The Attendee of the Future

The needs of your event attendees have changed. Are you keeping up with their demands?
Every participant we (potentially) have – is able to get what they want, when they want it, at the touch of a button located on the supercomputers in their purses and pockets. We have adapted to new technologies, and we all do old things in new ways. Banking, shopping for food, booking services, ordering well… everything…. We all use digital availability to maximize our own satisfaction.

Technology allows us to be expedient and thorough in our decision making for products and services by searching for what we need online at an ever growing rate. We all compare multiple options online, usually several at one time. We do this as planners to our supplier partners, and our participants do this with the plethora of possible events they can attend.

Welcome Generation C

Generation C are the attendees of the future, united by their behaviour and expectations, rather than their age bracket. Modern attendees thrive on these C’s – Connection, Communication, Curation and Community. They cross generations, but they are curious and many of them are promoting, creating, attending and sharing our events. So what can event planners do to welcome these digitally empowered participants?

Seeking community is a reason to attend. Along with event participation, our participants are also seeking the communities they want to belong to, ever increasingly on mobile devices. Websites must be mobile enabled and connected to the social networks you are using to support your messaging, making it easy for your community to connect to you, and each other.
Before the event generate excitement about when registration will open, and the second they have registered allow them a way to share this with their connections, adding a sense of FOMO and authenticity to your event. When you know you can expect to share the event with great company, the urgency to attend increases.

Understand for associations particularly these participants are no longer just your members – this new enablement allows those who don’t desire membership in the traditional sense – annual dues, a newsletter and access to a membership list – to be connected and it is time to find ways to embrace these digital joiners and use these new mediums to build on your existing success and grow into the future.

The New Hierarchy of Needs

Anyone involved in event marketing is familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. James McQuivey of Forrester is the author of Digital Disruption, a book first recommended to me by Reggie Henry, the Chief Information Officer of the American Society of Association Executives as a “must read in this new age” as even this association for association executives has had to respond to the new members and the old member’s new way of working. In this book Mr McQuivey notes that when it comes to the new digital reality our fundamental human needs now include

• comfort
  connection
  variety
  uniqueness

Comfort
Comfort for our attendees now means access to information on our schedule; knowing they always have power available on-site to charge often multiple devices; that ubiquitous WiFi will be available; time to attend to the needs of their digital life is available; that the schedule is available on their device; information can be contextualized on their device by note taking, visual record-keeping and sharing with others. Documents and videos from the speakers can also be uploaded, which allow participants to delve into the information more deeply if they wish.
Connection and Meeting Evolving Needs
“If you didn’t post a picture of it, it didn’t happen.”
We need the ability to connect to others in our own tribes and these needs will vary by who the participants are, who they want to connect to and the myriad ways we now connect – from 15 to 150x per day on average from our mobile devices. This can include professional connections in LinkedIn; groups in Facebook, WhatsApp or iMessage; Snapchat friends following your stories; connections made in the mobile event app; #hashtag streams on Twitter or Instagram related to the event; and email, phone, text or FaceTime with your office, clients or the family you have left behind.
We have to create shareable content and we have to allow time and space for both digital and f2f connections to happen as the digital connections are now as real and meaningful to the user in the time and space they are being shared.
Including a game with a leaderboard allows participants to share their own knowledge and experience to gain points, to stake their place, and this type of technology can be used strategically to build on intrinsic (I did it!) and extrinsic (prizes!) rewards. This is also a great way to connect people who might not otherwise meet as they start to look for those playing along with them in real life.
Variety
This is where meeting design meets the participant. Here you need to consider how this connected community wants to learn and connect with others. This includes:

• the overall flow of the space to include places to chat, check devices and meet both on purpose and serendipitously
  include quiet/white space – possibly even a digital free meditation zone
  the new water cooler – the charging station where people gather