An event designed to positively impact lives and society

The Nova Experience (our most transformative event) has changed lives and made the world a better place. Today we share with you some earned insights on how you can design a world-changing event.

Hey, we are Ramón Rodrigá?ez and Andrea Marino, Co-Founders at Nova, the Global Top Talent Network.

Welcome to Talent First, our newsletter where those who believe that talent is the most important resource in the economy get together.

Every week we cover a new topic related to attracting, hiring, developing, and retaining talent, as well as the learnings from our journey building Nova.

Summary:

?? What makes an event remarkable and life-changing? We know that it’s a big fancy claim… “an event designed to positively impact lives and society”. However, we have a few proofs of how our most transformational event, The Nova Experience, has changed lives and made the world a better place. We dive deeper into some of the lessons we have learned while designing and executing the Nova Experience.

The art and science of running transformational events

To give you some context, the Nova Experience is an event format we designed according to the best practices in the field of facilitation and hosting, merged with our deep knowledge of top talent needs. From the very first edition, the Nova Experience was designed by taking inspiration and following the principles of “The art of Hosting” which in their words is:

“an approach to leadership that scales up from the personal to the systemic using personal practice, dialogue, facilitation and the co-creation of innovation to address complex challenges”.

We strongly recommend those workshops and principles for anyone who has the desire to gather people in a meaningful way and capture in the best way possible the collective knowledge of the group. Per, our dear friend, mentor, and a key reason why we have met as co-founders (a story for another time) was the first to envision a gathering that was different from the usual conferences and brought together what today are still some of the pillars of the entire experience.

Today, the Nova Experience is?the most popular and selective Nova event ever organized, with more than 900 members who have applied throughout the years. Only 37 participants per year are selected ensuring the most diverse and motivated group of people. Last year we had members coming from 15 nationalities, 11 different industries, and all levels of seniority.

But let's get to the core of it; what are some of the less commonly thought aspects of designing a meaningful event experience? (for the sake of brevity we take for granted all those obvious aspects such as venue, excellent content, etc.)

1. Start from the end and move backward

When designing a new event and we are in the meeting room, we love to ask one question to the people around the table: what do you want the people to feel, think, and say when they walk away after the event?

This might sound obvious, but it’s not. Once everyone involved has visualized and agreed on how the end should look, you can start thinking about what are the pieces that will make you reach that goal and in what specific order you need to assemble them.

In our case, the Nova Experience was built on the shared vision of having its attendees leave the island with a higher sense of purpose, empowerment, and vulnerability. We wanted our members to go back to their countries feeling inspired and brave enough to take some tougher choices, those that sometimes hold us back.

Looking at how many of our attendees have turned their lives around, quitting a job, starting a venture, or moving to a new country, we can say that our ambition has been fulfilled since the very first edition.

2. The order matters as much as the content

What is often overlooked in event design is that the specific order of the sessions has a significant impact on how the energy flows and how people experience the event. If you do the same things in a different order the people’s experience would be radically different. One of the most common mistakes we see is that people often only care about the content: finding a great speaker, the best venue, etc. but neglect to design the event as a journey where each step has a purpose and is linked to that ending feeling you decided.

We never share the Nova Experience agenda because we want people to be outside of their comfort zones and put their controlling brains to rest. We only ask participants to trust the process, they don’t know the schedule or what happens when. So in this article, we cannot share much about the design of the event. We can however say that during the weekend we like to start from the personal level, looking inward and reflecting on what makes us the unique individuals we are, and then gradually shift the focus towards society and address some important challenges.

For the 2024 edition, we will be focusing on the topic of AI and its impact on the future of work, something we think is shaping our society and a topic where our leaders can add tremendous value.

3. Well-selected participants are the key to any event

“It’s all about the people”, we have said it multiple times in different contexts, and that is because it’s a universal truth, any journey, being that a career step or an event is significantly defined by who you share it with.

This is why we invite you to carefully consider who you select and how each participant fits the purpose. Suppose you are organizing a massive concert or conference, of course. In that case, you cannot select each participant individually, but if you are running a small gathering/retreat of less than 100 people, selecting each participant individually is key to the success of the event.

For the Nova Experience, the team assesses applicants’ backgrounds and motivations one by one and scores them based on the diversity they can add to the group and how motivated they are to join and contribute. It’s a lot of manual work, but we can guarantee that is worth it. During the last edition seeing how software engineers would exchange ideas with doctors on the topic of sustainability made very clear to us how reach diversity can be and how much value is unlocked by maximizing the diversity of the group.

4. Give some steering power to your attendees

This is very rare to see in usual events, we love leaving space for attendees to steer the agenda where they, as a group, feel the most relevant. Maybe you have seen those Netflix series where you can choose how the story unfolds, it’s a bit of the same but applied to events. If you have assembled the right group of people, they will most likely know better than you what they want to discuss and when, so make sure you design some part of the event to make room for the group’s intention to come to life. If you are curious about how to best do it, look into the art of hosting mentioned above..

Now that we have shared four overlooked principles around event design we want to share some of the ways this event has changed members’ lives and made the world a better place, we owe you this from the spoiler at the beginning of the article.

Ok, we get that this event has an impact on people’s lives, but you also mentioned society, how is that possible?

We like to take a bit of pride in those firms that were launched by Nova members who at the Nova Experience found either the inspiration or the ideas they needed to accelerate their creation journey. We are sure they would have made it anyway, but it’s still a small pride for the team.

The one that has moved further (among the ones we know of) is Trine . We still can remember when Sam, at the very first Nova experience, shared with the group his draft idea of wanting to bring solar panels to every corner of Africa building a sustainable investment opportunity. During one of the workshops, he got many ideas, connections, and inspiration for him to go back home and accelerate on his path of quitting his job and starting this adventure full-time.

Since then, Trine has changed the lives of thousands of African people who thanks to solar panels moved away from toxic kerosene lamps. Like Sam, many other members dared to kick off new ventures after the Nova Experience, sometimes inspiration is the only thing our members need.

The Nova Experience 2024 will take place in Ibiza

As with every Nova Experience, we will carefully select the participants who will join us for an immersive event centered around the pivotal role of a global top talent network in shaping the future of work through AI.

Here, we will delve into innovative strategies and solutions that harness the power of AI to drive meaningful change.

Learn more

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