Let's face it: the old-style trade show – the kind where people wander from booth to booth and leave with a stack of brochures – is dead.
Traditionally, business conferences have been stuffy, stale affairs, where attendees often experience an "alone in a crowd" feeling and leave more overwhelmed than inspired. The sad fact is that most traditional association tradeshows and big conferences lack one key ingredient: soul.
Please, No More Death by PowerPoint
The old method of showing boring PowerPoint presentations with passive, sleepy audiences doesn't work anymore. Intimate, high-touch point events are the way of the future. Despite the convenience of the internet — where anyone can pull up great content from websites, blogs or YouTube —people still need that personal touch. Personal connections are key in business, and the new wave of intimate and carefully curated events can help fulfill that need.
To combat trade show staleness, conferences should be intimate by design and created to help foster interactions. More small group discussions and unique networking opportunities and less presentations crammed with words and data. It must serve as a setting in which attendees can make real connections, or it will quickly become a faded memory, like every other plain-vanilla conference or trade show.
In the End It’s All About Who’s in the Room
Business events are only as good as the people who attend them, but there must also be an impetus to engage and make mutually beneficial connections. Influence Group carefully curates its attendees for each event based upon specific, relevant criteria so you can rest assured that you'll be sharing a room with individuals who are relevant to what you do and who speak your language.
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