The conversation with host Clare Forestier and guest, Event Psychologist, Victoria Matey explores how to change the status quo in event planning by incorporating brain-friendly strategies.

It discusses the mistakes organisers make - including not optimising content delivery and not providing guidance to speakers on how to engage the audience. Building connections between speakers and facilitating networking opportunities are crucial for creating a cohesive event experience. The loop of engagement can be established by treating attendees as human beings, asking for their advice, and maintaining communication before, during, and after the event. Other brain-friendly strategies include creating a comfortable environment, providing natural light, reducing noise, and incorporating wellness breaks.

Victoria Matey is an event psychology advisor and co-founder of Matey Events, event consultancy and the author of the 'Event Psychology Lab' online course and '10 Principles of Strategic Event Planning' book.

She leads the Event Psychology club, a community and the top resource for eventprofs looking to transform events with brain science insights, and hosts the podcast What If I Told You, the Event Psychology podcast. Victoria has been recognized by Smart Meetings as a Top100 Smart Women in Meetings, a ChangeMaker by MeetingsNet, and in 2022 she was named the Meeting Professional of the Year.https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriamatey/

Sign up for Victoria's newsletter here:  https://eventpsychology.gumroad.com/l/membership

Twitter: @MateyEvents

website: matey.events

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YOUTUBE

Hello and welcome back to Not The Same As Last Year.

So this week I’ve been thinking about education because we know it’s a key reason why people have traditionally gone to events to learn more about their industries and interests

and indeed the content part of an event keeps event planners busy right?

So how do we deliver content in a way that puts the attendee first.

by thinking about the way we learn, the way our brain’s work

so we therefore need to make events brain friendly

And as this is digging into the psychology again so we definitely need an expert here.

So it’s time to speak to my guru here - event psychologist, Victoria Matey someone whose work literally builds bridges between the science of human behaviour and events

In fact her hot topic is on making your events brain friendly

and that is ultimately the point of this podcast, Not The Same As Last Year, which I launched because I want us to make events that put the attendee, their hearts, their emotions, their brains and comfort FIRST

I started by asking Victoria how we can change things in our events to make them more brain friendly

Speaker 2: I think the main thing to keep in mind is that when we want to change something, it does not necessarily, it should not necessarily be about big changes. So it's small things that you can introduce in event design and in event marketing that will make a huge difference for you. I think mistake number one is that speakers do not receive any briefing on how to make their content more brain friendly and how to make the delivery of that content more brain friendly. And I should probably mention as well that I don't think that brain front presentation means, you know, fancy slides and sleek design, right? It can be pretty standard. It can. But if the speaker is aware of the things like attention dynamics, inclusive slides, right? Language techniques. This is when even the lecture style can become engaging. And I think not giving this brief to speakers before the event is a big, big mistake because at the end, when they know all these little things that they can introduce to make, to improve their content, to improve their presentations, to improve their slides, that would be a win -win all around because that will make their content shine that will put them into the spotlight and they will be perceived better by audience. That would be good for the audience itself because people will learn more, will remember more. And this reflects back on the organizers, right? So the satisfaction with the learning outcomes, with the learning experience is higher. So people will praise that, people will remember that, and that might be the reason, another reason for them to come back to the event. So it's something that everybody wins from.

Speaker 1:

I don't want to push back on this because I think that's absolutely vital and it's something I ask event planners, give me a chance to talk to the speakers because if they've not felt comfortable saying this to an illustrious speaker, then it's something I can say. But that is the issue. I think a lot of time, what will have happened a lot of times is that they will have got this sought after speaker, and they'll be all very deferential. Thank you so much. And you're amazing. And then they'll, this event plan, maybe they're quite young, is not going to say, by the way, could you not do it the way you've always done it and do it our way? So that is a pushback one, isn't it? So it's, I guess, finding the right person. If it's your MC or someone who can, who has the balls to say, the way you've always done it is no longer going to cut the mustard. Cause that's tough, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

I think that's one of the most common reasons why organizers don't do that. They sort of feel that they shouldn't ask for more from a speaker, especially if it's a seasoned speaker, right, an experienced speaker. But an experienced speaker doesn't necessarily mean that they are experts in neuroscience or psychology or behavioral science, right?and finding the words and the right approach to explain to them that it will actually be good for them, first of all, because people will be able to connect with the content with this speaker presentation better if it's brain friendly, explaining that and doing it again and again, you know. That's the only way actually, educating speakers and trying to find the right words to say how it will improve the outcomes for speakers first.

