Conference Organisers! Are you preparing to welcome an audience and a group of speakers? If you are, then this podcast will give you all the Do’s and Don’ts that will make sure you have an interactive, fully engaged, well received and well reported conference.
Who are your speakers? What do you do about awards? Do you run panel sessions? Why? Who are the dullest speakers? Who makes the conference?
And if you are listening to this as speaker we give you plenty of things to work on to keep your audience happy and you at the top of your game.
With over 15 years’ experience of speaking at and attending conferences all over the world, Bob and Jeremy have compiled an effective list and these tips will certainly challenge you to create a really worthwhile conference.
Conferences are back on, let’s make them really good! This podcast will make you laugh, and get you scribbling notes!
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Conference Organisers! Are you preparing to welcome an audience and a group of speakers? If you are, then this podcast will give you all the Do’s and Don’ts that will make sure you have an interactive, fully engaged, well received and well reported conference.
Who are your speakers? What do you do about awards? Do you run panel sessions? Why? Who are the dullest speakers? Who makes the conference?
And if you are listening to this as speaker we give you plenty of things to work on to keep your audience happy and you at the top of your game.
With over 15 years’ experience of speaking at and attending conferences all over the world, Bob and Jeremy have compiled an effective list and these tips will certainly challenge you to create a really worthwhile conference.
Conferences are back on, let’s make them really good! This podcast will make you laugh, and get you scribbling notes!
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Bob and Jeremy's Conflat the reality podcast.
Speaker 2:Hello, welcome. It is a beautiful, sunny day, the perfect day to record a podcast, and if you are outside enjoying the weather, I hope this helps. How are you, bobby?
Speaker 1:I'm very well indeed, sir, and how are you? It is a stunning day here in Kent. Is it beautiful in Buckingham shire?
Speaker 2:It really is. It could be, you know that kind of classic line the nicest day of the year so far.
Speaker 1:I would say so. I would say so, as I was researching this podcast, I was sitting outside on my bench with a flask of coffee alla the Swedish style working on my research, sitting in the sun. It's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2:On the terrace.
Speaker 1:so Exactly, and it reminds me of a great poem by E E Cummings, and he talks about the small, sweet, clumsy feet of April which came into the ragged meadow of my soul.
Speaker 2:It's pretty good.
Speaker 1:It's a great line, isn't it? And I think of that line every time we get to April and the sun comes out and you get this thing that slowly April comes in, because I mean you think? About the March we've had, with all the rain and all the wind, and then suddenly that good weather starts to creep in clumsily. I like that, and then your soul improves your soul warms up as the sun comes out Heaven. So there we are.
Speaker 2:My experience of the research and the planning of this has been rather different. I've been in the library in Buckingham town with Martha, who is in the first year of Array Levels, and it was packed.
Speaker 1:What the library was packed.
Speaker 2:Absolutely rammed. So I said to the chap on the desk. He said well, we have had a coffee morning. That really does bring people in, which harks back to a previous episode. If you offer people tea and coffee, they seem to turn up, don't they?
Speaker 1:So this is it.
Speaker 2:But you know what it is. It isn't the drink, is it? It's the conviviality, it's the connection, it's the sipping a drink with somebody else around you. It allows people to connect and it was full of people. Yes, and I re-bought Martha's library card for a very reasonable £2.80. He apologised about the 20p increase and Martha, of course, can now extract books from any library in Buckinghamshire.
Speaker 1:I mean. We should probably say, though, that if they weren't offering tea or coffee, hardly anyone would have shown up.
Speaker 2:Well, not to their coffee morning. However, do you know what the really nice thing was? The two people Martha had seen in the Winslow Library yesterday were in this one today.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So she's kind of found a little nucleus of people who are a bit like her, who don't want to revise and study at home. They want to go to their local libraries. One is a girl who's studying at Durham University and the other is a chap who's doing engineering. She's slowly chatting to these people, so that's very nice.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe we'll do a podcast on a library scene, but let's talk about today's podcast. Let's. Bob and Jerome is Conflab. We are going to talk about conferences. We're going to talk about the do's and don'ts of conferences.
