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Crystal Interactive Goes Inside the Delegate’s Mind
A new Report, Inside the Mind of the Delegate, for the first time provides event organisers with a minds eye view of delegates. To develop the Report, Crystal Interactive, which specialises in facilitating and building interactivity into events, has used its expertise to draw together and analyse the feedback of almost 5,000 delegates who collectively have attended 51 events in the past 18 months.
Uniquely, the feedback is based on open-ended questions – what delegates liked and what they would do differently. These questions were posed immediately after events and gave the respondents the opportunity to say anything they liked. This created thousands of text based comments and feedback which Crystal Interactive has analysed to identify common issues and event problems. These centre around content, organisation and interactivity.
The Report from Crystal Interactive examines each of these in turn, with lessons including:
Content-cramming – almost 24% of the organisational criticisms centre on timing issues. The main fault appears to be that organisers are trying to pack too much in. Content-cramming puts a squeeze on networking which is far more important to the delegates questioned than organisers appreciate.
Workshops not working – workshops are a practical way for attendees to mix with others in informal groups yet 28% of criticisms centre on them. The main problem is that workshops often lack focus, aren’t given enough time or seem to produce meaningless output.
Real time content shaping - 42% of content criticisms are because attendees have preferred topics they wanted the event to cover. Many event planners may carry out broad research exploring areas potential delegates are interested in, but this is too blunt an approach to guarantee that the content works for delegates. To remedy this, organisers should gather delegate views at the event and allow this to inform and shape the speaker slots in real time. This kind of event modification takes courage and speaker dexterity but delivers a far better event experience. Involvement – 25% of delegates spontaneously said they want an active not passive role in events. 10% said they also want far more debating and Q&A time.
To download a copy of this report visit www.crystal-interactive.co.uk/reportsform.htm or call T: +44 (0)870 787 4813. |