Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Thoughts on Conversation as Connection

Conversation is the most natural, effective, yet most complex vehicle that has the potential to lead to human connection. The goal of conversation is understanding between participants.

Understanding in communication is how we behave in front of a translation. We focus and we relax, we zoom in and out at the same time. We entertain the million thoughts and assumptions in our minds while the visual and auditory messages hit us.

The ingredients of a conversation:

1. The content  -- what you say. Although this comprises only about 7% of what we pay attention to, it still matters.

2. The process -- how you say it. It is estimated that 55% of the process is carried through by nonverbal communication with 38% being the vocal tone alone.

3. The timing -- when you say it. This influences greatly how we process information.

4. By far the most important is permission. Are we talking with each other or at each other?

Out lives are based on our ability to communicate.

The meaning of communication is the response it elicits, not the intention. This relates to the Latin root of conversation as sermo. If we look at one of the ancient Greek words for conversation diatribe comes up, which means use of time, occupation, dialogue.

Conversation is a space where relationships are managed.

These relationships may be sudden and invisible to many -- relationships between people, problems, solutions, processes, objects, and all of these and many more together. When attention and authenticity accompany the message we shorten the distance in these relationships as we create something new.

It is interesting to observe here that the other Latin word for conversation is colloquium, which implies a more intimate setting. This became the English colloquial and German umgangssprachlich, which literally means of every day.

Communication has Latin root in communicatio as well as one in commercium or exchange between people. The ancient Greeks called this omilia, which also meant commerce, relationship, intimacy.

Our brain is an associative network.

It means that our memories record not just the specific details of events, but also our feelings about them. So when it is under the influence of one emotion, it habitually makes connections to past events that triggered that same emotional response.

Emotions affect the way we feel, but they also affect the way we remember. When we relive a memory, we make a new memory in the process, with new connections.

We like twists in a story because we are wired to remember novelty, to recall events that somehow deviate from our expectations.

Our brains have a biologically grounded interest in surprise. Add to the mix considerations around context, cultural differences, social circumstances, and environmental noise and you see how making a connection is indeed a very powerful proposition. 

 

[edited from archives]

[image courtesy]

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

To the Rare Birds

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a couple of accomplished pros courtesy of my colleague and friend Leigh Durst.

In the course of our discussion over lunch, we talked about how some of us through curiosity, creativity, and the ability to roll up our sleeves and get things done have grown horizontally and vertically in a few domains to the point that it is almost impossible to classify us.

I've had the discussion about square holes and round pegs my entire life. And if you are able to keep a secret, I'll tell you how much that helps you -- not one bit. Because while it makes great book and article material, being pointed to as different is something you end up having to overcome constantly.

Yet there we were, Leigh and I talking with others like us who can wear many hats and learn as we go and keep pushing the envelope on what is possible. I am grateful to be part of such a group and for knowing the difference between making it and bad luck.

In honor of Thanksgiving (U.S.), I would like to extend a word of encouragement to all who have ever been called "different" by a less flattering term:

to the rare birds, an energizing force to inject ideas with actions, disrupt complacency, and just keep at it.

The trained eye can see you.

 

[image courtesy]

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

Innovation that is Changing the Most Lives

“Human-centered design [is changing the most lives in the developing world]. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it’s not a onetime thing; it’s an iterative process.”

[Melinda Gates]

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The focus of Gates work is empowering women and girls. Like the Steven Lewis foundation that is working with grandmothers to help children with AIDS in Africa, Gates discovered that empowering women benefits the health and prosperity of entire communities.

This is something we often forget to reflect upon and to mention, because women in their roles of mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, nieces, girlfriends find a way to make things work. And they do it quietly, silently helping others break through.

Leaders in their own rights, on the front lines of historical events yet unrecognized, women continue to be an invisible force, hidden in plain sight.

From Madame de Stael (one of Napoleon's principal opponents) to Rita Levi-Montalcini (neurologist), Marie Curie (physicist and chemist), and Rosa Parks (civil-rights activist) to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (astronomer and astrophysicist) and Susan B. Anthony (activist), Dr Grace Mary Hopper (computer scientist) to Maria Gaetana Agnesi (mathematician) the important contributions of women continue to be edited out of history and business.

Official stories tend to cast them as support agents while they were instead pioneers who left their mark on what came next.

We live in the age of collaboration, and yet we are constantly seeking to reward just one person, the most visible, all too often someone who matches a still prevalent worldview.

Human-centered as in all humans is a good principle to remember. Until then, the entire world is still developing.

 

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

Visual Storytelling

Conversation Agent 2011 Yearbook Quotes from Valeria Maltoni

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my work, in addition to research and analysis, is visual storytelling. The decks you see in my slideshare account as well as all the visuals I use to illustrate concepts at my custom keynotes are my product and my selection.

The "best of" compilation I worked on for the blog's yearbook a couple of years ago was especially rewarding -- putting together appropriate images with posts has been an hallmark of this blog.

At work I collaborate with visual designers and art directors who can take concepts to a whole new level. It is a blessing to see the finished products through. Good visuals tell a story powerfully.

Whenever I am looking for inspiration, I log onto slideshare or prezi. Here are a couple of recent discoveries and a few timeless examples of good visual storytelling.

Pixar's 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling from @powerfulpoint

I am in awe of the talent and product coming out of Pixar, and I have admired them in the past writing about the Pixar touch and how it is made up of product, purpose, persistance, and performance.

Incidentally, Bob Sutton provided one more reason to learn more about Creativity,Inc. in the new upcoming book by Pixar's Ed Catmull#. The presentation I chose for Pixar uses a simple design principle and keeps it constant throughout, making it easier to take in the breadth of information shared in the 22 rules.

Q&A Highlights with Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds from Duarte, Inc.

Another solid format is conveying a few key points from a Q&A -- this could be done with product launches where I would add a short video as well, or at company meetings, for example.

This short deck summarizes a conversation between two presentation artists. I particularly appreciate the restraint from using corporate templates, logos, etc. The message is a powerful enough brand.

Redefiners: Capturing Media Growth Dollars from Activate

This deck is a couple of years old, yet it still remains one of my favorite visual representations of data and analysis to make a point. The message is still quite relevant. In this environment you want to take from the best ideas and build on them fast.

What's Your Perception Strategy? (Why It's NOT All About Content) from Stephen Anderson

Perception, says Anderson, is a process of active construction based on prior experiences and memories. This is a good example of using many slides to convey a complex concept clearly and keep the presentation engaging.

The content does not exist independent of some presentation form and other forms of context. In the formulation of messages, meaning is a combination of what (content) and how (presentation), plus other external and internal elements.

How Do You Design For Creativity? from Bud Caddell

Another favorite visual storyteller, Bud Caddell employs a very clean design to provide a few pointers on creativity. Complete with exercises and thought starters to demonstrate an approach to problem solving.

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My favorites on Prezi are client-related, so I won't be posting them here.

 

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

High Performance by Design

Can business and passion coexist?

In many instances, your passion is great until you're part of the team, then you've got to tone it down. It is not only corporate executives who are ambivalent around passion, it seems that people who get things done are not very passionate at all; they're more process-oriented.

Are the two mutually exclusive?

Especially in large organizations the day to day practices and processes seek to contain and mute the very passion executives so eloquently celebrate.

Do a search, and you'll find two common kinds of popular definitions of passion: sacrifice and lust. Some of the words associated with passion in business are pursuit, progression, pull, connection, discipline, and authenticity. This is an interesting grouping for sure.

The idea of passion is increasingly talked about as important to our personal success. Find your passion and you will succeed, say many. Yet passion often leads us astray. Is it possible to harness its magic without yielding to its unpredictability?

I'm most interested in the performance side of passion, and that is what we elicit when we deliver on a promise.

While it is true that when emotion is engaged it leads us to action (from Lat. emotion ex = out + motio = movement), building a business or a practice inside an established company demands engagement with operational duties, practice, hours of dedication, relationship building skills, and a number of other things. Some of which we may not particularly like. 

A play, a symphony, any number of artistic pursuits require many hours and often years of training and preparation. Sweat equity that goes into delivering an impeccable execution that (hopefully) results in a moving experience -- or rather opens the door for the people in attendance to infuse their own experience into it.

We see the results, not all the work that went into it. On one hand appreciating the mastery of others brings us delight. On the other it may either lull us into the illusion that what looks simple is easy to do, or intimidate us.

The new world of work is still unevenly distributed between corporate competition for individual high points, market pressures, and co-opetition along with collaboration in progressive outposts. We must balance execution and stretch goals in environments where there is often little slack for thinking, and learning.

Some ideas to increase curiosity and enthusiasm for continuous development:

High performance by design

(1.) Start with you -- forget comparing your insides to someone else's outsides. Even when you are figuring out what you want and what you need, take a step and start something. Develop confidence by delivering on your promises.

(2.) Keep at it –- don’t let things you don’t know or don’t understand get in the way: learn them, join them. "But each time I seemed to be climbing into a roller coaster and finding myself coming through the downhill run with that sort of dazed feeling that we all know." [Enzo Ferrari]

(3.) Listen with one ear and forget with the other -- you are in the driver seat, you decide what makes sense keeping. This is very hard to do.

(4.) Stay soft on the people, including yourself –- even when you will need to be hard on the issues. On your way anywhere, you will meet mates and you’ll meet the other kind. To some people you’ll be but a blip on their radar, to some you’ll be a source of great inspiration. Know the difference, you are accountable for it. Don’t keep score, it bogs you down.

(5.) Develop stamina –- think of yourself as a marathon runner. Don’t look at the time, build on the distance. "Aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines." [Enzo Ferrari]

(6.) Take risks -– in fact, the very definition of value creation includes creating risk. Invest in yourself, build capacity and experience by exploring opportunities and doing the work. When you go for safety, you shop at that price. "As bend followed bend, I discovered his secret. Nuvolari entered the bend somewhat earlier than my driver's instinct would have told me to." [Enzo Ferrari]

(7.) Design your context –- chisel away all the marble and what you have is the masterpiece. Edit down as appropriate, sculpt your experience: you decide.

(8.) Have a “to be” list - be interested, curious, adaptable, and open to new ideas, including yours. Many call this attitude, I call it spirit (Lat. spiritus = breath).

(9.) Deliver an experience -- and learn from it so what you learn can be something new every time. In business you often have no dress rehearsal, it’s the real deal. Go at it with gusto and panache. The verb perform is built into performance.

(10.) Build momentum -- this is very important. Whenever things start clicking, don't take your foot off the accelerator, keep going.

 

[edited from archives]

[image of question of passion by Emily's mind]

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

Making Sense of Consequences, Making Stronger Choices, Making it Better

Making sense of Consequences

• Google Broken Promises & Who's Running the Search Engine? Danny Sullivan: the problem with fuzzy is also the lack of accountability. If Google does make a major change, goes in a new direction, who made that call? And who is going to explain it? That’s the disappointing thing to me, with Google’s two-years-in-a-row of broken promises.

• The Galdwell Pivot. Mark Seidenberg: Gladwell gets a lot of grief, but he does his job Damnwell. Reading is good. Knowledge is good. Enjoyment is good. Take the book for what it is and have fun. Or go read a novel. But here’s something to consider. What if in telling one of these stories, the author inadvertently made life much harder for a large group of people who are disadvantaged in some way? What if it resulted in fewer people being able to overcome that disadvantage? What if it added to the considerable burdens that such individuals and their families already experience?

Making Stronger Choices

• It's Time to Kill the Net Promoter Score. Ron Shevlin: The utility of NPS just isn’t there anymore. There are better metrics out there. This post is about one of them: Referral Performance Score.

• Master of Many Trades. Robert Twigger: Monopathy, or over-specialisation, eventually retreats into defending what one has learnt rather than making new connections. The initial spurt of learning gives out, and the expert is left, like an animal, merely defending his territory. [...] polymathics would not just be another name for innovation. It would, I believe, help build better judgment in all areas.

Making it Better

• Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather of Free Online Education, Changes Course. Fast Company: As Thrun was being praised by Friedman, and pretty much everyone else, for having attracted a stunning number of students--1.6 million to date--he was obsessing over a data point that was rarely mentioned in the breathless accounts about the power of new forms of free online education: the shockingly low number of students who actually finish the classes, which is fewer than 10%. Not all of those people received a passing grade, either, meaning that for every 100 pupils who enrolled in a free course, something like five actually learned the topic. If this was an education revolution, it was a disturbingly uneven one.