Speaker 1:Now, just to give you some context for this, jeremy and I have been attending and speaking at conferences for years and years, really since the very start of our association together and sometimes those conferences are company owned conferences, where they've been together sales teams and management teams, and they'll put speakers to talk at those in-house conferences, which sometimes are massive and immense in big conference centers, sometimes they're abroad, and then, additionally, you also get booked for association style conferences where you get lots of members coming out somewhere, sometimes abroad, sometimes in the UK, to a big conference venue and then we speak at those.
Speaker 1:Now, over the years we have witnessed many, many speakers, sessions, introductions, cabaret, all sorts of stuff that we've seen at these various conferences and that's given us a great deal of experience, a great deal of entertainment and a great deal of enjoyment to. We love a conference and we thought it would be interesting to have a look at some do's and don'ts for conferences. And we've gone away and done some research on this ourselves and just thought about this subject and we're going to come together now. I've no idea what Jeremy's got. I'm sure we'll have some which are similar. We thought it would be interesting. If you're organizing a conference or you're planning a conference, maybe these tips will steer you in the right direction.
Speaker 2:I think, a couple of things to add to what you've said. We have not been speaking much of later conferences and without being political, we're not quite sure why abroad. We'd love to go abroad again. Oh yeah the lure of sunny locations. That has calmed right down. I have actually just been booked for a talk in a few weeks, bobby, did I tell you that this morning? Yes, you did yeah a little solo one, I'm afraid the will be duo. Give me gigs again and really you need the double act conference speaking experience to fully.
Speaker 1:Well, you certainly do.
Speaker 2:To kick this off, do you mind if we go to the Cambridge Dictionary? Why? Because I want to give a definition of conference. Go on then. The reason I think we should do that is when we go into our do's and don'ts and we should say listeners, we're continuing the popular list format, the Cambridge Dictionary, which is actually very similar to the Oxford. I preferred it. I preferred it to Miriam Webster. She does a lot of good work. That's a joke, by the way.
Speaker 2:Are you ready for this? And I think anyone listening to this can you just note this down if you're having company discussions that you remind people of what a conference is? It is an event, sometimes lasting a few days, at which there is a group of talks on a particular subject, or a meeting in which especially business matters are discussed formally. It may last a few days and it's a series of talks about topics, and that's why we're attending. It is not an exhibition, and Bob and I have been to many of those, and we're not going to talk about exhibitions today. I won't give things away, but some of my don'ts come back to people misinterpreting that definition.
Speaker 1:So let's come to you, bobby, my first do is a general note to any conference speaker and my note is Tell stories. That is my note Tell stories to inspire people. We're not going to do presentation skills on this podcast, because we've done one on that, but I think, as a general note, we remember stories that are told and if you think about things like TED Talks, ted Talks primarily are 18 minutes of people telling stories to illustrate their points in a way that they hope will inspire you and inform you and in some ways entertain you. And I think we get far too many presentations at conferences which are not stories. They are factual representations of things that you think this audience will be interested in, where really what they are there to do is to learn something and to be inspired by what you're saying and to get an insight into what it is that you're trying to get across, rather than just be shown a load of guff. There we are Tell stories.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to tag straight on Research your audience. This is again a note to speak, as at conferences Research your audience, and there's only two things. You've got to really research what are the challenges that your audience has and what are the opportunities that they have that they're unable to grasp. If you can research those two things, great. However, a little side tip If you are attending, you should also be looking around you and thinking all these people around me attending I'm wondering what their challenges and opportunities are too, because you're one of them. If you're an attendee and when it comes to other things we'll talk about later, like networking, it's good to get into the zone of what's the challenge that spins off from this topic or the opportunity. Ok, next one, let's go to number two Create debate.
Speaker 1:Jeremy very interestingly defined what a conference is. I do not think a conference is a conference if everyone agrees with everything that everyone says. We have to find areas that are debatable. So if you are presenting a certain aspect of your industry, of your business, whatever it may be, allow there to be a contemporary, different viewpoint which may challenge what it is you're saying, so that people have a chance to look at the different sides of any given subject. So creating debate, I think, is a very important point which is largely overlooked.
Speaker 2:If you're going to a conference where there's a whole stack of speakers, this sounds flippin' obvious. But I know people who've come away and they've said, oh, they weren't very good and I didn't really like that. Again, it's this word research, research. All the speakers See what else they have said, who else they have spoken to, what have they written? You can Google them to see if they've spoken anywhere else. You've got to, like the speaker and their topic, Choose the time slots. You could argue that festivals fit into this, like literary festivals, if there's one author after another and you just wobble in and think, oh, let's listen to Louis de Bernier, but actually you're more interested in listening to Violet Moller. Then choose the right one. That's my one.