Speaker 1:

It's a great one because it's okay. It might be a little bit hard the first time you've got to kind of come up with the right words and the right phraseology. But once you've cracked it, you've then got it for all the speakers. What's another thing that people could change so easily?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.Another thing I see a lot not being done is facilitating connections between speakers. And I think it's very important because if an event features multiple speakers, they share connections through the events overarching theme, right? And by encouraging them to familiarize themselves with each other's content, They can identify and build on common points. And through that, they're creating a seamless narrative throughout the event. And I believe that this will strengthen the experience and also it will foster a cohesive and integrated knowledge environment, emotional environment for the audience.

Speaker 1:

I think I spoke about that in episode two, that collaboration is super important between all the people coming to the event from the suppliers to the speakers to everybody. So they've all talked and collaborated. They've all made great connections. They've all personally benefited. It means they've also been able to come out with potential ways of solving issues or problems that might come up in the event. But also that side that if they bothered to find out what you're going to be talking about, how they can play in with what they're going to say, where the rest of the...agenda fits in and I do see some speakers ask that they really want to know where am I in the agenda who's before me who's after me but others they're gonna turn up with their little stack of slides and they're gonna do what they do regardless of anything else going on so that's such a good point and again it's it's not hard to set up a few meetings is it

Speaker 2:

No, and then making it a standard practice will make it easier for everyone because if this is something that everybody does and gets involved in, you won't have that much of a pushback, right, from speakers. I think most of them actually are keen on engaging before the event and throughout the event. So you just need to make it a standard practice.

Speaker 1:

Well, I like that because I talk, obviously my passion is about attendee first experiences, but you know, your speakers are also your attendees and they are the advocates for the event. And if they're coming to the event going, wow, loads of attention was, was paid into, into my contributions and to me meeting other people. And I feel very welcome and wanted. And I feel like any of my issues have been heard. you're immediately setting a code for how you expect to treat everybody at the event.

Speaker 2:

Mm. And another mistake that I wanted to share my thoughts about is personalization, fake personalization. If you send a post -event note or if you do the follow -up with your leads after a retrace show or if you ask to join an event, I think the common mistake is not taking time to properly sort and categorize.and kind of find out who you are talking to. Right. Because I guess, you know, I'm not the only one who received that kind of message in the past that Victoria, you know, thank you for visiting our booth or thank you for attending. And I've never been to, I immediately feel not seen, noticed. My absence was not noticed. I feel not special when I get this kind of message.

Or, you know, got a personal message through LinkedIn inviting me to an event and the person, my connection invited me saying, Victoria, I'd like to personally invite you. And I replied thinking that they meant to start a conversation. I replied with a question and then they never answered. And I mean, don't start a conversation if you don't intend to engage in it, right?

And I know that a lot of organizers go by these nice stats or nice numbers saying that, you know, personalized content gets, I think it's 84 % more attention, which is true, but it's what's beyond grabbing attention. It's only about grabbing attention, but you need to maintain it first point of contact, right? And to maintain it to really stay on people's minds, you have to be real. And, you know, doing this fake personalized messages doesn't good, you know.

Speaker 1:

I think you're right. It's very cursory how it's done. I mean, we all get those emails or messages on LinkedIn saying, I see you do this. This is what I can help you with. And you're like, well, I don't do that. So you haven’t read what I do. You've just done a keyword search and you've read the word events and from that you've decided this is my job, which it isn't. And it's of a bit like, come on, you're going to do half the job, do it properly. So it's like, don't personalise unless you're really going to do it properly because we are too savvy now. We're aware of it and it immediately makes us go, well, they don't really care, do they? They don't really want me point.

Speaker 2:

fake authenticity and fake personalization does more harm than no personalization at all. This is what I would say, yeah.

Speaker 1:

One of the things I often quote you on, which I absolutely love, is that post -event feedback form, which comes through, which is shocking most of the time. And most of us don't fill it in, or if we do, it's very quick. Half the time, you're not even asked about the things that are relevant. So you feel like this is a bit pointless. They've just asked me if I liked the food or whatever. And you always say to ask for advice. And I quote that all the time. I think it's such a brilliant idea because.we feel so good when someone goes, Claire, I'd like your advice. I'm like, okay, I've got time for this. Somebody wants to hear from me. So why is that? Why does it work so well?

