Events are all about the attendees. The best events focus on the audience and utilize exciting techniques to encourage participate and natural engagement. Here are some ways to make your event truly memorable, inspiring connection with the material and between guests.
1. Seat Swap
This is old hat but always works to recharge the room. In between main course and dessert, when conversation tends to dwindle, announce a seat swap, where attendees have to switch their seats. What’s the best way to organize this? Ask only the men or women to switch. Or, split attendees by asking those with last names in the first part of the alphabet to switch. Surprise your guests, but don’t be too disruptive with your swapping.
2. Tag, you’re it
While some event coordinators think name tags are passé, name badges are a great way to break the ice. Be creative with it. Hand out large blank cards that give attendees enough space to add their own flavor. Try open-ended introductions like
“Tell me about…”
“I study..”
“World’s Greatest”
These are a lot more fun than “My name is…”
Another idea that is now popular at Tech events is including a scannable bar code that users can use with their mobile devices to connect to each other’s websites.
3. Body Voting
Getting up and moving around will energize your audience. Here are some examples of “body-voting.”
You can show the amount of experience in the room. First, ask the audience to think of their quantitative years of experience. Then, have them line up across the room in this numerical order.
Ask a handful of people at the higher end of experience end to recite their years of experience as answers for the whole group.
Next, ask people at the middle of the line to repeat their years of experience just as the higher end did.
Multiply this number by the number of total participants. The difference of collective people minus years of experience in the room will be higher than any one or two people’s experience. This is a fun group activity and will be sure to get people chatting about their work experience.
The key to keeping your audience happy is letting them communicate with one another. If they’re moving around the room and enjoying chatting with each other, you’re doing a good job.