Want to get spoken at all day? Er…nope…

So after the success of our data management event a few weeks ago and our FME events, I have been reflecting on what makes days like this so worthwhile.

Over the years I’ve been to loads of GI events, conferences and user groups, and the overwhelming feedback I’ve taken away from those sessions is that you often get overloaded with sales pitches, ‘customer presentations’ (otherwise known as sales pitches in disguise), a load of rhetoric you have heard before and if you’re lucky, you may come away with a nugget of information that is valuable. Only one nugget mind! I leave with lots of noise floating around in my head, which then must seep through my ears and dissipate into the ether. A poor return for a day of my precious time!

There is a better way to get the cognitive juices whirring away – and it’s called interaction. When I go to events I want to meet new people I’ve not spoken to before. It’s nice to catch up with people of course, but it can be a bit groundhog day-esque. We are all “busier than ever before”, we are all “under pressure” due to the economy so that 5am rise needs to be worth the effort. If I was one of our customers, I would want to learn about new technologies that help, I’d want to take away ideas for specific action or contacts that I can actually do something with.

But from the perspective of a commercial entity, how does an organisation like Dotted Eyes run events that people get value from but also positions what we can do and offer?

So at Dotted Eyes we came up with our own interactive style of events that showcase the technologies we’re passionate about. However, if you don’t leave with four things you can apply back in your own business then as far as we’re concerned we’ve failed. We measure that KPI and its working. People love the interaction – our pub quizzes, speed dating and hands-on group tech challenges are getting rave reviews. In May 2014 we’re going to do some more events and we’ll be stepping it up even further.

And this week I tried this approach somewhere else – the AGI.  As part of my role as chair of AGI Cymru, I organised a session that was all about interactivity. The response proved to me that this is definitely the right approach to events.

Written by Charlie Gilbert, Business Solutions Director at Dotted Eyes, 4th December 2013