• Software, Hardware, Everywhere. Jon Bruner, O'Reilly Radar: The outcome of all of this combining and broadening, I hope, will be a world that’s safer, cleaner, more efficient, and more accessible. It may also be a world that’s more intrusive, less private, and more vulnerable to ill-intentioned interference. That’s why it’s crucial that we develop a strong community from the new discipline.

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

It's That Time of the Year Again

The time when we are called to choose between experiences and things.

Experiences we carry with us for a long time, and have the potential to affect us at many levels through inspiration, kinship, connection, and frankly traveling light-er. Which makes travel all the more possible.

Things, while appealing even when not really necessary or functional, occupy space, often are not durable unless of super high quality, and we worry about misplacing or losing them. Things may need maintenance, upgrades, storing, and so on.

All experiences ask of us is to be present to them, to soak in the flavors, colors, sounds, motion, and aromas -- to be an accomplice, even when critically involved, in making the moment special.

The things we own end up owning us. The experiences we join end up teaching us.

We do live in the age of "both/and", and it is possible to have a balance of both. However I have found that a focus on having it all (or trying to anyway) diminishes the joy of what is there already -- enough -- and activating it to do more for us.

Choosing is akin to editing; bubbling up what is sufficient to make something work well using sincerity and clarity as guideposts.

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While everyone sorts out where they stand on the experiences-things spectrum, I am working with conference organizers to book talks for next year. The themes I tackle in keynotes and in panel conversations are along the same lines of the topics I cover on this site:

• digital products as evolution of content, reimagining commerce with digital at the core -- with emphasis on the interestingness of convergence of CMO/CIO or CTO roles having spent quite a bit of time learning with CIOs/CTOs and working with CMOs

• what's next is customer experience, with social and commerce as horizontal layers to experience -- this is an evergreen conversation I have been focusing on for a number of years (see past speaking) and where brands are evolving their model

• a new (surprise) topic about the new world of work -- this one is on me (you pay travel), and I will select three organizations, including and especially higher education, for this rich conversation I will tailor as appropriate to the questions and issues surrounding your firm

My day job has me constantly involved in deep research on the trajectory of current trends (vs. fads) and in conducting both tech and brand reviews, their impact to digital transformation and business results.

So in addition to inspirational keynote addresses, I offer engaging panel discussions and group work sessions that deliver deep insight on focusing product vision and brand promise to help you understand what is bedrock and what is sand.

Contact me if any of this sounds good and we will craft an energizing experience that will help kick start your action plan on a robust path to success.

 

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

Situational Awareness and Impact

A couple of things happened to me yesterday after I posted about a research study on the combination of online and in-store as being key to successful retail strategy.

The response to my tweet with a link to the post containing the title of the topic was the first one. I do not know if the remark came after reading the post or just the title (often the latter is the case).

Simon Wardley, who typically writes on physical and digital/business and technology provided an example of online/in-store combination that did not work. You can see the exchange above.

Sound strategy needs a strong execution to work, I believe what I said. And that means contextual and situational awareness in terms of the choices the firm makes in the moment and over time.

As we discussed here a few days ago (no, big data should not replace thinking), strategy provides forward momentum and little direction. Quoting from Peter directly: the point is that to be able to recognise the challenge you need to be able to process what “it” is, where it’s going, and how to steer it.

So I do like the term Simon used -- inertia -- in conjunction with poor situational awareness as he responded to his very question of what happened to Blockbuster, a company that theoretically had the combination sorted out. With change a constant, advantage is created by responding to the challenge appropriately.

Something else happened as I was thinking about the example Simon offered. Steven Pressfield's Wednesday post hit my inbox. The topic: advanced form of resistance and some ideas of why that would be happening.

I am fairly attuned to convergence and I've experienced quite a bit of it in my life with concentration in the last couple of years.

Pressfield calls the phenomenon resistance, Simon talked about inertia, it feels like the same kind of thing that blinds us, scares us into submission to "the way we do things here" in corporate environments and keeps us from listening and being present to gain an understanding what “it” is, where it’s going, and how to steer it.

