Lesson 1 Criteria for Success

During the Event

Give a Strong Opener

If you want your audience to be engaged during your presentation, you need to start with an attention-grabbing intro. 
How can I start strong?
Think outside the box. It’s not just about giving a joke, a personal anecdote, or interesting analogy. In this video, TED curator Chris Anderson offers fun ways to engage an audience, which include: 

• 
  Limiting your talk to just one major idea
  
• 
  Giving your audience a reason to care
  
• 
  Stirring your audience’s curiosity
  
• 
  Using concepts that your audience already understands
  
• 
  Focusing on the ultimate benefits of your idea
  
• 
  Thinking about how to hook people 
  

Lead with Questions

Today’s audience wants their voice to be heard — they don’t want to just sit around quietly. Stir your audience’s curiosity by asking inspiring and thought-provoking questions. And give them a chance to share their ideas. That way your session can be interactive, dynamic, and interesting. 
How can I increase audience participation and make my session more interactive?
If you’re speaking for a large group, or you predict no one will be willing to answer you out loud, try using a live polling feature on an event app. When connected to a screen or projector, you can show the results instantly to the entire crowd. Try asking questions like:

• 
  How have you been influenced by Dr. Gunther’s work?
  
• 
  What were your experiences using a tool similar to the one I’m presenting?
  
• 
  What is your preferred method in solving this issue? How effective is this method?
  

Have a Post-Session Meet-up or Coffee Chat 

Leaving immediately after your session will squash any excitement you may have created during your speech, and you can’t trust that attendees will find you on their own later. But meeting with as many attendees as possible is hugely important for both you and them. One of those attendees could be a potential mentor, employer, partner, or colleague, so it’s not an opportunity you want to skip. It can be worthwhile to arrange a post-presentation meetup — that could be coffee, a drink at the hotel bar or dinner. 
How can I organize a casual meet-up or lunch meeting?
Ask those who come up to you to meet somewhere later, or, if you plan ahead, use an event app to promote your discussion meetup. For example, if you’re using Whova, you can use the “Meet-ups” to post the time and place to connect people who share your interests. Want to be more casual? Create a group for a morning run or a city tour! People like spontaneous and fun group gatherings after daytime sessions. 

Interact with Other Speakers

If speakers are at the same event as you, it’s likely you’ll have common interests or similar backgrounds to some other speakers. Connect with other speakers (especially those in the same industry or who spoke on a panel with you) and take advantage of the opportunity to grow your network.
How can I connect with other speakers?
If you aren’t sure how to track down a fellow speaker in person, find them on LinkedIn or leverage an event app to send them a message. Likely, they’ll appreciate that you reached out and are interested in connecting, and you never know how this connection could come in handy in the future.
With Whova, you can easily organize a Meet-up with speakers who share commonalities with you. Arrange to meet for coffee or lunch during the event if possible, and exchange e-business cards and connect digitally via the event app. What’s more, as a speaker, you have access to an exclusive Speaker Hub on the Whova event app. This personalized experience includes a VIP chatroom with the speakers from the event, allowing you to easily get in touch with other presenters in real time. After the Event Engage and Share with Attendees
Keep the conversation going after the event ends by sharing slides or follow-up information for attendees. Stay open to questions from the audience. This may help encourage the attendees to seek you out in the future for further collaboration, or even future speaking gigs. 
How can I stay engaged?
Continue to utilize social media, the event app, and also your event organizers. If you exchanged contacts with some of your audience or had an interesting discussion, it’s a good idea to follow up with them. 

Collect Feedback

You may want to reflect on what you have tried and how helpful it was to engage attendees. Ask yourself whether a majority of the attendees got interested and excited about your talk, if they understood your key points, how many people you could connect with or had interesting conversations with, etc. To improve yourself, you can also get some feedback from attendees or organizers. 
How can I get feedback?
You can directly ask your audience in person or through an event app, but if your organizers run a survey or collect per-session rates from the audience, ask them to share it with you. 

Personal Wrap-Up

If you had a personal goal to achieve through the event (e.g. increasing awareness of your business, recruiting, finding a collaborator or connecting with other experts), you can come up with your next action items based on what was your goal and what you got from the event.
For example, you may want to update your website and social media pages with any photos from the event, or quotes from attendees. Search through the event hashtag, as well as your social mentions to see if any attendees posted about your session and if so, respond to them to show appreciation. Connect with any new contacts, and encourage them to follow your blog or your social media profiles.

Increase Engagement with Audience Engagement Tools

Remember that event technology is evolving, which means there are (and continue to be) new ways to increase audience participation. Audience engagement apps with live polling, a community board, QA, article sharing, and Meet-ups is just one of many examples. 
By leveraging modern and fun ways to engage an audience,you will impress and inspire more attendees — not only with your awesome talk but with interactions before, during and after your session.