Speaker 1:Go for it. See if you could find a more middle class analogy. I mean, come to Bob and Jeremy's Conflab folks the only place where you get literary festival analogies. The next thing is number three on my list, and this was something we did at a conference in Dubai some years ago and I thought it worked brilliantly. It was called a Dine-Around, and the Dine-Around was where every single person at the conference was given a different badge with a different image on and, depending on what image you got, that was the coach. You got on that night and you went to a restaurant or hotel you had no idea where it was with the people that, you had no idea who they were and you had an evening with them and I met some brilliant people that night.
Speaker 1:I have to say I went to a fabulous restaurant at the Ritz Carlton. It's unbelievable, but it was so wonderful to meet new people and have a good chat and I thought anything that shakes up the groups, the natural cliques that exist at conferences is a great idea and I always thought that was an absolute winner, Nice my next one, and I'll deconstruct the industry terminology which are the ad gets.
Speaker 2:So who are the people who have paid to speak? And the media owner Perhaps crowbars them in each year? And actually, what's the angle? Why are they there? Are they a?
Speaker 1:sponsor that's paid to speak. Is that a do or a don't here? What are we talking about here?
Speaker 2:This is a. Do you want to root out the ad gets? Don't be drawn in, because if it's a huge sponsor and they've got logos everywhere, you might get a sales pitch about buying it or a biased presentation, or a biased angle, so I'm sorry it's still on the research For me you're my first three research the people who you absolutely must see and you're going to learn from, rather than something that looks particularly glossy but actually might not be of any weight or interest whatsoever Good.
Speaker 1:My next one is advice for all speakers, and it's simply this Rehearse your speeches, rehearse your talks, rehearse it considerably, and if you're booking people to talk, make sure they are rehearsed before they go on. Yeah, all too often people bowl up at conferences, wander onto the stage and give a poorly rehearsed, ad hoc sort of presentation, pretending to be casual, but actually it just comes across as crap, and I think what we need is a bit of professionalism when it comes to presentations, and the best way to do that is to rehearse your speeches. Again, if you're booking book time in, to rehearse the speeches too, so that you have some idea how to really up the game of those speakers, even on the day or the day before the conference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can book someone like Bob Karen, actually, who will help look at the speakers, cut their stuff out that they don't need, and we can come to that in the don'ts. Number four if you're a speaker or an attendee, know your outcome. Why are you going? What is the problem? You're looking to get ideas on what is your outcome? Now, if I go to my uncle, tim on this, before he goes to a conference he is completely defined the outcome. He goes. I'm going to the Geneva Motor Show and the reason is I need to find a better way to sell air fresheners in much better packaging. Could be that that boring, that that accurate, and he will off. He will go in his previous motor factor days and he will have a complete, defined outcome. Or I've got to find a better way to do logistics. I've got to find a better way to motivate staff to use perks, whatever it is. Don't just think that looks interesting. Have a defined outcome.
Speaker 1:OK, now my number five is really simple Make your sessions interactive with your audience. The best example that we ever saw of this was when Martin and Avratilova got a load of tennis balls that she'd signed and anybody who wanted to ask her a question, she would throw them a tennis ball. And if you have one, I've got mine right here in my drawer.
Speaker 2:I'm going to. Only, we have video here. Look just so you can see it. Oh, that's a nice yellow.
Speaker 1:Oh bless her. Now. Interactivity Lots of people are terrified of, so some people don't have the confidence to stand on stage on their own and say any questions and people go yes, what about dadada? And they need to have, didn't she did?
Speaker 2:now, she said whoever asked a decent question so mine, of course, if we go off to tennis for a moment was Martina. We know about all the top seeds Well, at least you and I do. Martina is with the two people in the room that know about tennis, but I'd like to know about upcoming seeds and maybe outsiders that you think could have a chance at the title. And she loved that and she said well, you know, I'm going to go for Gail Montfies and we had a whole. I was just like tennis heaven for me.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great. Now back to the original point. We need to be able to be interactive with our audiences, because otherwise the audience is just this passive wall of faces which may or may not.
