Have you ever wondered what could help increase member engagement at your conferences? Here are some engagement ideas that will not only fit into a range of budgets but also inspire brainstorming and team-building among attendees: 

Integrate project-based, design-thinking workshops into your conference content. If your participants are engaged in discussion and idea-sharing, they will retain 50 percent of the information after the conference. If they are building solutions to real-world problems in small groups, they will remember 90 percent of the information. Small groups prove most beneficial if they include a blend of different mindsets and personalities within them. For some of my previous events, we’ve had attendees take Predictive Index and DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness and consciousness) behavioral assessments and used their results to form the small groups.

Make use of the city where you’re hosting your event. Select several unique and memorable locations and spaces within walking distance of your host hotel. Some space I’ve used for my events include pool decks, rooftops, bike bars, tour buses, observatory decks, comedy clubs, coffee shops, and adult arcades. Each location should lend itself to the content and whatever vibe or theme you are trying to create for your members—and by simultaneously changing their surroundings, you can make them more open-minded to new and different perspectives. An example of this is when we had our participants bike from their host hotel to the general session on 15-person bike bars. It created a shared networking experience that former participants still talk about three years later.

Schedule dine-arounds. Set up dine-arounds for attendees based on the food preferences you collected using a questionnaire distributed as part of registration. Make sure each location is within the price bracket of your participants and that it is walkable from your host hotel or last presentation venue. Designate one leader per group to do a headcount and guide the group to their destination. Dine-arounds provide an opportunity for more informal networking and idea sharing, give participants another chance to explore more of the host city, and it keeps your association’s food and budget expenses low, since the participants pay as they go.

Keep the conversation going. Associations need to think through programming that allows for year-round conversation, instead of focusing only on programming that takes place during a conference. Without stretching your budget, think through the value-add options your association brings to the table, especially across different mediums. Here’s a few suggestions:

• Select an article from your publications to spark a discussion on your online community.
• At your conference, have participants select one of their peers to have as their accountability partner throughout the year.
• Negotiate an additional presenting opportunity into your conference presenter contracts. An additional webinar or online community conversation before or after your event can increase engagement and also raise awareness for your next conference.
• Create mentorship opportunities where attendees can learn from peers with guided content and regular check-ins.