Getting People to Stay to the End of a Day-long Event

I’ve been a member of LinkedIn for some time.  But I’m just now starting to get the hang of it.  One of the things I’m doing is trolling the Questions area and chiming in on discussions relating to presentations.  The other morning I came across this question submitted by another user:  “What are the best ways to get people to stay to the end of a day-long event?”

 Answers from other users were varied, but many revolved around using gimmicks and manipulation techniques like physical exercises, prizes, turning down the AC, food, belly dancers (?!) and so on.  You can read the full discussion here.  

The thing that strikes me about this discussion though is that the question and most of the answers miss the point entirely.  If you have to bribe people into staying through to the end of a day-long event (or any presentation) you’re not providing your audience with what they want & need.  Content must be relevant, it needs to be organized in a way that makes sense to the audience, and they need to feel engaged and part of the conversation. 

Here’s my contribution to the discussion:

If you keep the content relevant and interesting, and you engage your attendees in the conversation, there won’t be such a need for gimmicks to keep them in the room.

Admittedly, this is not easy, and requires: 

• That the organizer of the event has a thoughtful plan in place prior to the event.  A plan that takes wants and needs of the attendees into account, provides clear relevance to each person, and connects the dots between modules.
• That each speaker has a well-developed presentation that is listener-focused and relevant to all attendees.
• That each speaker connects his or her content to what’s come before.
• That a great facilitator is there to move things along, set up each new speaker appropriately, and provide relevance during transitions and wrap-ups.

Of course, keeping everyone engaged is difficult, even with the best content and most interesting speakers.  But people can see through the gimmicks and manipulation techniques, so I recommend using them sparingly.

A little over a year ago I posted a similar entry about using ice breakers or attention grabbers at the beginning of a presentation.

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