USING
SESSIONS TO
MAKE
MATCHES
15
Tanya Pinchuk,
MD at ExpoPlatform,
says a good
matchmaking system is
key for good business
he primary objective of a
conference organiser is to
help your audience achieve
their goals, whether that is
education or finding a specific
solution to a problem. You need to
know what your audience is looking
to achieve and accordingly, match
them with the sessions that suit
them best.
A good matchmaking system is
key in achieving this; employed
correctly it can lead a person through
a problem-solving process. Let’s say
they are attending a particular event
in search of particular information. If
you know what that is by recording
their job function, or by looking at
their registration data, then you can
ensure they sit in the right sessions.
This can be reverse-engineered for
PCOs of course. If you know what
sessions are proving popular, then
you can engineer your event to
include ancillary elements that cater
to this appetite – fan the flames of
this particular element of your event;
you’ll increase interaction and
therefore satisfaction.
How do we go about this? Begin by
tracking the interests of your
delegates via the sessions they have
registered for, and make sure you
can categorise this in a codified way,
according to subject areas or speaker
categories.
Data taken from pre-registration
and other readily available digital
profiles will help you to match one
delegate’s provisional conference
programme according to their
specific interests, with others that
have expressed a similar interest.
And by matchmaking people with
Technology
sessions in this
way you can also
connect people who are interested in
a particular session or speaker, or
people who have a greater likelihood
of benefiting from meeting one
another. Rather than connecting
people according to what they are
(their personal attributes) you are
connecting them according to what
they like (their interests).
The challenge is to present
additional value to attendees without
compromising their enjoyment. But
by either connecting or gathering
delegates with aligned interests, you
can increase their chances of
meeting and discovering such shared
interests, which may lead to fruitful
interaction down the road.
It is unlikely that one linear
programme will cater to every
individual’s interest unless the scope
of your conference is very narrow. So
use the data you have collected to
provide a programme that appeals to
the median, while making allowances
for those who may not conform to
type. Select a venue carefully and
use the space available to enable
you to introduce alternatives –
because it is in these spaces that the
real value may be discovered.
Matchmaking is all part of an
effort to introduce science to the art
of improving the chances of fruitful
connection. So let us make sure the
right people meet each other at the
right sessions, and increase those
odds.
BETWEEN
PEOPLE
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