Speaker 1:they're not webinars, they're not flipping webinars Point is you are live and if you are an expert in your field or if you don't have to answer all the questions they ask, you could just say that's a massive subject, let's take that offline and talk about it later, you know. But you've got to be able to make something interactive and I think the more you do that, the more it will be better received and better remembered my number five really short.
Speaker 2:make notes you won't remember.
Speaker 1:Very good, that's it.
Speaker 2:That's good. I'll rattle through my resume list. Okay, after the conference reflect, do more research or take action. It's pretty obvious, but you don't want to go off to a conference again that was nice and store it somewhere Go. What am I going to do now? I'm going to talk about networking. Now, number seven Talk to anybody, because here's an extraordinary thing you don't know who they are till you do.
Speaker 1:Well I know it sounds flipping obvious.
Speaker 2:People hang around and go oh, I'm not going to talk to that guy with the coffee over there, you don't know who they are. I don't know who they are.
Speaker 1:People are taking their pens right now and making notes about that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Now next one. Like the speaker? Question mark, Make contact.
Speaker 1:Now.
Speaker 2:Hello. Well, here's a story. Last night at the squash club, bobby, I bumped into a friend. His son has just got a job he's just actually finished the job, a gap year job because he wrote to the speaker of a conference complimenting them on the speech. The guy wrote back said do you fancy some work experience and a job? He's worked with the CEO for six months. Brilliant, I think that's brilliant. Number nine thank people, thank them for their time, thank them for what you give them. And number 10, of course, this is close to my heart, bobby Make sure you eat and drink enough. Don't go hungry, because you do need energy. Your brain will get tired and, as a migraine sufferer, I've got to keep the food intake and the water intake or these conference talks are going to overpower me. Right, let's go off to your don'ts.
Speaker 1:We've never been to a single conference where we haven't eaten and drunk fairly well, actually, I have to say.
Speaker 2:Well, that's true. Thank you for listening to our podcast when we're not recording these. We deliver sales training and management programs for our company, reality Training. For 20 years, we've worked with major brands and ambitious businesses to help them sell more, retain customers and manage their people more effectively. Contact us via our website, realitytrainingcom. Let's kick off with the don'ts.
Speaker 1:I've got a massive one.
Speaker 2:I wonder if we've both got the same one. Okay, so just look at your list before you start. Make sure I want your biggest first, my biggest first is without any question.
Speaker 1:Do not run panel sessions. Panel sessions yes, Do not run a panel session.
Speaker 2:Ie I'm sitting on a stage with five people to talk about a subject.
Speaker 1:It is the most boring, utterly, utterly uninspiring, miserable hour of anyone's life.
Speaker 2:Oh, they first of all sit down, so they've cut half their body language out already. Yes, they sit down and they go Hi, we're going to come to you, danny. What do you think about? Oh, I love the fact you got that on their list. None of them will disagree.
Speaker 1:It comes back to my point earlier about creating debate. If you see a debate on Newsnight, they'll have two or three speakers presenting different points of view. That's why it is a debate, because you get different perspectives. On a panel session at a conference, everyone just sits there, agrees with each other, makes asinine comments that nobody's that bothered about.
Speaker 2:Well, without spelling out their names. We were once at a conference and the headline of the section of these two people having a panel was called Clash of the Titans. Absolutely. They'd actually written that they were the two CEOs of major companies and what happened was one spoke and the other one. Yeah, I agree with.
Speaker 1:Oh, pointless.
Speaker 2:And it was the dullest. There was no clash. No, there was no Titan, it was.
Speaker 1:Triton, not just that, not just that. There was no insight, there was no inspiration. Oh, it was awful. And then there were other panel sessions where the poor moderator is sitting there trying to get these people to talk with any interest about their subjects.
Speaker 2:Well, I think these are the ad gets, bob. Yeah, I think these are the ad gets. These are the money things that people pay to talk. Right, my biggest number one don't use videos, don't show us advertisements, and I've written this down so I don't forget Are you ready? The medium of video is for us on our own, and when we watch long videos on big screens, we don't like people stopping them and talking or eating because those venues are called cinemas. Right, I'm not going to a conference to go to a cinema.
Speaker 1:Try not to get upset.
Speaker 2:Oh no, because the cinema is a sacred building for me and my son, as you know, and people show us. Here's the new video we've made about Lanza Roti. Here's the new video of this car. Here's a new video of our automated process. Please don't show video.
