Behind the Events Curtain: Organizing 9 Great Conversations for 5,000 Seats

I joined the event industry about 12 years ago.? Since then, whether personally or helping friends organize an event, one of the biggest questions has always been, “How do we fill the biggest room with the most people?”? Solving this question defines the success or failure of an event.? People know that I have a creative/strange/quirky way of looking at things so they have asked me this question in different ways through the years.??

“Who’s the most exciting person or company in the industry?”

“What does our audience need to know to be successful in the future?”

“Whose voice do our attendees need to hear to think differently about a problem?”

To add a sense of scale, between audience size and facility limitations, keynote rooms at the largest usually top out around 5,000.? So when thinking of answers to the questions, I ask myself whether 5,000 people might be interested.? Even though the actual size might be 50% larger or smaller, this has been a good benchmark to plan against.? There aren’t many answers that pass this hurdle of 5,000 happy attendees, leading to large events reusing the same faces and names.? While I believe in recycling in many places, I don’t think content is one of them!??

Even if we have good ideas relevant for a keynote audience, digital media means that the thoughts of so many more people are available at a single tap or click, negating the need to travel to hear them.? This further raises the bar on the message, delivery and messenger of a keynote.? In some cases, this results in gimmicky content where a celebrity is added to provide sizzle, but detracts from the substance.? I’ve even seen multiple cases where presenters are amazing in their dress rehearsals onstage, but stumble once the audience of thousands is in front of them.? As an event organizer, those are among the more painful things to watch.

Assuming we have a well executed keynote, there is still tremendous audience variance.? Another painful moment event organizers can relate to is sitting in the back of the room, and seeing silhouettes of attendees getting up and leaving content put together with blood and sweat.? With a mix of companies, functions, backgrounds and interests, there is no single point that enthralls everyone. ? To address attendee mix, we create a portfolio of keynotes, hoping that in aggregate, we’ll hit the right points for everyone.? The number of keynotes can’t be so large that it’s too time consuming, nor too small that it’s too light.? In the best of scenarios, we hope that attendees will see between 5-10 of these sessions, optimistically 9.

While there are specific nuances and differences between events, the general thought process gets repeated for each event, across industries, geographies and types.? This process has been repeated for decades ad nauseam.? I assumed this was preordained destiny of event organizers until I attended Fintech Meetup, a few months ago.

As a bit of a quick background for my participation in last year’s Fintech Meetup, in addition to being an event organizer, I’m an early stage fintech entrepreneur.? In that role, I’m interested in potential partners, customers, and employees.? So my purpose attending Fintech Meetup was to make progress on my startup, rather than an event organizer.??

When I registered for Fintech Meetup, I answered a brief, targeted set of questions completed by all attendees asking about who/what I was and who/what I was looking for.? The meetings platform aggregated responses, presented suggested meetings which everyone could opt into.? A final meetings calendar was created, filled only with double-opt-in meetings, i.e. both participants agreed to meet.? At the event, in person, tables, each with a prominent number placard, filled the entire room.? Two seats were arranged neatly at each table.? During the meetings program, every 15 minutes masses of people would swap seats and begin the next session.? It was really cool to see!

During the program, I met with people I wanted to meet as well as people I didn’t know I needed to meet, including potential partners, investors, and employees.? I also caught up with friends and acquaintances.? If I contrast that with other events, this was a quantum leap forward.? As an example, typically before an event, I’ll exchange messages with many people about catching a few minutes, and we will not plan anything.? If we do run into each other, it’s usually in the midst of each of us doing something else, so we just exchange pleasantries and move on.? In other cases, I’ve used event apps to network with attendees before and attempt to set up time.? This usually involves a back and forth exchange of several messages to try to find time when I might be available, with about 50% accuracy because of everything else going on at the event.

Attending Fintech Meetup completely flipped my thinking about how to answer “How do we fill the biggest room with the most people?”.? Rather than trying to find 9 mass conversations that will be relevant for 5,000 attendees, I thought of it as 9 conversations personalized individually for each of the 5,000 attendees, for a total of 45,000 conversations.? One analogy that comes to mind is during the early days of the internet, media companies extended their mass broadcast mentality to the internet.? So if you went to the website of a major newspaper in the late 90s, you would see a digital version of their front page, with the same headlines and stories, regardless of what you historically were interested in.? Nowadays, stories are presented based on your history and digital profile.? Rather than having to click through various sections to find news about the entertainer or team you are interested in, it’s easily presented and accessible at the onset.

So while other events might present themselves as digitally enabled, they’re really the newspapers from the 90s.? Join us at Fintech Meetup this year in Las Vegas March 3-6, to experience what a modern conference is all about, and where our industry is going.