Ashoka-Lemelson Partnership

Reaching the Audiences that aren't in the Room

Often times, your second-most important audience, maybe even your most important audience, is not in the room.

The point of a meeting or a collaboration, especially among social entrepreneurs, is usually to catalyze forward action on a new innovation, replication, or policy; but no matter what the goal, rarely is every important player in the room.  For a new innovation to truly take off, maybe it requires some sort of policy change or tax incentive.  Perhaps a potential replication partner couldn't make the meeting, what do they need to know to inspire them and enable them to move forward anyway?

Collaboration events and meeting inspire high hopes and calls for action, but even the best post-gathering intentions can quickly unravel if the right non-attendees aren't also somehow moved or touched by the content.

Lesson #8: Engage Your Participants in Setting the Agenda (and well before the event takes place)

This should be a no-brainer right?  Too often though, it is much harder a process than it really should be.  Emails sometimes go unanswered, brainstorming calls trail off into "ummm yea that sounds good" and different parties often have different priorities for the same event.

Its tough to get the feedback you need from the particpants you want before an event, collaboration or important meeting (though much easier after) but that doesn't mean its not possible.

Here are a few tips we are using to make sure we get the feedback we need from the Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows coming to the event and from our other participants as well

1. Email will rarely give you what you need. Get on the phone or, better yet, go see the future participants in person to find out what they are thinking.  Do a trial run with them to see what they like and don't like.  For instance, my colleague in Singapore just found out from a few Fellows that the site visit that we are planning for the event in Hyderabad (the one we are so excited about) is actually much less important to them than having plenty of unstructured networking time.  So now, with that feedback, we are looking at making the site visit optional.

So last week I wrote about pre-gathering surveys.  Today I want to write about a new tool I have in my arsenal for getting those responses back.

Are you ready for it?

EventBrite.

Now, I should probably clarify (given these new FTC rules that everyone is chatting about) that EventBrite isn't paying me for this post, although that would be nice.  No, I'm just a happy user of their free tool.

Why am I so happy?  Because EventBrite gives you the option of creating your own survey questions and then allows you to REQUIRE them to be answered in order for guests to register.

You can write short answer, long answer, multiple choice and even "check all that apply" questions and you can even specify different kinds of questions for different guests. 

For Hyderabad, we stuck with mostly multiple choice and "check all that apply" so that having to answer the questions didn't become a deterrant to registration.

So far, its working out great.  I sent the invitation out on a Friday afternoon to a group of busy, busy social entrepreneurs, for an event happening in February.  So far, we already have about 15% of the group registered.  If that isn't close to magic, I don't know what is.

Try it, my friends and until next week, stay techy.

The Road to Hyderabad: Lesson #6 Lay the Groundwork

One of the most successful things we've done in our recent Ashoka Tech collaboration gatherings is actually something that happens well before anyone arrives for the meeting.  Before anyone ever gets on a plane, we send out a short, pointed questionnaire to all of the participants related to the topic they are coming together to discuss.  After receiving responses back from as many participants as possible, we compile them into a packet of pre-meeting reading material that gets sent to all of the Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows participating at least one week before the event.

Seems pretty simple right?  Perhaps you've even done something similar.  I'll give an example.  For the meeting we are holding soon on reaching remote populations, I sent out this questionnaire to all particpiants:

The Road to Hyderabad Lesson #5:

Last week I had the opportunity to attend The Feast in NYC.  It was a great conference with some truly amazing speakers (more on that in another post) but it also gave me the opportunity to see how another organization puts conferences and gatherings of social entrepreneurs.

One thing I took from The Feast (besides the amazing series of speakers) was the attention paid to detail and the way the organizers made sure that every little thing contributed to the overall feel and mood of the event. 

From keeping the event running on time, to printing the wirelessness network and password onto the back of everyone's name tag.  From compostable plates and flatware to a fun networking activity (including food-even better) early in the morning.  Everything added up to make a non-verbal statement about the event that both appealed to everyone attending, and branded the event for an external audience.

When planning a meeting for 8-10 social entrepreneurs, as we often do at Ashoka, things like the flatware don't factor in as much to the meeting.  While good food, a good atmosphere, and a comfortable place to sleep matter a lot, its really those intense interactions within the small group that define the meeting.