Speaker 1:OK, my next one is linked to that. So don't rely on PowerPoint. Okay, I don't think we've been at a conference ever that hasn't been almost entirely done on PowerPoint in one shape or form. The videos are embedded, the music's embedded, there's just slide after slide. I personally think that if you are a well-rehearsed speaker, you should be able to do your talk with no slides at all. And in fact I remember a chat we saw who was relatively entertaining, who didn't use any slides at all. He just spoke and he was quite funny. And I think sometimes, why do we have to have a visual support? And some people say, well, some people like to have images. Who said, just because PowerPoint exists doesn't mean you have to use it.
Speaker 2:That's because they don't have a story, isn't it?
Speaker 1:There's no story and they don't have the confidence to just stand and talk and be interesting. So I think to go to a conference where there was no PowerPoint would be an amazing thing. It would be really good.
Speaker 2:Just to labour that point, people say, oh, I'm a visual learner and stuff. No, no, as a child, when you had a parent, grandfather, relative, next door neighbour could tell you a bedtime story from the top of their brains without a book. You were enraptured. You don't need an image. My next one don't sell. Help people point out their problems and guess what? That is indirectly selling. Of course it is Because you are selling when you're not selling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is such a learning point for people. Oh, ok, ned, you're going to like this one. Ok, I wonder if we've got some of the same. Well, I don't mind, I'm very specific. This one you're going to like, don't take a really boring, sit him in what can only be described as a throne OK At the end of a conference and ask him for his meaningless, bland, dull, uninsightful opinion. Do you remember?
Speaker 2:this Right, I'm racking my brains to think who this is OK, we went to, at least. Do you mean a special chair? No, no, no, no, no conferences.
Speaker 1:Ok, this guy was like a chairman of a board of people, like a non-executive chairman.
Speaker 2:Oh, got it. Got it At the end of this conference, got it At the end of this conference, yeah, yeah, which he has no interest in.
Speaker 1:He's not in that business at all, he's just a non-exec. No, he's not, they sat him in this kind of throne thing and asked him for his thoughts on it and his insides. And he was the most boring in the world and I just thought but they booked him again.
Speaker 2:He was then another one, wasn't he?
Speaker 1:Another year later, and then the person's got to say and then sit him in the thing. So he, it was just absurd and you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but was he in a relationship with somebody connected? I mean, the must have been somebody.
Speaker 1:You know, if you've got a ball, get them off the stage. Ok, you do not need that, ok.
Speaker 2:Next Right. My next one Don't pay people taxed bonuses at your conference.
Speaker 1:I've got that as my next one as well.
Speaker 2:Ok, Well to spell it out a bit more this is when you combine your conference into a catch wall. You make it an award ceremony, you make it a party, you make it an AGM, or you do what this particular organization did. They gave away prizes. I think it was a thousand pounds to the manager.
Speaker 1:Yeah Five thousand to an individual no five hundred.
Speaker 2:Five hundred. And then, I think, ticker tape came down from the ceiling and then the person next to me said you do realize they're taxed, you know. So they're coming out, they're coming out of their wages.
Speaker 1:You don't do that. How do you do that? Now, I'm glad you mentioned that, because I do think that that is ridiculous. But secondly, why do you have to have awards at every conference you go to? I know why not have awards separately? Now I've been to an awards lunch. That was just awards. It was brilliant. It was just awards food and drink yeah, just awards yeah.
Speaker 1:But to go to an actual conference and then watch some awards being given out, or the anticipation who's going to win, nobody cares, these awards don't mean anything. You know, they're the oddest things.
Speaker 2:So let's quote Henry Minnsburg, which I got from John Seddon. He told me this quote the only thing you need to know about awards is Mozart number one. Correct, which is Henry Minnsburg. You know, it's true, it's true, wonderful.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, wonderful OK.
Speaker 2:So don't get a completely disconnected speaker to your audience.
Speaker 1:OK, this is bizarre. Mine says unrelatable speakers You've got it, there you go.
Speaker 2:Unrelatable. I love it Because so this was a speaker in a completely different field, as far away from the industry and the audience as is possible, booked there to speak to them. People were motionless, there was no resonance. It died to death. They couldn't have quoted or known 20 to 30 people that they referenced. And I think the only the only way round I don't know if you have an idea on this the only way you could book a completely disconnected speaker is unless it was going to absolutely shock them, educate them or create change. Well, but the speaker that was booked in this instance could achieve one.
