The Future of Conferences

There is some buzz that professional conferences are relics from a now-bygone age. An age when pre-2020, people gathered in large groups without wearing masks. Stood in clusters around each other and shared glossy, printed materials and handshakes without wearing gloves. While I cannot predict the extent to which this or other pandemics will continue to grow and spread and change culture and the way we work and function together as a society, I have some opinions about the likely path for conferences and live education, and I do not believe their relevance and value (or existence) will fade.

Today (30 May) would have been the final day of our organization's 2020 annual conference. Like so many who deliver conferences, we pivoted, and created an on-demand package of presentations instead, ACE Unplugged.

I’m proud of the work my team accomplished through this new asynchronous educational program. The speaker presentations were exceptional. The variety of content was strong. Learners can watch and earn CE at their leisure. We were more fortunate than many. As a credentialing, education and standards body, we have been delivering professional development programs for 35 years using a variety of live and online education.

But however well we deliver the content that was planned for a live event using an online platform, and however well we design and deliver synchronous and asynchronous courses and programs online, they simply cannot replace the intensive nature and outcomes of a 3-day, live annual conference experience. Collectively, the 1,500 professionals who would have attended our event would have attended educational sessions -- that much is clear, and easy to replicate online. But they would have had hallway conversations, and learned and changed in subtle ways that are difficult to measure, and impossible to replicate in an online environment. As a result of these multi-faceted experiences, the attendees would have returned home with revised thinking, new techniques and tools, and a different energy, enthusiasm and attitude. This enthusiasm about what they learned would have spread to their teams, their families, and the most important end result would be better insights and advice to an estimated 250,000 individual and 10,000 institutional clients served by these professionals.

Organizationally, over this three day period we would have held strategic conversations and made decisions at our Board of Directors meeting, at several committee meetings, at our WealthBoard advisory council of senior industry executives, and at the CIMA Certification Commission meeting, which sets standards and requirements for thousands of professionals operating under that voluntary standard. We had planned another Women in Wealth luncheon for 200 leading women professionals in an industry underrepresented by women. All of these groups would have held multi-hour, face to face, strategic conversations about the future of the advice business. We would have hosted an awards dinner and awards presentations highlighting contributions of leading thinkers and influencers in our industry. At the individual level, strategic conversations occur, as well. Hundreds of “side meetings” would create new, or renew, or generate break-through business. Conferences are an ecosystem, and like any ecosystem, the organisms who interact within it are changed in small and large ways that ripple out affecting larger circles of relationship.

While working for the Financial Planning Association in 2001, I watched the tragedies of 9/11 unfold the day before their annual conference in San Diego. Of course the conference was cancelled, so we set to work planning for new order of delivering education: One that (of course) wouldn’t require airline travel. Since we were in the height of the dot.com era, as you can imagine or recall, it was prophesied that learning would be delivered entirely online, and live learning would consist solely of local programs. My team developed a lot of that online education, and times were good. It wasn’t long, though, before conferences came back. As a learning professional, volunteers would ask, “which will win, live or online education?” The answer was clear: Both. Learners had choice: Live or online. Some learning works better online, and some learning works better in person. Some people learn better online. And some people learn better around other people. Simple principle: “to each their own."

While some industries have a few association conferences as the central gathering point for the professions served within that industry, financial advisors have thousands of conferences for advisors to choose from. The current crisis will wash out many of these players. Over the past several years, the financial services conference space has been flooded by for-profit conference providers: employers, publishing companies, corporate conferences (custodians, asset managers, service providers) and start-ups (industry personalities who could charge sponsors to interact with their fans who gather around them once a year). Between 2010 and 2020, it has been relatively easy to gather a group of financial advisors, put on an education program, then send the bill with a 20% markup to product and service companies.

I have long hoped that financial advisors would "look to the source" of where they earn their continuing education. There’s an adage out of Silicon Valley, “If it’s free you are the product.” Financial advisors are, after all, in the business of offering objective advice free of conflicts of interest, yet they expose themselves to conflict by primarily attending their employer conferences, publisher conferences, and the product and service provider conferences that surround them. Instead, why not pay to attend conferences put on by the non-profit professional associations which deliver objective, quality education to the profession they (we) serve? Associations are unique and powerful in that our members are by nature the owners, the workers, and the customers for the programs and products we develop – by nature, our conferences are “by practitioners, for practitioners.”

In conclusion, I don’t think that in-person, professional meetings are dead. There is no question that those of us who are still providing valuable conferences 2-3 years from now will have adapted and evolved. Fully-hybrid delivery models (in-person, synchronous online, and asynchronous online) will be more normative, because it is just better learning. People holding other people accountable to learning will lead to more post-conference study groups functioning online or in local communities. 

Threaded learning, or stackable learning, will continue to grow, using live events as catalysts. 1) Attend this conference; 2) Take a course; 3) Earn a certificate; 4) earn a certification; 5) Stay competent by attending additional conferences or courses, or by watching videos, reading articles, and/or participate in online communities. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s the model the Investments & Wealth Institute has been moving toward for some time. I believe that abrupt change in the environment will simply accelerate that move.

Smaller, executive-education style, hosted VIP events may become more common. I don't know what will happen to large scale, "shock and awe" trade shows in the future - many have called their doom, but then, many called for the demise of professional and college football following the clear findings surrounding the effect of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) on players.

What will happen to online education and how will all of those publishing, product and service providers, and other for-profit providers of education compete in the future? Well, that is up to the marketplace served: financial advisors. As younger professionals’ learning preferences take hold, I suspect we will experience a deluge of micro-learning and webinars that will be easier to view and share via social media. To “hook” learners, tomorrow’s online education will be sharp and clever, sexy and appealing, and as free or cheap as possible. As payment, advisors will give up data that can be leveraged or sold by the provider.

One thing remains consistent: as the premier professional association for financial planners, investment consultants, and wealth advisors, our programs and activities will continue to deliver upon the outcomes expected by our members and stakeholders:

• Enhance the competency and professionalism of advice delivered to the public.
• Strengthen our position as the industry’s leading provider of education and credentials that address contemporary investment and wealth management challenges.
• Deliver premier, quality education with real-world solutions for practitioners.
• Provide access to the most relevant knowledge, insights and tools required for practitioners to best serve their clients and distinguish their expertise in a global, and highly competitive marketplace.
• Advance the financial advisory business through a commitment to high standards, ethics, and quality.

Founded in 1985, the Investments & Wealth Institute is the premier professional association, education provider, and standards body for financial advisors. Through its award-winning events, publications, courses, and acclaimed certifications—Certified Investment Management Analyst? (CIMA?), Certified Private Wealth Advisor? (CPWA?), and Retirement Management Advisor? (RMA?)—the Institute delivers Ivy league-quality, highly practical education to more than 25,000 practitioners annually in over 40 countries. Members of the Institute include the industry’s most successful investment consultants, advanced financial planners, and private wealth managers who embrace excellence and ethics in applying a broad set of knowledge and skills in their daily work with clients. Institute members and certificants manage more than $4 trillion in assets for 1.14 million individual and 90,000 institutional clients.