Vicki Johnson & Associates

Gone are the long, tedious days of back-to-back speakers on the event schedule. As the event industry continues to evolve to meet the needs and desires of the changing dynamic of attendees, new trends in experiential learning are developing among event planners. Take a look at some of these fun experiential learning opportunities and find out how they can transform your next event, conference, or meeting into an experience your attendees will never forget!

Hackathons

Hacking gets a bad rap, and deservedly so; however, some conferences and corporate meetings are adapting the idea of “group hacking” to solve large-scale industry issues. Rather than having individual speakers discuss potential solutions to problems, large groups of attendees come together with the goal of creating an actionable solution to the problem at hand. Not only will attendees leave inspired, but they’ll have a clear course of action to take to become part of the solution.

Debates

Some of us are still recovering from high school debate jitters, but staging a debate at your meeting or conference can be a great way to get new voices involved in industry discussions. If you want to truly explore all sides of the argument, be sure to spend real time and effort choosing the question and finding debaters who come from diverse backgrounds and demographics. If you really want to spice things up, make the debaters switch sides halfway through.

Movement

Experiential learning starts by changing the energy of the room, and there’s no better way to do that then by giving your attendees the opportunity to move around. At a recent MPI conference in Copenhagen, planners had everyone write down what they found inspiring at the event that they could actually apply to their work. Then, they were directed to ball the paper up and start having a “snowball fight” with those around them. Once the “fight” was over, the attendees were directed to pick up a random piece of paper and start discussing with others in the audience.

Experiential learning has the potential to inspire action and engagement among a different subset of attendees by capitalizing on different learning styles. Learn more about how Vicki Johnson & Associates can help you with everything from site selection and contract negotiation to event marketing and creative services.