Hiya! Hannah here from the CrowdRiff team. Our annual customer conference, SEE2024, is just around the corner. We wanted to pull back the curtain and share just how we design the most creative conference for destination makers (that’s you! The humans doing the hard work).
We’ve got one hard rule for SEE, and that’s attendee experience comes first. This space is for you to come as you are, to learn from your peers, and to create connections in the industry. You’re also the catalyst behind how we changed the agenda this year. Let’s dive in!
How We Brainstorm Events
If you were to pull back the curtain on planning SEE, you’d find a handful of eager, hyper-caffeinated team members who spend a lot of time reading up on niche fabrication techniques (how do we build a custom, giant tic tac toe spinner?), deep diving Instagram accounts of local artists, and evaluating sock quality.
We like to start with somewhat of a chaos model, which is LinkedIn speak for throwing wild ideas down on paper and seeing how the threads connect.
Admittedly we thrive in this phase. No holds barred brainstorming is how we find the diamonds in the rough. An Instagram deep dive led us to the incredible black light powwow performance that opened SEE2023 in Denver. It’s how we cooked up a surprise experience at Banger’s this year. 👀 It’s also the source of ideas that quickly don’t pan out and will never see the light of day. We aren’t perfect!
How We Structured SEE
I have a theory that the best way to learn with our shortened attention spans is to increase the time we spend on each topic.
I am fully subscribed to the dopamine cycle that is my social feed, but I find that at events, I have really been missing deep thought. I miss focusing on one idea for longer than 20 minutes.
I miss slowing down.
Once upon a time, I could sit through long meetings or courses, but now focusing on a series of presentations at a conference is a struggle. My attention is divided between the rapid fire sessions on stage, the red notification dot on my email inbox, and my curiosity around what’s being served for lunch. I hope it’s tacos.
It’s all been prompting me to ask: how do we find a way to get your undivided attention and inspire you to take action when you get home?
Hello Makers’ Labs 👋👋
Destination Makers’ Labs are a distraction free time to sit with an idea, see it from multiple perspectives, and work on it together. This session type takes all of the energy of a keynote and stretches it out!
Over an hour and a half, our attendees will hear from an expert, dive into a case study, and workshop together. Speakers have been working together to craft a learning experience jam-packed with takeaways, alongside activities to get you moving and learning!
While we’re not exactly re-inventing conferences, this approach is unique enough that we wanted our speakers to feel supported, especially knowing that DMOs have tight schedules and heavy workloads. We brought in an instructional designer to help build the Lab structure, and we then facilitated training with the speakers on how to best communicate concepts and get audiences to work together.
SEE You Soon!
Full disclosure: we don’t know if this will really solve attention-span woes, but we’re game to try and have some fun along the way. We’re also testing out some new formats like organic lightning rounds, and a series of roundtables for attendees to ask burning questions of the experts.
Of course we’ve kept some tried and true classics: we reached out to our talented network of creators, marketers, travelers, and great-thinkers, and brought together a crop of expert speakers to present keynote addresses and panel discussions.
Oh and I haven’t forgotten entirely about the tacos! No matter what city we set up shop in, we always work closely with in-house teams to connect with and support local attractions, businesses, and creatives. The talented team at Visit Austin has helped us discover some of Austin’s best food, drink, and music – and we couldn’t be more excited to showcase it in October.
Curious to see just what we have in store? Head over to the agenda and scope out topics like Gen Z travel trends, AI builds and more.