Speaker 1:Well, I put brackets on mine. I think sports people are incredible individuals. I don't think they're always incredible speakers. I don't think they're always inspiring because they have spent their lives training to become successful sports people. 99.999% of the people in all of their audiences will a never have done that and are never likely to do that.
Speaker 1:And so that relatedness is so kind of slightly disconnected. And you know, over the years we've seen some very, very successful sports speakers and we've seen some people who you think are bronze, when you know nothing wrong with the achievement but you just think you're being booked for something which is sort of.
Speaker 2:Well, I won't say who it is, but I would add in certain sports leaders and coaches. We did see one who I think had trotted out the same thing a million times yeah. And it had no relationship to the industry, and there were people carrying the book of the right, book of the person, the question is what can you do with what they're saying?
Speaker 1:If you can't do anything with what they're saying, there's a limit Now and I've written here that there's only four things that will get changed, and you mentioned change. Okay, two of the things are completely nothing to do with conferences pain and the receipt of things which allows you to change. Two things are related to conferences, which is seeing something that inspires you to change, or learning something that you want to change. I see no learning at conferences and I see little inspiration, and I just think sometimes there needs to be some thoughts on that if you really want people to make a change.
Speaker 2:I've got one, which is especially if you're a company and your senior team are asking you to do a lot of arranging, but they're not very close to it. What you don't want to see in an audience is what I'm calling here a senior team buddy off within jokes. So you've got one of them, walks off, hands the mic to the other, they talk for a minute and then we're all waiting in the game. What they do, hey, like a little push on the shoulder, don't you do the finger pointy, oh, come on. And then Karen, is Karen coming up? She's not she. Who's Karen? Oh, she's the financial director that no one's ever met. She's not coming up. She's looking, putting a hand up to them going. Don't you say that.
Speaker 2:But so a kind of load of in jokes with the executive board and the rest of the audience are just sitting there. Yeah, I've seen that happen, sort of these in jokes and it all goes over. You know four people get the joke, 400, 4000 don't. Okay, don't get the multi-millionaire owner to talk about family values when he pays the vast percentage of employees minimum wage, and don't do this, especially as they're just about to tuck into their food. So family values are extraordinary, sometimes owners of organisations, that they may well have been floated, but there's still somebody who's sort of got a massive chunk of shares and the thing began as a family or whatever. They feel they need to talk. They're not great speakers and everybody knows even the sound guys and girls who we've talked to say we've met, do five minutes. When they've hit 35 minutes and the food has now gone cold, does no one have the power in that company just to strike them from the conference speaking agenda?
Speaker 2:Imagine the poor chef trying to get 600 meals served you know, and my final one, which again, my uncle taught me years ago from all his businesses don't bully suppliers into sponsoring tables, and this will feed to all of you. So if you're organizing a conference, you say, how do we pay for it? You, flipping, pay for it yourselves. It's your conference. Don't go. Oh, I've got to get a business case, I've got to make it work. I'm going to think who do we buy stuff off? And I will contact them to pay for this. Now, come on, it's okay Conference. And again, it's your own ideas.
Speaker 1:Great example of this. So we went to an international conference and it was in a very famous chain hotel and because the whole thing had been contoured, someone, someone was given the gig to speak. So part of the deal was that you can have your conference here and we'll have a speaker on your stage. So the guy gets up.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the idea. Now the guy gets up to do his speech.
Speaker 1:He was one of the worst public speakers I've ever seen. So whatever deal was done, it was completely wasted. And he had an hour of this top group of people's time to bore them senseless about this chain of hotels which everyone knew a bit about and wasn't that bothered about, and I just think what a waste of everyone's time that is it really is.
Speaker 2:So the final note I have is we've ended on don'ts, but I want to go back to a do do have a conference. The world needs ideas, it needs debate, it needs people to develop new ideas, to prepare, to speak them aloud, to give them a life, so that other people can then build on top of those ideas. The only way you get an idea of getting better is if it's expressed.
Speaker 1:Also, don't be afraid to have a conference where competing ideas are expressed. I think that's really important, because if everyone agrees that everything's going in the right direction, that doesn't necessarily mean it is, and sometimes you need to book a speaker who will contradict what other people have said and cause a bit of a debate, because within that comes creativity and ideas and logic and solutions. So I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:But I would also say go outside. Sometimes you need someone from outside.
