Every conference holds valuable insights in its data for those who are willing to investigate more closely. These insights can be used to improve not only future conferences, but also regional events, seminars, webinars, and course offerings. While this won’t be an exhaustive survey,

Let’s explore some essential aspects that can ignite further curiosity and prompt meaningful dialogues for you and your team. To illustrate, let’s consider a hypothetical scenario where your association hosts a sizeable annual conference that spans four days, starting from Wednesday through Saturday in April. This conference features a comprehensive array of 200 educational sessions. Here are some valuable insights and thought-provoking questions to ponder:

Pay Attention to arrival and check-in patterns:

• When do most check-ins occur (day and time range)?
• What’s driving this? Is it due to an opening reception, dinner, keynote, or similar?
• Did they fly or drive?
• Are they trying to take care of this before meeting friends or colleagues for a meal at a nearby restaurant?

Determining the peak time of your conference

• When is the conference attendance at its peak?
• Which day of the conference is it?
• Is it during a keynote presentation, awards ceremony, or exhibit hall hours?
• What do attendees think is the most critical or pivotal time of the conference?
• What do they say and what do they actually show up for?

Evaluate session attendance and identify trends for future conferences

• With breakout or educational sessions, how does the overall attendance compare to general sessions?
• How much greater or less? How does this line up with previous conferences? If you don’t know, this is a perfect time to start tracking this data.

Examine attendance trends and patterns across conference schedules

• With breakout sessions, also gauge approximate (or actual) attendance 10 minutes after the start of the session time, at the midpoint, and at 10 minutes prior to the end of the session.
• What patterns or trends do you see there for given sessions and as a whole for educational offerings?
• What percentage of attendees are involved in educational sessions on a particular day and time? How much does this data vary across the 3-4 days of the conference?

Identify popular topics and speakers at the conference

• Take a look at the top 10% best attended sessions for the conference.
• What are the topics?
• Are they addressing more current subject matter?
• Are these sessions focused on timely information on changes in the industry or with regulations?
• Is the strong attendance based on a well-known or highly-regarded speaker?

Identify opportunities to deliver high-demand content to a wider audience

• Considering the high attendance of specific sessions, should the association consider offering similar content through other channels or at other events?
• It’s possible that only a small percentage of conference attendees were able to attend these sessions, and this number becomes even smaller when considering the association’s entire membership base.
• Where can this material be repurposed- future conferences, seminars, webinars, online courses, etc.?

Dig deeper in to the underperforming sessions

• Similarly, consider the least attended sessions or the bottom 10%. Were these presentations on topics that have been sufficiently covered at recent conferences or through other means?
• Were the presenters relatively unknown or have they been given too much stage time by the association?
• Were these sessions simply competing against strong sessions in their time block?

Analyze attendee retention and engagement toward the end of the conference

• How much does attendance tend to wane on the last day, in the final few hours, and in the closing session or activity of the conference?
• When is the conference most likely to lose attendees to the allure of the city, resort, or locale?
• What efforts are being made to keep them engaged and show value until the official end of the conference?

Be forewarned: Getting answers to these questions may just lead to an appetite to ask more. And that’s a good, solid result. Engage your colleagues in this exercise to look at your next conference through a different set of lenses and gain new insights and actionable items for future offerings.

After evaluating your conference from alternative viewpoints and fresh insights, it’s essential to have the right tools in place to turn your data into actionable strategies. To achieve maximum efficiency, it is imperative to find a partner who understands how to manage your data effectively.

Our team at IntelliData can help you make the most of your data by using advanced analytics and data visualization tools like Power BI to deliver key insights in real time. By analyzing data from different systems and program areas, we can provide a comprehensive view of your organization’s overall performance and help you make informed decisions that will drive success for your events, and ultimately, your association. Don’t miss out on unlocking the full potential of your event data.

Contact IntelliData today to explore how our advanced analytics and data visualization tools can help you turn your data into actionable insights that drive success for your events and association.