Events and Experiences

I was at a strategy meeting on Wednesday of about 10 people for a forth­coming event — not NMK, for once (readers sigh with relief), but with a sister organ­isa­tion (readers scrabble for some­thing else to click), Dynamo London, that’s about our digital creative industry.

Anyway, mum, it was a really inter­esting meeting and could have spelled the first time that the Head of Interactive at the BBC sat down in the same meeting as his opposite number at The Guardian. We also had people from the PR, mobile, exhib­i­tions, music and design agency sectors.

That, in a way, was the theme of the meeting and the event we were dis­cussing. These people, working in very dif­ferent media, that very often don’t talk to each other, were all doing similar things and facing the same problems viz. working with and cham­pi­oning digital, inter­active media.

The Digital Divide

The people who are in charge at many clients and board dir­ectors in other organ­isa­tions view digital as an add-​​on. They are typ­ic­ally men aged 55+. And, at best, rather than admit that they don’t get it and please tell me more, they shove aside a tiny amount of cash for an online offshoot or part­ner­ship. What the people in the room knew, and I’m sure you know, is that the audi­ences are coming from the opposite dir­ec­tion. If the first time they hear about your launch is when they see a friend has them on their MySpace, then you’ve lost yourself a lot of time and money. This isn’t an extra; this is where the people are.

Experience Rules

How did you learn about how to use the Internet? Or any other IT, for that matter? If you’re remotely like me, then the answer is nowhere; you just did it. You made some mistakes, and your friend gave you some advice, but you were inter­ested enough to find your way. People learn by doing: learning reten­tion rates from exper­i­ence are around 80%, compared to 30% for reading things and 40% for hearing things. I used to be a teacher, and I reckon the 40% figure is about 40 times too high.

And how many IT-​​related con­fer­ences have ever allowed you to exper­i­ence anything? The closest I normally get is being able to ask a question, which I never do, unless it’s one of ours and I feel that hor­ri­fying oblig­a­tion to kick things off. As an event attendee, you can simulate exper­i­ence by taking notes — it makes you process the words a little and so it goes in a little deeper. But really exper­i­en­cing anything? Never.

So that creates a bit of a conun­drum — we’d like to reach people who don’t really get inter­active; we know that exper­i­ence is the best teacher; yet we’re stuck with a tra­di­tional con­fer­ence envir­on­ment for the event. (We’re getting a pres­ti­gious venue for free, so don’t knock it).

I’m thinking mobile phones or some of the inter­active voting tools that are used in classrooms. Suggestions and real help welcome.

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