Speaker 2:That's right you do, because if you are a company conference and I've seen a few of these and a few gigs that we've not got recently, bob, and they've not booked anyone, and when I've been in touch, it's all where we've upgraded the venue or fed them more when you are only dealing with your own people, glad handing each other and kind of patting each other on the backs and going aren't we all marvelous I think you're sometimes even outsider to come in and say this is going on in the world right now. This is going on in leadership, this is going on in selling and service. This is going on in the world of complaints. Now bring people in from outside who have expertise that you do not have.
Speaker 1:Now I think there's a kind of a general don't which is worth expressing here as well, because we do know that there are certain companies who will book a company conference which is ostensibly a jolly, with a few figures thrown in, and certain board members will use the conference as an opportunity to take advantage of certain number of their employees because they're in a position of power, and I would say that's a massive don't as well. I think that sometimes we need to realize that if you're actually booking a jolly, have a jolly and make it a really good one, just do that.
Speaker 1:Have a really good jolly. Don't dress it up as something.
Speaker 2:Celebration. Call it a celebration of success, a celebration of whatever, but don't wrap it into a conference is about conférence.
Speaker 1:It's ideas it's discussion.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's not awards. You actually said something that neither of us have put on our list. I don't want to go to a conference for you to tell me what the turnover is, what the profit is, and I'll tell you what's also shocking. Our profits have declined by X percent. We've only made 148 million. Oh, it's Dreto, you're really suffering. Yeah, yeah, our profits have dip. Let's all pretend to beat each other up for a bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Our board members have only bought 17 bedroom mansions this year. They were hoping for 21 bedrooms, so we're not doing as well.
Speaker 1:No, that's right.
Speaker 2:Don't show figures, don't talk about yesterday. What was the conference without spec? We went somewhere where I think half an hour was about last year. Then the next guy came on and we went oh, lulia, we're moving. And he talked about, made up figures of what next year would be before it even started. Yeah, yeah. Next you were going to do this. How do you know if you got?
Speaker 1:that's not the worst, that's not the worst. The worst conference we went to for a single speech was when the new, the new director of that particular area introduced herself to a very particular song and came dancing in that was one of the most blatant pieces of self promotion I've ever seen. It was sickening, wasn't it, to watch that they danced to. It was from the greatest showman to pretend they had a character. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:When it became very apparent that in the prevailing year or two of their remaining they did not have one and they wanted to lie their way into people Hearts.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was absolutely awful. Anyway, we digress.
Speaker 2:You neither has put down the guy, the financial director, who came on to talk and before he taught he showed a video of a dog pointless, absolutely so don't show videos of dogs and cats, because you know what?
Speaker 2:We're all watching those privately because we like dogs and cats. We all love dogs and cats, or most of us do, but we don't need to go to a conference to watch a nice video of a cat Now what I hate to think of is that some poor person who's been given the job of creating a conference, well, they're going to give up and they're going, oh my.
Speaker 1:God, we don't know what to do. Where do I start? Actually, a conference is pretty simple. It's about how you form that feeling.
Speaker 2:I'm going to put an offer out there. If you are organizing a conference, just ring me up. Ring me up, we'd love to help you do it well so that your people have fun. We don't want to be booked to speak at it, we just want to help you have a decent conference. Absolutely right, ring us up and say look, the MD wants this and the FD will really help you. And you can say that you've talked to some people who've been around the block a bit and you've had some advice Sounds good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you want help organizing your conference, and don't worry, you can do one on a shoestring. You don't have to book a posh place. It's about the ideas, not about the venue, correct? Okay, I think we've said by far enough. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you for those who are getting in touch with ideas for episodes. We are working on them. If you do have an idea for an episode, please send it to us, give us a review or press forward on this and send this to somebody who you know is in the process of organizing a conference and Bobby wants to come in Just to say to finish, we are delighted to have gone well over 5,000 downloads now for Bob and Jeremy's Conflab.
Speaker 1:Thank you for supporting us. And for those of you that have businesses that have contact centers, don't forget that we also do another podcast called Contact Center Focus, and that may be perfect for your contact center staff. So all the best to you, thanks a lot and we will see you on the next one. Ciao, bob and Jeremy's Conflab. The reality podcast.