Are you promoting and facilitating interaction among attendees throughout your event’s course? Boasting about your innovative and interactive event sessions is merely enough to ensure attendees are actively participating to them. And even though this is usually the main point of focus, what happens during the breakout sessions?
The importance of creating and communicating an inviting environment that encourages interaction between visitors during these sessions, does not only bring you closer to your end goals but also serves as a truly effective way of breaking the monotony of a conference.
Here are the top tips to help you get started:
Optimise networking areas
Especially during large-scale and crowded events, participants often struggle to find a suitable spot to engage into more pleasant and relaxed conversations. Imagine now of holding a beverage, a plate with food, or a briefcase and laptop case while trying to exchange business cards: now that’s a pretty accurate example of an uncomfortable situation! Event planners ought to keep this in mind when assessing the venue facilities.
Creating an ample space to optimise networking opportunities can make a world of difference in encouraging your visitors to connect without worrying – or wandering – whether that’s feasible.
Re-think your seating arrangements
Whilst there are many seating arrangements tightly linked to the overall purpose and theme of the event, interaction should be at the top of the event planner’s mind when choosing a suitable one. Keep in mind to arrange the seats in a pattern that lends itself to the sharing of ideas and knowledge. Give your attendees comfortable seating options,dismiss the formal – and stereotypical – upright chairs and witness the difference in the frequency and ways they interact with each other.
Create ‘Discussion Zones’ for different areas of interest
There might be awkward situations from time to time, where attendees don’t feel inspired to interact with each other, most likely because they don’t share the same topic interests. For avoiding such baffling instances, event planners could consider creating special discussion zones within the event space, focused around different topics – always in line with the event’s overall theme. This will make it easier for attendees to engage with each other and show more interest in contributing to relevant discussions with their peers.
Find more tips and inspiration here.
Whether you are interested in enhancing the overall event experience, boosting participants’ engagement or activating your target audiences, MCI can help you achieve your goals. For more visit our website.
