Originally posted on Advisor Perspectives, April 10, 2017

The basic premise of conferences is flawed. Attendees focus on the quality of the speakers and feed the myth that more charismatic speakers will contribute to a more productive conference. The data contradicts this premise.

How many conferences have you attended? I suspect the answer is “too many to count.” Your firm has probably sponsored some of them.

Let’s see if I can guess at the format. It’s built around a roster of speakers, who specialize in various topics. Each one talks for 45 minutes to an hour. Participants go from room to room, to hear subjects of interest to them.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the bad news. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s time to re-think how conferences are conducted.

Speakers love it

The format works great for speakers. I should know. We’re well paid to give presentations. It’s something we’ve trained to do. There no shortage of advice intended to help us shine, with titles like: How to Give a Great Presentation.

We love giving presentations. Who wouldn’t? We’re the center of attention. We have the opportunity to demonstrate our expertise and our presentation skills. We’re fully engaged and totally energized.

Unfortunately, the audience isn’t. That’s the problem.

A short attention span

I previously wrote an article about the short attention span of audiences. I noted studies that show that audiences daydream and even fall asleep during presentations.

Other studies (referenced here) found that an audience will “mentally check out of your next PowerPoint presentation after about 10 minutes.”

Think about that data. It undermines the entire premise of holding conferences, which is to convey information that will be heard, understood and implemented.

It gets worse.

Poor listening

An extract from The Plateau Effect, by Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson, published in Scientific American, reached this stunning conclusion: “The truth is, the older people get, the more their listening comprehension sinks. Making matters worse, studies show that people wildly overestimate how good they are at listening.”

The authors referenced a number of studies to support this observation, but this one is all you need to know: Participants were asked to sit through a 10-minute oral presentation. They were then asked to summarize its content. The study found that half of the participants failed to do so even moments after the talk. Two days after the test, 75% of them couldn’t even recall the subject matter.

I can only imagine the results if the oral presentation was extended from 10 minutes to an hour.

It’s a charade

The current format for conferences is a charade. Everyone feels great about it, except those it’s intended to benefit. The sponsors believe they’re doing something productive by organizing the event. The speakers are getting paid and have the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise.

The audience may feel they have done something productive by showing up, but they have wasted their time, since their retention level is so low.

Recommended changes

It’s time to make some fundamental changes to this format. Here are my suggestions:

1. Limit speakers to 10 minutes. Encourage them to make a small number of points, and then engage the audience in a question and answer session for the balance of the allotted time.
2. As suggested in this article in Forbes, encourage the use of videos, multiple speakers during the same session and audience participation in exercises.
3. Instead of having a few speakers talking to large audiences, have more speakers holding workshops with fewer participants. The goal is to engage the audience. People are engaged when they are participating, not when they are passively listening.
4. Above all, make the new goal for your audience to have fun, laugh, be entertained and involved.

The basic premise of conferences is flawed. Attendees focus on the quality of the speakers and feed the myth that more charismatic speakers will contribute to a more productive conference. The data contradicts this premise.

What will enhance your conferences immeasurably is a more involved audience. You can’t reach this goal by sitting passively while speakers – however talented – drone on.