Today, a non-negotiable aspect of organizing an academic event is associated with what you do post-event. Yes, you read that right. Post-event. If you’ve signed up to be an event planner in this day and age, well, we’d like to warn you that there are clear boundaries. And perhaps no finish lines. It is a race that continues well after your event officially draws its curtains.
This is, however, not a terrible fate altogether. On the flipside, event management and academic event planning are among the very few fields that come with a great sense of achievement and human impact. Engaging with attendees and other stakeholders post-event lets you see, feel and soak in something that other industries do not have the privilege of: attendee feedback and satisfaction. Whether your attendees are satisfied or not post-event is a whole different question altogether.
But the mere act of engaging with and knowing your participants beyond the event’s agenda is a privilege worth working for. That being said, engagement in academia can be tough to deal with. Post-event analysis is so incredibly vast in that it is often tough for beginner-stage professionals to narrow down on measures that most appeal to their audience group.
In this blog, we’re taking you down a topic most event planners are often uncomfortable touching upon: post-event engagement and analysis. Particularly within the context of academic events, it may seem easier to just sit back and let the event end there. Perhaps you and the team have worked just so incredibly hard and the mere thought of more work post-event is frightening to confront.
But it does not have to be so overwhelming if you plan your post-event engagement strategy and post-event analysis frameworks well in advance. Funnel these aspects right into your event planning process. Because, well, we’re telling you post-event engagement is just as important as the main event itself. Here are the most common challenges plaguing event planners organizing contemporary academic events across a variety of niches and disciplines.
Post-event Engagement is Not An Issue of Interest or A Lack Thereof
Your event starts out spectacularly with the most brilliant minds sitting together in one room. Or a Zoom meeting room. Whatsoever. That being said, here’s a reminder that a virtual event is not an excuse to neglect post-event engagement. With the rise in popularity of hybrid conference engagement tools, there are fewer excuses for event planners to cite. Where there’s a will for post-event engagement, there is certainly a way. Several dozen ways, in fact. Gone are the days when one had to wait to sign up for a singular software solution to solve all their event engagement woes. Today, there are plenty of choices.
Returning to the question of whether post-event engagement is determined or influenced by audience interest, the short answer is no, not really. While it is only human for energy levels to plummet toward the end of the session, academic events are advantaged by the fact that you are also interacting with a crowd that is fairly motivated and committed. Therefore, organizers can gauge any fall in interest with a post-event feedback survey or by signing attendup for updates via email. All these methods are highly responsive to the team’s efforts.
For those who don’t seem too convinced in the first place, appeal to them again. The problem with post-event engagement today is not a lack of interest. Scholars who attend academic events are, almost by definition, invested in the ideas being discussed. They have submitted abstracts, travelled at personal or institutional expense and have set aside time they rarely have to spare.
Post-event systems in academia are, in most cases, either underdeveloped or entirely absent. This is where our energy needs to go, rather than dissecting the motivation levels of attendees. As an instance, with tech today, we have dedicated survey management systems that are far more effective in obtaining useful feedback than manual effort.
Check If You Are Overwhelming Attendees With Post-Event Engagement Material
Now you may say: you mentioned that attendees of academic events are more motivated than the rest on average. So why would they be overwhelmed by filling out a simple survey form at the end of the event?
If this question popped up in your head, kudos. You are on the right path as an event planner, especially as someone who is in charge of getting people to fill out your post-event surveys after a tedious academic event. That stuff is not easy and the only thing that keeps one sane is asking questions. A whole lot of them. But we are not like your managers and supervisors. We actually answer your questions, no matter how seemingly novice, silly or unproductive.
Firstly, it is pertinent to understand that motivation does not equal invincibility in fatigue. Even the most motivated academician will fall sometimes. But they usually get back up. Feeling overwhelmed from multiple days of structured agenda for an academic event is normal. One of the most immediate challenges in engagement is the sheer volume of information that attendees absorb across a typical conference.
Over 2 or 3 days, a scholar might sit through a dozen presentations. And by the time they return to their home institution, the mental map of who said what and why it mattered has already started to blur. This is a structural challenge and not a personal one and it repeats itself at virtually every academic event. This is one that, at least partially, can be attributed to the very human condition of being prone to fatigue and cognitive overload.
How Post-event Engagement Works
A meta-analysis of research on post-event retention and engagement notes one clear factor: deeper reflection and structure.
In the context of post-event engagement, this can mean encouraging attendees or providing them structured note-taking prompts at the end of each conference day. Essentially, this post-event engagement strategy works like this:
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- Attendee is given a prompt, either entirely rigid or more semi-structured and open-ended.
- We then start by asking them to record just one idea or takeaway for them from the event.
- If your goal is post-event networking, it may also help to ask them to jot them the name and contact of one person they intend to follow up with.
Structured reflection, when employed immediately after sessions, improves retention and follow-through rates. The best thing about this is the simplicity of it in administration. You do not need anything more than an internal resolve and a few prompts that you’d prepare beforehand to execute this.
The Challenge With Event Websites
A major problem with event websites when it comes to post-event engagement is that they stop working the moment your event ends. As though they were timed to do so like a ticking bomb.
The challenge herein is rooted in the very core of how the industry has been building event sites for this long. The design of most event websites and conference portals does not help with post-event engagement. Why? Because they are simply not equipped to get around with what happens after the event.
Most conventional platforms are built almost entirely around the pre-event phase: registration, program publishing, and abstract submission. Once your event ends, the site often goes dormant. There is no feed of post-event activity and no archive of conversations that took place during the event. Absolutely no trace that such an event ever took place. For the average event planner who is (hopefully) building an event to create some lasting impact, this is an architectural limitation.
On Retaining Traces of Your Event
The solution to not making your academic event look as cleared up as a crime scene is to redesign event sites around a lifecycle model rather than a deadline model. This means that you need to ask your web designer to add a post-event layer that includes things like recorded sessions, speaker contact options, discussion threads tied to specific presentations and even prompts for attendee follow-up. In doing so, you are extending the life of your conference platform by a few weeks or even months.
This is not even a novel concept in adjacent fields. Online learning platforms, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, have used such post-course community features to sustain the connection they share with their learners. And the evidence that they work is really just out there. The proof is in the pudding. