When designing and planning a corporate conference or seminar, the conference’s content and agenda is one of the most important elements.
It’s what gets guests excited about attending, it’s what will sell the event to those who are going to buy tickets, and it helps you to pick and choose the right speakers, venue and run sheet for your event.
It will set the scene for a successful event if done correctly.
Here are the steps that we follow when we’re advising our clients on how to create a memorable corporate event agenda.
1. Start with your event goals
Like with anything when it comes to event planning, it always comes back to the event goals. These will set the tone for the event.
Think about what you want your attendees to gain from the event, whether you want it to be educational or interesting, and what key messages you want guests to take away from the event.
When you begin to plan every single session and workshop in your agenda, you should always keep these questions in the back of your mind and make sure they are aligned.
2. Know your audience
Thinking about who will be attending the event and who you are aiming the event at is crucial in ensuring the content is relevant and engaging for them. It’s important to make sure it’s something that your attendees actually care about and want to know more about. Otherwise, you are literally wasting your time.
Things to consider when you are thinking about your audience:
- Demographics: are your attendee’s c-suite executives with minimal time to spare, or are they front-line staff who are more likely to be able to take a full day off work?
- Interests and pain points: these vary greatly depending on the industry and position your attendees hold.
- Attention span: a room full of executives is going to be much harder to keep still than a room full of lower-level managers.
3. Balance structure and flexibility
No one wants to sit in a room for the full 8 hours and not leave; just listening to people talk at them all day long is a certain way to ensure your attendees lose focus and don’t enjoy the event.
Make sure you mix it up, ensuring the sessions have a variety of moving and changing spaces, and a variety of formats. Swap between panel events and interactive or workshop-style events.
Also, make sure you are allowing enough downtime throughout the day; no one’s brain can focus intently for a full 8-hour block, so think about bathroom breaks, food breaks or even just a simple get up and talk to the person next to you break to stretch your legs.
4. Kick-off with a bang
Make sure that you are starting the day with a bang and keep that energy level up throughout the day.
There is nothing worse than attending a conference, and being bored in the first 5 minutes of the day, your mind already begins to wander, and you’re counting down the minutes until it’s done.
Think about hiring an engaging keynote speaker and MC or host for the event, and consider some icebreakers to get the group talking and excited when they first arrive.
5. Moments of connection
We often attend these types of seminars and conferences not only to learn from others but also to create some genuine connection with those around us.
Scheduling time in the day to literally just let attendees network and interact and learn from each other lightens the scheduling load with content but also provides the opportunity for these invaluable connections to be made.
Some of the most common feedback we get after events is that attendees have even more time to network with those around them; as the old saying goes, it’s not what you know; it’s who you know.
6. Feature engaging speakers and content
This one almost goes without saying, but it is so incredibly important. Picking the right speakers to present at your conference is going to make or break the conference.
It’s important to make sure that they are high energy and engaging. We can all picture that lecture we did at uni with the professor who mumbled, and you never really knew what he was talking about – we don’t want a repeat of that at your conference.
Also think about shaking up the percentage of the event where guests are being spoken at, versus the time they are asked to get engaged and contribute back.
7. End of a high note
When planning your schedule, you want to make sure you wrap up the conference or seminar with a summary of the day, days or week that was, to make sure there are some easy key takeaways for guests to walk from the event with.
It’s also important to leave guests with a taste of the next one to come and some positive things happening within the industry and or organisation they are a part of.
Overall, a memorable corporate event agenda is one that has it all. It’s a fine balance between entertaining and insightful; it gives guests the chance to learn more from key speakers whilst also learning from each other.
If you’re not sure what your agenda should look like for your event, reach out, we love brainstorming different agenda formats and content topics!