You can't script conference radical hospitality. It's not something that you can fake or spin. When it's done authentically, it spreads like wildfire.

People who demonstrate radical hospitality don't look down on others. They welcome people, just as they are and invite them into the experience. More importantly, they engage conference participants.

So ask yourself, are you happy to have satisfied attendees? Meeting professional beware. This is a sneaky question that will lure you into the trap of status quo. Satisfaction does not equal learning or loyalty.

The better question to ask is, “Are your conference participants engaged with the experience?"

Participant engagement is actually one of the goals of conference radical hospitality. And participant engagement begins with team engagement—your team of volunteers and staff dedicated to serving on the front line at your event.

When you unleash authentic radical hospitality at your event it actually determines your bottom line! Now that's a bottom line worth investing in.

After attending this presentation, the participant will be able to:

• Discover how to create a conference culture of radical hospitality.
• Discuss how to discover your participants expectations of your event, one of the first stes in radical hospitality
• Explore intentional ways to make a great onsite first impression that extends Radical Hospitality before and after your event.

Engagement is obviously a central aspect of an energized and effective conference experience. If your conference participants are not engaged with your experience, what chance will they have at improving their job performance? Conference participant engagement starts as a result of the conference organizers careful planning and execution of specific strategies. Using the strategies identified in this presentation, every conference professional can create event experiences where engagement is the norm, not the exception.

After attending this presentation, the participant will be able to:

• Identify the four questions conference organizers must address that participants will ask themselves.
• Discuss why conference experiences must have a high level of inclusive, interactive energy experiences.
• Discover practical strategies that translate engagement research and theory into conference experience practice.

It's probably one of the most important skills that they don't teach at universities. Or anywhere else. How to design strategic conversations that lead to change.

Strategic conversations are necessary when stakes are high, answers are unclear and the participants are expected to create real insights together—rather than play out prepared scripts—across organizational boundaries.

Many today face major shifts in business models and increase competitive pressures. The standard meeting or brainstorming sessions won't cut it. They are not sufficient for dealing with messy, open-ended challenges. They fail to deliver the all-in participation that's required to wrestle with tough issues. They invite participants to stay and play within their established roles.

Designing strategic conversations is a craft—not a crapshoot. It can catapult a “been there, done that" meeting into a gathering that few will forget. It's about eradicating as many time-sucking, energy-depleting strategy meetings as possible. And replacing them with inspiring productive strategic conversations. It engages participants not just analytically but creatively and emotionally as well.

After attending this session participants will be able to:

• 1.Define how a VUCA World creates boundaries and parameters that must be addressed.
• 2.Discuss how adaptive challenges call for adaptive leadership.
• 3.Identify the steps needed in the art and science of designing strategic conversations.

We are living in a world of hinge time. Our conferences are planned to educate attendees for an era that no longer exists. The challenges our attendees face are vastly different from the ones of the past.

Most of our conference attendees were educated on how to be right. We focus on individual and collective attention on deficits—cognitive, emotional, financial and industry-related says author Dawna Markova. Rarely have we been taught how to collaborate effectively with people across cultures, time zones and temperaments. Thus hinge time.

After attending this presentation, the participant will be able to:

• Compare and contrast market-share with mind-share mentality.
• Identify the four strategies of collaborative intelligence (CQ).
• Discuss CQ strategies that we can apply in our conference settings.

Are you guilty of touting feel-good conference vanity metrics? Yep, we've all said things like: “Our attendance is up 30% from last year. We sold out our exhibit space. Or we have 45% first-time attendees.” We repeatedly confuse our conference activity for healthy vital signs. We let our emotions fool us with these faux-positive vanity metrics. Instead, we need to uncover actionable metrics that help us make strategic decisions. Join us as we discover how to shatterproof our conferences and measure what matters.

After attending this session, the attendee will be able to:

• Compare and contrast vanity and actionable metrics and discuss the value of actionable metrics.
• Explore the differences between leading and lagging conference indicators.
• Identify healthy vital signs of financially sustainable conferences.