One of the symptoms at a personal level is sudden self-doub -- we talk ourselves out of going through with a project or an idea. Where serendipity pulls us into starting, once we realize we are about to create risk (along with value), we pull back and settle for anxiety management.

A note on value -- today we equate it to cash, however there is all kinds of value we miss when we do that.

The antidote to falling into anxiety management, inertia as Simon called it, is to focus on the work task and design to the way things are (vs. used to be, should be, might be, etc.) -- what matters now, what change is needed, what we do first, second, third, and so on.

My love of the work is why I keep Rilke's quote handy, “Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.”

 

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

Combination of Online and In-Store the Key to Successful Retail Strategy

The new report from Retail Systems Research (RSR) titled The Great Leveler: eCommerce's Next Move# highlights the challenges and opportunities retailers are facing as we approach the 2013 holiday season.

As I have written before, with digital technologies, the path to purchase is no longer linear, nor is it one-dimensional. Multi device ownership is a reality#. Smartphones and tablets are changing our behaviors by putting an ever-increasing abundance of options at our fingertips, including when and how to make a purchase.

While we do most of our research at home on desktops or tablets, mobile devices continue to drive purchase decisions in the store. This isn’t just for large ticket items, but for everyday products, too. The beauty industry offers a good example of this trend.

According to a March 2012 survey of online buyers in North America conducted by A.T. Kearney, people spent 33% to 45% of their monthly beauty and personal care budgets online. Shoppers are using both etailers and brick-and-mortar stores to purchase these types of products.

Brands need to step up their multichannel marketing efforts to reach customers wherever they are buying.

However, for retailers, unlocking new opportunities to influence and persuade customers to buy is not just about integrating new tools. It is about understanding people.

While retailers have always specialized in getting to know their customers, the increased availability of communication and transaction channels is posing some unique challenges.

Where do customers go to find out about products? What roles do search, content, reviews and recommendations, and access/speed play in the customer journey? How does a retailer create a single view into customer interactions across different touch points?

Why attention alone is not enough

Attention may be the currency of the Web. However, it alone does not translate into action. People spend more time online, visit more Web pages, and click on more links than ever before, yet all this isn’t necessarily leading to more transactions.

Today, a Web or in store visit from a mobile user is almost certainly less likely to convert into a purchase just from a click. Brand tweets are seen by ten times as many people, yet they are only half as likely to get clicked on as they used to be.

While attention online seems to go up fast, the amount of interaction it leads to is not increasing at the same rate. Browsing doesn’t equate action, and action doesn’t scale as quickly as browsing.

This is why designing experiences that support what your customers are trying to do is more important than ever. Starting with an understanding of who buys from you and tailoring your approach to their needs.

Better performing retailers see their eCommerce platforms of today becoming their cross-channel platform of the future, says the RSR report. Although budgets are tightening, retailers seek to improve traffic to their sites through search and keep customers there once they arrive by boosting sites' browse capabilities.

Retailers know they have to enable customers to live out their paths to purchase the way they already do.

The difference is, to become a preferred brand, they need to shift how they think about the customer journey from the retailer-centered pre-shopping/shopping/and buying phases to customer-driven behaviors: discovery, engagement, conversion, and loyalty. Then support the needs of each stage in the journey with digital tactics.

As buyers continue to blur the line between digital/in store, the next wave of digital innovation will be in store. Respondents for the RSR survey confirm this developing trend with the admission that where “websites” once needed to be as exciting as stores, stores are now in desperate need of being as exciting as the online experience.

Highlights from the report

On the one hand, Amazon.com’s march towards market dominance is forcing retailers to differentiate their digital presence into something else. On the other, the “new” consumer’s influence is so powerful that not only does it permeate the external challenges retailers face; it also creeps into the operational challenges.

This generates:

• business challenges (external) -- among the top are uncertain customer demand, maintaining growth rates, keeping up with evolving consumer shopping patterns: social networks, mobile, etc., getting consumers to engage more online, and generating acceptable margins

• operational challenges (internal) -- like deploying cost effective shipping and fulfillment, understanding and accommodating how different customer segments engage, optimizing inventory deployment across all channels, and coordinating with other channels to create a seamless brand experience

And on the other side of the coin are:

• opportunities -- like improving search and browse capabilities and fulfillment processes, providing richer product detail information using photos and video, embedding more social capabilities, and investing in cross-channel capabilities

The top three roadblocks to extending eCommerce platforms to other parts of the retail organization are:

1. budgeting
2. resources
3. hard to quantify ROI

Download the full report and recommendations at RSR.

