DALLAS — Freeman released part one of its Learning Trends Report, which focuses on how attendees learn within conference room sessions and general sessions, and the value they receive from different traditional formats.
The idea of quality over quantity, which the industry has leaned into in a variety of places, is applicable to educational experiences as well. Data shows that attendees are less impressed with the sheer number of sessions available to them than they are with fewer sessions that drive real impact based on their objectives.
To dive deeper into the report and the insights it provides, Trade Show Executive connected with Ken Holsinger, Senior Vice President, Industry Research & Insights, at Freeman.
“The story of the research is that content consumption is not the goal. Retention, transformation, action and change are the goals,” Holsinger said. “We brought in external research to say the opportunity is here; in-person learning is where this happens. These fundamentals are hard to ignore. … We have an opportunity, and if we’re going to navigate the retention challenges and other external pieces, we have to start with a menu that people want to eat off of.”
Gaps Between Delivered Experiences and Audience Needs
Like many of the Freeman Trends Reports before, the data shows a steep disconnect between what audiences are looking for and the value that event organizers believe they are providing.
This gap becomes a greater point of concern when coupled with the fact that average event’s attendee retention rate hovers just around or below 30%.
“Attendees are craving the validity of expertise and validation of in-person (events). We should be jumping on that, and we should be seeing an explosion of opportunity, but we’re seeing a generation retiring on both sides of the apple,” Holsinger said. “We’re not making the changes that are necessary, and if we’re not careful, and this is the warning to organizers, the new events will eclipse the existing events because retention is not high enough. Disruption is actually easier now than it’s ever been, so organizers better be doing some of these fundamental things because the next generation does not have 30 years of loyalty and membership to bring them back to your event.”
10 Key Data Points from the Report
The robust trends report dives into myriad data points. Here are some of the major highlights from the full report:
- 70% of respondents said that in-person conferences, trade shows or other events are a top source they go to for professional education, training or to learn something new. Online events (48%) and professional and trade organizations (32%) follow behind.
In-person events are in a unique position to capitalize on the trust live events build with audience to deliver rich, impactful education that cannot be matched by online channels.
- Among the NowGen professionals (those aged 23-46), 40% say certifications offered at events are very or extremely valuable, which is higher than the average of 34% for all ages.
While in the past, motivation for attending educational sessions at events centered around accreditation, certifications alone are no longer enough to drive attendees to educational programs or viewed as the most valuable aspect of programming.
- 64% of attendees say their learning goals at a professional event should generate new ideas, approaches and inspiration, while 55% say discovering take-home, implementable ideas/practices are among their goals.
Organizers need to ensure their speakers and content are providing actionable takeaways in each session, regardless of the format, to provide the valuable learning experiences audiences are seeking.
- Attendees with different objectives for attending want learning formats that align with those objectives. It’s important to have a mix of lectures, hands-on sessions, workshops, demos and other session types to appeal to everyone.
Consider attendee personas when designing conference formats. Attendees that are more commerce-focused may prefer more one-to-one learning opportunities on use cases, while networking-focused attendees may want peer-to-peer learning like facilitated roundtable discussions.
- Attendees said the most compelling learning opportunities at in-person events are conference room sessions and interactive/participatory experiences.
When budgetary constraints come into the conversation, it’s important that organizers think of maximizing their conference room sessions in terms of impact, rather than consolidating the programming.
- While 74% of organizers say their conference room education sessions help improve how attendees do their jobs, only 59% of attendees agree. Similarly, while 83% of organizers say their programming helped attendees connect with others with similar interests and challenges, only 68% of attendees agreed.
Significant gaps remain between what organizers believe they’re delivering in terms of valuable learning experiences, and how attendees evaluate those learning experiences.
- Celebrity keynotes are not resonating with attendees; 59% of attendees prefer to hear industry experts speak at general sessions and plenary addresses.
“Attendees want to have the simplicity of basic, good, fundamental content,” Holsinger said. “You can add beautiful things in on top of that and make the room prettier and all the things, but if you’re not getting good speaker selection, and those speakers aren’t delivering practical content that resonates, you’re not helping people shape their experience.”
- 87% of attendees view speakers that provide real-world challenges and examples as important, but only 75% find speakers to be effective at this. At the same time, 84% want speakers to leave the audience with implementable takeaways, but only 64% find them to be effective in this area.
Organizers should consider bringing in more industry experts to lead education, and provide coaching or other forms of support and direction to ensure actionable takeaways are provided. This could include tapping into the SMEs exhibitors bring in to help drive better engagements at their booths.
- Only 47% of attendees say general sessions add to their overall ROI from an event.
Not only do less than half of attendees think general sessions add to their ROI, but general sessions are also seeing declining attendance with organizers reporting that only about half of attendees choose to attend that session. This highlights a key area of improvement and opportunity for event organizers.
- 69% of event organizers say that general sessions require change to meet audience preferences, but budgets and the “way we’ve always done things” mindset are real inhibitors to enact change.
The challenges posed by budgets and balancing various interests are very real and slow down event organizers’ ability to make impactful changes that would enhance events. Stakeholder management becomes a key skill needed to face these obstacles.
Action Items for Organizers
Based on the data from the report, Freeman identified a few key areas where event organizers can take action to change their events’ learning experiences for the better.
For starters, in order to serve attendees with different learning preferences, programs can be designed to provide the same core content in a variety of formats, like brief talks, small-group discussions or hands-on moments.
To continue enhancing educational content, organizers should start to experiment with AI to see how that technology and other tools can help improve learning through recommendations, summaries and highlights, on-demand recordings and the ability to connect with others in attendance over topics.
“Content needs to be carefully curated, and we need to encourage the event-tech space that making recommendations for people has got to come to the top of the list,” Holsinger said. “You see it in the data. Just tell [attendees] which sessions they should be attending. They don’t want to sift through hundreds and hundreds of pieces of content. Tell them the six or seven they should attend … and make sure they’re recorded because it gives peace of mind.”
To secure buy-in from leadership to be able to make changes to learning experiences, organizers can leverage industry data, bring stakeholders in early and try reframing change to be risk-mitigating rather than risk-taking, because learning experiences that miss the mark is not helping retention efforts.
“Event organizers have obstacles,” Holsinger said. “There’s the ‘we’ve always done it that way’ we deal with. We have stakeholders that want something different, whatever that might be, but the business case is there, and it goes back to you have to differentiate.”
Future Reports
The second part of Freeman’s Learning Trends Report will hone in on learning experiences that happen outside the classroom environment, and how organizers can better design event experiences that encourage knowledge sharing, discovery and serendipitous insights.
