This week we attended the inaugural Seattle Interactive Conference (#SIC2011) along with 1000+ others. We were struck from the get go with how the conference experience conflicted with its intended mission:

SIC is an opportunity for brands, businesses, creative leaders and consumers to directly interact with the digital trendsetters of today and the thought leaders of tomorrow.

But instead of direct interaction with speakers, the sessions were more like the traditional interaction model of television: programmed spaces were dimly lit, passive, and so large that looking at the big projection screen (instead of the speaker) was the only option from many seats. Meanwhile, just like commercials on your television, the advertiser spaces in the lobby were brightly lit, louder, and more lively. This dynamic causes two problems: adult learning is stymied and, in this case, the conference experience is incongruent with its mission and brand.

Creating a compelling conference experience isn’t a challenge unique to #SIC2011. We’ve seen this in our own field at OD conferences and others that rely on an industrial-age model of one-way one-to-many presentation. And we can appreciate that if it’s your 63rd year putting on an annual conference, you might have a blind-spot around the how attendees actually experience your content in your chosen venue.

Speakers often share this blinds-spot, especially around room mechanics like light, sound, and furniture. We once attended a “Masters Class” on ‘organization dynamics’ given by an industry figure-heard. His stature warranted a large banquet room space in the hotel, but a row of empty 12-seat banquet tables (perhaps left over from the previous night’s wedding) separated him from the audience.

The way we work, and our recommendation to @SeattleInteract, @ODNetwork, and other conference organizers, is to treat the professional conference like a large-scale interactive adult learning experience and a product, and design it as such. Whether your conference is World of Concrete, DICE, or DreamForce, we believe our top tips apply:

1. Identify the adult learning outcomes, and design every part of the experience to them
2. Engage user experience researchers and designers early in the event planning process
3. Consider the impact that the venue, space, furnishings, temporary structures, lighting, and sound may have on those learning outcomes
4. Limit company showcase presentations to paid advertiser areas of the event
5. Expect all speakers to make similar considerations as you in preparing their material
6. Close the gap between the speaker selection process and the attendee feedback process by using the same evaluation criteria for both
7. Eliminate any distinctions between ‘sessions’, ‘workshops’, or ‘working session’ (since all sessions except inspirational keynotes should be experiential in nature)
8. Offer graffiti/Post-It-Note walls, photo sharing, and other methods to aggregate the sharing of attendee learning and ideas
9. Conduct user-research during the conference to ensure course corrections and to generate more data and ideas for next year
10. Leave space for attendees to self-organize their own session (i.e. the un-conference model)

If you made it to Drory Ben-Menachem’s “PENCILS vs. PIXELS” session at #SIC2011 (it wasn’t in the printed schedule), you would have seen a good example of an interactive learning event. We’re also excited for the upcoming Prototype Design Camp for young adults. Many of the techniques at work there would work well in a professional conference environment.

And as always, we’d love to hear your reactions to these ideas in the comments below.