 

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.

What Good Event Organizers Know and the Power of Ideas

Put a kid in a candy store and they will attempt to pluck all the colorful, sugar-coated, highly shiny objects in sight. When it comes to events, we are often like the kid in a candy store -- looking at the shiny subjects.

Of course, intellectually we know nutrition comes from elsewhere, yet we want to snack on yummy celebrities and easy to talk about (and do, please) topics. We want the emotional blanket of rubbing shoulders with all the other cool kids who are in it for the point-scoring value. See and be seen.

Like good nutritionists, good event organizations understand the power of a balanced program. Along with the necessity to draw attendance comes a need to provide a satisfying menu -- too many courses and your guests will be feeling bloated, too much of the sugary stuff and your attendees will be bouncing aimlessly off the walls.

Where the seven "shoulds" of conference organization might be unattainable in a less than perfect world, taking just one step in the right direction will improve the experience considerably.

That step is content. Good event organizers know the power of using an organizing principle or theme and then connecting to it stories and sound advice that comes from earned experience.

Then looking harder at the pool of practitioners to draw from. Eric Ries and Sarah Milstein, co-hosts of The LeanStartup Conference, founds that the common conference organizer’s argument that we don’t know any black people in tech or that women didn’t apply to speak just doesn’t hold up.

It is not easy to uncover those stories and find those people.

The astounding number of Twitter and LinkedIn bios that list the magic trifecta of "speaker, author, and social media expert" does not provide a good starting point -- no differentiation on topics or level and type of experience. Social is a horizontal competency, like saying I can talk and do math.

Putting together a good program is like producing a successful show -- the people in attendance keep the experience as the main take away. This is valid for agency- or company-sponsored events and general admission-type conferences. 

Having produced 100 general admission events as well as three major multiple-day client conferences, and having spoken at more than several dozen events myself, I can say I empathize with event organizers.

Here are some thoughts on how to create experiences worth attending:

• develop an original theme that aligns with the core deliverable -- for example, if you are hosting clients, what overarching type of change is their line of business, industry, or profession experiencing?

• assess the topics connected with the theme by both quantitative and qualitative research -- for example, via customer interviews, and through your customer service or support logs; what is problematic and keeps coming up? Conversely, what is working well and needs spreading to others?

• filter by using considerations about what helps further the firm's or agency's core value proposition as well as clients' learning and experience -- don't just educate the head, work on the whole person and be engaged on bubbling up opportunities for relationships and connections

• work to get the most appropriate speakers on the roster -- this is a challenge, because often we don't know what we don't know; so if everyone in your circles is quoting someone, you have no idea there are even better someones in other circles. Mingle more, make it your business to both provide access and build relationships across domains; doing a blind review on the merits of content like Ries and Milstein did is a fantastic method to do this

• take the time to coach the speakers on the type of event you are envisioning -- even well prepared speakers could be out of sync with the experience you are producing; this is the part where you shift a bit to director and provide some coaching

• orchestrate the sessions to have a natural progression throughout the day -- for example, put the strategy in front of the tactics -- preferably there is one coheasive track to keep the conversation flowing within the whole network in attendance. Hard to resist the multiple tracks, I know

• consider the day of the event as the starting point of a new phase of organizing, and not the end point -- much remains to be done to pull off an off the charts good experience at the start of the program; details matter, connecting people in person matters; being in the moment to catch speakers being fabulous matters a great deal

• make it your business to follow up the event with a delta of what went well and what could be improved and to stay in touch with speakers -- I am astounded at how few organizers do this; when you select well, speakers are practitioners and they have colleagues, partners, and clients who might be ideal for the next event

Obviously, a million things go into organizing an event, it's not all just about content. Get the content right, and you are well on your way to earn stellar attendance and afterevent buzz.

Good event organizers use the power of ideas to their advantage by engaging with novel approaches.

 

[image Shutterstock]

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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.