Discover neuroscience research that proves how important human connection is to your conference's participants' brain health. Explore how to bake-in more brain-healthy networking to make your attendees smarter. Discuss strategies to design meaningful We-centric experiences, as Judith Glaser calls them, that unleash a flood of positive brain chemistry leading to healthier brains and increased conference customer loyalty.

Leaning Outcomes:

• Discuss the three levels of conversations used in networking and which level stimulate the We-centric part of the brain.

• Explore the five cognitive principles that need to be intentionally baked into all your networking offerings.

• Discover how to use conference networking to foster deep connections that activates higher levels of trust and creates a transformative healthier positive experience.

You need innovation as an engine for you conference participants' success!

This requires that you must break free of Infectious conference learning myths.

Despite our intentions to ensure that all our conference participants learn and network successfully, we seem to be working harder than ever at accomplishing less. And our attendees seem to be more disengaged than ever and longing for more. At any given time 50% or more of our conference attendees are not attending our programming.

In an effort to improve our conferences and help our attendees, we have pushed the existing conference model into hyperdrive, offering more and asking attendees to work at super speeds to consume as much as possible. Our richly-scheduled events—code for overly-scheduled—negatively affect attendees' learning and quality networking in the long run.

We need to break free of infections myths about conference experiences, learning and networking to find ways to hardwire conferences to organically develop the natural intelligence of our attendees. It requires courage, tenacity and certitude that our conferences can become true learning events that redefine our participants' 21^st century success.

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

• Connect how the demands on 21^st Century professionals require a shift in the way conference attendees are expected to participate, think and interact with others in the real world and thus how we plan and organize our events
• Discuss how the impact of our current conference models practices, policies and structures impact our attendees and why we need to establish and adopt some basic conference learning principles.
• Communicate new conference realities that break free from traditional learning and networking myths.

Forecasting! The mere word may cause fear, apprehension and the thought “I don't know how to do that! Much less how to apply forecasting to picking future-focused conference and education topics for my customers."

Don't worry you're not alone.

Forecasting is more than predicting or foretelling the future. And if you're under the impression that forecasting is something only strategists, governments and scientists know how to do, you're going to be pleasantly surprised.

Your organization's conference and education topics need to be forward focused not best-practice or backwards focused on what worked for someone last year. You need to forge programming that helps your customers forge a better future for their profession and lives.

Forecasting the right learning opportunities topics for your customers is an essential leadership activity. And it can be done with your committee volunteers too. All you need is the right tools and process to begin to make better decision in the present so that your customers gain optimal outcomes for the future.

This webinar showcases critical information and expertise from business strategist and author of Paid To Think David Goldsmith on a step by step forecasting process. And it works!

After attending this session, the participant will be able to:

• Explain why learning opportunities should be future focused and not what worked in the past only.
• Define the three forecasting orientations and which one you are currently using for planning and programming your conference and organization learning opportunities.
• Discuss and apply a step by step forecasting process for identifying forward thinking programming options.

Healthy conferences change. Their organizers adapt to new contexts, society trends and business shifts. Those conferences

that don't change become stale, stagnate and stuck in a rut. Some meeting professionals sense that we are in the midst of

radical change. The kind that only happens one in every decade. While no one is absolutely sure what is ahead, talking about

it allows us to position our conferences for a changing world. Discover some seismic conference and attendance shifts that

your conference needs to adapt and adopt now.

After attending this session, the participant will be able to:

• Describe how engagement will drive conference attendance.
• Explore how investment in conference attendee participation experiences will outweigh investment in production experiences.
• Identify two to three trends that you should consider and adopt now in your own conference planning

Your job in leading and facilitating a conference planning committee is to cast the conference vision, build an equipping-oriented internal culture and model proactive thinking and planning methods. This means moving from a consumer information-delivery mind-set to a participatory, transformative mind-set for your attendees' conference experience. This webinar will help you facilitate conference committee meetings that are more productive, ask the tough questions and lead to improved business performance outcomes for both your team and attendees.

Learning Outcomes:

• Discuss why your committee needs to focus on providing sessions that solve attendees' problems versus providing a lot of content.

• Discover proven facilitation skills to achieve a shared vision for your conference.

• Identify six strategies to elevate conference committee discussions and outcomes that lead to more innovative, brain-friendly and relevant conferences that will attract and retain attendees.