris Krug

Recently Joi Ito, the neo-director of the MIT Media Lab published a blogpost entitled Media Lab “Members” instead of “Sponsors” in which he defines that switch as one of the most important things he’s working on at his new job.

There is a subtle but crucial difference between the two subjects and it goes way beyond grammar. The key element is involvement. As conference organizers we often have to deal with sponsors that [in our opinion] don’t get what our whole conference is about and the opportunities that it offers, but we still need their money to run the event. This is especially true in events like PICNIC (in which I worked for the 2009 and 2010 editions), where the format is somewhat  different to that of many conferences (different vibe and rather edgier or futuristic topics).

Joi Ito writes (I highlighted some passages in bold) :

[...] Having worked with sponsors, and having fundraised for a variety of organizations, I believe the best relationships are those that are not purely transactional. When the relationship is based primarily on financial support, this sometimes causes strange power relationships and limits the field of exploration. Rather, I like working closely with funders/sponsors/members on a shared mission–exchanging ideas, coming up with new ideas, and building things together.

I want to get away from the idea that a sponsor is paying money for someone else to be smart, interesting, or productive. I believe that we really need to build a community–a kind of “tribe.” To better convey this, from now on I’m going to start calling the companies that support the Media Lab “members” instead of “sponsors.” Membership will not primarily be about financial support, but rather about the wisdom, inspiration, and reach these member companies can offer. It will also be about how they can enhance our ability to pursue our vision and impact the world. We will look for members who wish to join our community as active participants and contributors.

Raise your hand if you haven’t gone through the following situation when dealing with sponsors: You make an amazing presentation to prospective sponsors, showing them all the cool alternatives they could exploit, how it could tie in with their existing strategy, etc and at the end you get asked: “Ok, nice, but how big is my logo going to be on the web/signage and where do I put my booth?” Bonk – reset, restart.

How To Transform Your Sponsors Into Members

I don’t have a formula, but I can share some things that have worked in the past and I’d love to here about your successes (and failures) in the comments:

• Show them your plans as early as possible: if you propose them something that’s already made, it’s less probable that they can take a real active part in creating the experience. While this might not be practical with all sponsors, consider sharing with recurring sponsors and with potential big ones what your plans are for the next event and ask them where could they add value for the attendee (note that the common goal should be to make the event more valuable for the participants/community first and then for themselves or the organizers).
• Involve them in the co-creating of the event:  for example they could collaborate with the curation of a specific section of the program or a a series of workshops.
• Have an outstanding speaker from your Sponsor/Member on stage (tricky one, read on): having a speaker from your sponsor is always a tricky issue. I like how TED had a separate event within TED Global 2010 which was dedicated to short presentations by employees from their sponsors. This was separate from the main TED talks and it was clearly stated that those who talked were sponsors (transparency is a good thing). Another good way of having a sponsor involved on stage without diminishing the event’s value is to look for a suitable speaker together, aiming to those game changers hidden somewhere in the research labs (hint: a marketing or sales manager from the local branch is not the kind of person you want to have on stage). Some other times having a big *real* product/service launch on the main room can be a good thing because it adds a news-factor (it positions your event as a place to break news).
• Involve them in a long term collaboration: the idea of a membership should contain a long-term hope in it. Give precedence to existing members over competitors and devise a way in which they can sign-up for long but don’t feel trapped by a multi-event contract. Remember, it’s not a game where one has to lose for the other to win.
• Host recurrent mini-events at your member’s office/HQ: if you organize a once-a-year-conference, then you probably suffer from a physical disconnect from your community throughout the rest of the year. Host frequent seasonal gatherings for your community of sponsors/members and participants (they can be of as little as 20 people) and have one of your members/sponsors act as a host by providing the location (eg. their own offices), welcoming role and maybe an interesting speaker. This mini-events could be 2 hour workshops, a meet & greet with a famous person (past, present or future speaker) or group discussions on relevant topics.
• Give back to the member/sponsor more than he’s expecting (or than they payed for): showing goodwill first, giving without expecting something in return, will help pass the new concept that you are not reaching out only for the money. In the end -directly or indirectly- it always pays off, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Have any interesting Member-Sponsor experience that worked at your event? Please share it in the comments below!

Yesterday I visited the recently opened first fast-food joint from The Melt, founded by Flip camera creator Jonathan Kaplan (more on The Melt’s launch here and here). So what has a grilled cheese sandwich restaurant got to do with conferences?

Quite a lot actually, at least this particular one. Kaplan has created an interesting way to handle the order-queue-delivery workflow.