Speaker 2:

Well, because it touches us at a deep level. And whenever we want people to take some action, to respond, whenever we want to reach someone, we need to consider things that are beyond the surface, that go underneath those needs, core needs that everyone has, need to be special or feel special, right, need to belong. And I think when we ask for advice, we kind of signal to the other side that we think about them as equal experts in this thing, right, what we're asking about. And we ask for their help. And that evokes a lot of… feelings and emotions, positive feelings and emotions.

Speaker 1:

It's very valuable. You feel that you're valued, like you're important to that person.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. So we feel valued, we feel seen, we feel like we are part of the process. So it's not like the organizer is on one side and we are on the other side. We are together in this. And then those little powerful, in fact, signals make people take action. In this case, they will reciprocate. They will respond, they will provide really advice, not just a couple of thoughts, very surface -like opinions, but deep quality feedback. And that's exactly what you're looking for as an organizer.

Speaker 1:

Speaker 2:

Yeah. No, I think there should be a separate plan for asking for feedback at different points of the attendee journey before the event, throughout the event, and after the event. And I recently talked about having secret attendees at an event asking questions, because that's exactly how you can get in the moment feedback. And that's a very important one because people will share something that they won't share afterwards when they have already post -rationlised their feelings and emotions, right? And when they are sharing some opinions in the moment, it's more likely that they will be, more honest and raw and, something that you can gain insight from.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'd love that I'd love it if someone said, Claire come to our event. You can't be MC this time, okay? But we'll give you a little bit of, you know, you can be our secret shopper or our secret event attendee, because it would be so interesting. And I think as well, if you just walk around with a clipboard sometimes, and you're invisible at an event, because normally I'm the MC, so people kind of recognize you. But if I'm skulking away thinking, I just wonder what they thought of that session, you can get some really good feedback.

So if somebody's listening and they go, well, I, you know, I like, I like what Victoria had to say.you've suggested a couple of things, maybe a couple more things that you know would make an event brain friendly that is not hard for people to do or a small budget, but what would you think?

Speaker 2

what we should remember in the first place is this connection between brains and bodies. And so you need to look after the bodies. And then someone would say that, well, we do it all the time. That's what events are. We provide food. We provide all the logistics stuff. But I think looking at that from the psychology perspective and looking at that as the link to brain -friendly environments and brain -friendly events is kind of a different angle altogether. So what I mean by looking after the bodies is like having a lot of breaks, you know, having more or as much as possible natural light, right? Having less noise because..If you ask people to network or you expect that they will be networking and at the same time you're having a very noisy environment, well, people won't do that, right? Because it just, you know, it's not possible to have a meaningful conversation when, you know, the music is so loud or any other kind of noise, right? And then think about emotional involvement. What do you want them to feel?

What kind of emotions, specific emotions do you want them to feel? What kind of small details you can introduce to make them feel again, special and valued. And then out of that, we can get more original and creative formats, right? It can be, you know, wellness breaks, networking hikes, musical keynotes, conversation corners, those are activities that don't require a lot of changes, but at the same time, they are very powerful in terms of the impact on audience perception, on audience engagement. And then another thing that I believe is very important is to thread your event out over time and focusing on what you do with your audience before the event and after the event. You know, you can do a series of pre -conference events, for example, or you can follow up with some mini post -conference activities. And that might be anything that works for your audience, but it creates this cohesive event environment, It makes it a whole rather than just sporadic points in time where they just registered and they are at the event and then nothing, right?

When you try to create a holistic event environment, then you need to...

have a continuous relationship with the audience, pre -event, at the event, and post -event. And that's something that will lead to behavior change.

think about the event as moments in time, actually involving the audience meaningfully and helping them connect meaningfully before the event starts, right? And doing the same after the event, trying to see what kind of things happen at the event that affected them, that impacted them in a way that they do things differently, right? That will actually create this loop, a powerful loop. that will bring your attendees back to your event at the same time will impact their life and they will start doing things differently as a result of attending the event. And that's the actual power and potential of the events that I see.

