When it comes to reimagining your tradeshow floor, there is a lot we can learn from large customer events such as Dreamforce, Oracle OpenWorld, or Microsoft Ignite. In these designed hub experiences, you won’t see pipe and drape, bright-white lights, or a clean 10-foot-by-10-foot grid. Instead, you’ll experience an abundance of learning theaters, interactive experiences, turnkey demo kiosks, and soft lighting.
While these experiences can cost significant money to create, small- and mid-sized associations are realizing that they need more than expo booths to make their show floors compelling enough for participants to spend time there.
Without losing any revenue, one of our healthcare association clients decided to eliminate the expo and replace it with a hub experience that features a handful of top-tier sponsors. Another scientific conference created neighborhoods and developed numerous themed areas for poster presentations.
Several clients have successfully adopted solution circles. These are curated and sponsored intimate conversations on the show floor designed to help attendees develop solutions for their most complex problems.
What innovative experiences have you seen to help transition the expo floor to a learning destination?
Reprinted with permission from Velvet Chainsaw’s Sticky Conference newsletter.
