You Ask, I Answer: What Makes Events Valuable?

In today's episode, let's answer a question from my friend Phil, Phil Marchand, who runs events, uh has a fun book out uh on making memorable events, and uh he's the one who's responsible for a lot of social media marketing world. What makes an event valuable? Right, what makes an event valuable? It isn't just information because you can get information everywhere. It isn't even necessarily networking per se, because again, you can do that anywhere.

Is it the food? Is it the experiences? I would argue that a big part of what makes an event valuable is takeaways. Takeaways that someone can show, hey, here's what I got. It's like it's like souvenirs, right?

You go on vacation, you bring home souvenirs to remember key parts that and you can show them off, and people can look at them, whether it's photos or video reel or you know, little trinkets and stuff. Uh it's something that shows that there was value there. Marketing, marketing hiring is constrained in many markets, which means that there's fewer people who can attend events because somebody's got to keep the the trains on the tracks. And events are a huge commitment for the average attendee, right? Attendees have to give up time in the office, they have to book travel, they have to travel someplace, they have to sit through a day or two days, maybe sometimes three days of programming and content.

And the moment they step back in the office, they've got to be able to show, they've got to show the value. They gotta say, here's what happened. Here's here's why I'm a better investment for this company, why I'm a better employee for this company, because of this armful of takeaways that that they've got. They can that they can hit the ground running with, they can show the team, they can teach other people. How many useful takeaways?

How many of them were provided by the event? That is really tricky. I did a webinar recently for associations and and event companies. And one of the things I emphasize is that every event should be using generative AI to summarize speaker sessions into one-page takeaways for each session that basically form a miniature book by the time you're done. So that's in attendees inboxes the Monday after the event, right?

That is a huge straightforward thing to do. So when the boss says, hey, what'd you learn at the event? Here's the book I got from the event, made by the event from the content in the event. Imagine the value of that. And relatively low cost.

You get permission from speakers to record their sessions, or you know, make it a requirement of their payment. You're not paying them, maybe you should. Um then you get permission to record and transcribe the talks, and then you use generative AI to summarize their talks or give the speaker the option to provide their own one page summary. And then you sew it all together. Here's the book of this event.

Imagine how valuable that would be. Imagine how tangible that is. That's great. Now we can make we can leverage all the information from these sessions. Would an event that provided you such tangible benefits beyond the list for consideration next year?

Sure wouldn't hurt. When the boss looks at what the team brought back from the event, if there's a book from the event, that's there's a clear value. The power of generative AI makes this possible today, right now. I'll give you a couple of examples. At a recent event, I had my keynote video that I recorded myself because the event wasn't recording anything.

I asked permission. They said, sure, fine, record yourself. I don't care. Um, I recorded it, I produced it, and I had my AI summary takeaways ready within three hours of walking off the stage. That added value to the event.

It set myself apart as a different kind of speaker. Uh, and I do this for any event that pays me a full-fee keynote. You get this all production uh as part of it. Your event could do this, your event could do this and set itself as apart as a different kind of event. I had another, I did a two-day workshop this past week uh for an association, and the takeaways were not just the learnings.

They got the attendees got the screen recordings and the audio. Um, but the attendees walked away with custom built AI tools that they built, not me, they built. We walked through it in like uh classroom. They built it with their own two hands. They built things like proposal bidding uh tools and win loss analysis tools, and of course, you know, your usual marketing summarization tools.

They even walked home with went home with custom songs for their companies that they themselves built. So when they show back up at work on Monday and they show the boss says, Well, what you know, we sent you that two day workshop. That was expensive, and uh you know, it took a lot of time out of it. You took you know a lot of time for you to be out of the office. What do you have to show for it?

They go, here's what I got. And it's it's like you throw down the bag of swag, and uh instead of you know little wind-up toys and and pencils and and stress balls, is you know, this person can use the summarization tool, this person can use the bidding tool, this person can use the proposal review tool, this person can use the RFP generation tool. And the boss is like, wow, that was like 50 grand worth of useful tools that you would have otherwise hired me to build for you, built by your attendees so your your team can maintain it, your team can modify it. Huge value. It's all about the takeaways.

When you're thinking about attending event an event, ask what the takeaways are. Ask other attendees what takeaways did you get from this event? Ask the event, what uh takeaways will you be providing? If you are an event, ask yourself what takeaways can we provide that no one else is going to provide, that we have the ability to create and give to attendees and provide incredible value. That's how you make an event valuable.

That's gonna do it for this week's episode. Thank you for tuning in. I'll talk to you on the next one. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button, subscribe to my channel if you haven't already, and if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.