That makes total sense and that philosophy makes sense. So how, I know people are going to go, what does someone do to do that? How do you practically say, I want to have this loop that starts and continues so that there's no, we finish and then off we go and nobody pays any attention to us for another six months till they try and get us to come to the next event. How do we start and keep that loop going as an event planner?

Well, I think changing the communication plans is the first step. And again, introducing small changes at the pre -event and post -event change. Like, for example, you can do actually all the things that we've just talked about, you know, connecting speakers between themselves before the event starts, right? And then asking different questions at different times for your audience before the event starts and doing the same afterwards. And those small changes and communications here and there that...

will make a difference and will give you more information about what your audience cares about, what they feel, how they feel about your event at different points in time, right? And so this will provide you with more information, more insight that you can work on.

So I see what you mean. The strategy is going to start, if you just start treating your audience a little bit more like a human being, even before the event and after the event, then that little circle you want, this loop is just going to be easier. And I can totally see that. If someone's asked your opinion and your advice before the event about how you want it to go, and then they're asking for it afters about how you want it, you are going to naturally be more inclined to stay in communication with them and to keep being part of the conversation, aren't you?

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And then for example, if you want them to network, don't expect them to network at the event. Provide them with the advice before on how they can connect better, right? Try to educate on some communication biases that may prevent them from having effective interaction with someone at the event, right? But you do it before. You kind of do a lot of...

Yeah.

work before the actual event starts. you know, we've got a lot of discussions on networking right now in the community, right? And I think looking at it from the psychology perspective is a way to help organizers and helping their audiences.

deep personal things. That was research, right? And, you know, those questions include included something like, when did you last cry in front of the other person? And the results were amazing. So participants were first asked to rate the degree of awkwardness on a scale from zero to 10. And on average, they rated it as seven.

Wow.

So they felt like they would be very, that would be very awkward to talk about this kind of stuff, right? But the actual awkwardness level that they experienced was around four. So similarly for the level of connection before the conversation started, they expected a connectedness level of.

Thank you.

or three, again on a scale from zero to 10. But the actual connectedness that they experienced was rated as six, or twice as much. Twice as much. And so I think a lot of the things that come from research, from social psychology can be used because if you talk to your audience and explain these kind of things,

in a simple way, you don't need to provide them with research references and stuff like that, but just educating them about those subconscious biases and subconscious motivations that drive their communication, that drive their own behavior an environment like an event.

then you're helping them to be more effective in communication.

If you've asked them about their networking preferences and they've all come at, you can say, look, 90 % of you have responded saying you find networking awkward. So this is what we're doing to make it less awkward, but also here's some advice or here's some suggestions or things we've discovered about.

human beings that might help you in your, you know, you're because you've started a conversation initially asking them for their advice, they're going to be more likely to read what you send them next. That's responding to it. The thing is, we say this and then we also say we don't want people to get long crazy questionnaires.

yeah, talking about communication plans, it's not that you should throw that, like in one go, right? You can have three, registration questions. And then once they register, you send them a lot of communication at different points in time, which will not cause any overwhelm if you do it right. I mean, if it's a balanced communication, if it's not.

you know, long reads, just tips that you provide them at some point, then it's going to work.

every day.

Understood, understood. Well, thank you so much. There's so much there. I'm terribly lit today. So huge apologies, everybody. There's so much sun coming in my window. I think my lighting is... But yours is gorgeous, Victoria. So that's all that matters. And anybody who's listening to this on podcast form doesn't care anyway, because they can't see us. But if you're watching the YouTube one, there is a slight problem with the lighting today, but not to worry. Victoria, I'm going to share all your information.

Hehe.

Hehehe.

in the show notes so anybody can find out about you. You are clearly the person to talk to if you want to start really making events that are going to appeal to the brains of your attendees that are going to make them feel happy and safe. So it's been wonderful to hear from you and to get kind of a little bit of a different view of the way I've been telling people to do things or advising it. I like hearing your...

Very emotional connection there and it's definitely a psychologist's view. I love it. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Claire.

Amazing stuff right, because with a little thought you can make really easy changes that will dramatically improve improve the experience of your attendees. It’s about forgetting the idea of one and done and prioritising brain friendly experiences and if you’re having any problems getting others on board explain why and show them the science. Check out Victoria’s website - link in show notes to see the research.

Until next time when we talk about what to do in events when the proverbial hits the fan!