It’s not fully implemented yet (the store is just a few days old) but it will ideally work like this:

1. Select your sandwich and/or soup combo using the mobile App (or at the register). The app will generate a bar code/QR code identifying your order
2. When you’re at the store, scan the code on a scanner located at the counter (you could have paid for the order online or you can do it when you get there)
3. The kitchen gets an alert that you’re ready to eat and the details of your order.
4. A few minutes later your grilled cheese sandwich is ready and they call out your initials for you to pick-up the tray

Sounds familiar? It’s actually very similar to the registration process at a conference.

The flow at a conference would be more or less as follows:

1. You buy your ticket online and you get a receipt with a QR code that you can print and bring to the venue or (ideally) display on your smartphone
2. When you arrive at the venue you stand up in line and you scan your code, indicating that you’re ready to pick up your badge. The badge is sent to the printer (usually just the label with your name/company which will be applied onto the badge)
3. If there are several registration counters, a screen at the entrance of the queue indicates to which one you should proceed to pick up your badge
4. When you get in front of the registration assistant, you say your name (and show some kind of identification) and she provides your badge

Advantages of this process:

• Badges are produced just in time, so that the registration assistants don’t have to navigate through hundreds (thousands) of printed badges
• You don’t need to have registration counters divided alphabetically by surname, which usually makes the flow worse (you can predict how many people will go to each counter but not when, thus often producing idle times in some counters while others are too crowded)
• Having a unique queue that leads to several counters makes traffic distribution easier (and the whole process faster)

PS: The Melt Experience

The experience was good, in the end it’s just a grilled cheese sandwich! The restaurant is rather small and the registration process I described above is not fully implemented yet (you order and pay at the cashier, she produces the ticket with the code and scans it for you. When your order is ready they call out your name). It’s a nice detail that under each table you have a couple of power sockets where you can plug in your laptop, which makes it geek (or worker) friendly. From what I read, the technology used to cook the sandwiches is rather innovative and has been developed by Kaplan and his team. It allows to make the “perfect grilled cheese” sandwich in just 60 seconds. I ordered a soup-sandwich combo which was about 10 USD final price.

A lovely idea to reward the attendees of your event and share some love with those that didn’t. PopTech (web, twitter) has released the first volume of a mixtape collecting a series of live performances that took place during the last few editions. It includes top artists like Rodrigo y Gabriela, Imogen Heap and John Legend.

The album can be listened to online or downloaded from here.

To avoid headaches and guarantee good quality before embarking in a similar initiative for your conference you should:

• triple check on licensing/copyright issues associated with each artist (even if you distribute the mixtape for free –as PopTech does– you need an authorization to feature the music of published musicians)
• make sure you dedicate a bit of extra budget to the recording equipment, so that the outcome is at least decent (otherwise no one will want to listen to it again!)

Now positive tweets about your conference (or product, service, etc) are a good thing to create buzz, but how do you “stimulate” those tweets in an original, fun and non too pushy way?

Spanish online bank Uno-e found an original way to do it during the internet conference Internet es tuyo (translate: “internet is yours”), that took place last May in Madrid. Uno-e decided to offer free Ice-Cream with the formula “one tweet, one scoop” to those who tweeted the following (see photo and below for translation):

Attendees paying for their scoops of ice-cream with tweets (one tweet, one scoop)

@unoe_dice #porfa1heladode [name of the Icre-Cream taste] en #internetestuyo

it translates as

@unoe_says #please1icecreamof [name of the Ice-Cream taste] at #nameoftheconference

As a result, people gave visibility to Uno-e’s twitter account (@unoe_dice) and to the event’s hashtag (#internetestuyo). In fact, I discovered about this initiative way before I reached the conference, as I was tracking the conference hashtag and saw all these funny ice-cream requests.

Pay with a Tweet

Paywithatweet.com is an online service that allows you to just do that: “Your users can decide if they want to pay with a tweet on Twitter or with a post on their Facebook wall to tell all their friends about you, your product and your brand.“

A few ideas you could use it to promote your conference:

Before

• Offer a promocode that can obtained by paying for it with a tweet, something like “I just got a promocode for the such-and-such conference [url]” or “A great in-depth analysis of top digital trends by @name-of-speaker speaking at the upcoming #name-of-conference. Download it for free: [url]“

During

• You could give out physical or digital goodies as rewards to attendees present at the event (or followers that fulfill a certain criteria) by asking them to pay with a tweet or a post on Facebook.

After

• You could use it to give access to the video footage of the event, a special report or other goodies.

A speaker is suddenly interrupted by a man who refuses to turn off his cell phone… and so starts  a surprise musical performance at the 2011 edition of the GEL Conference.

For more details visit Improv Everywhere.

Thanks to Ricardo Sousa for the tip.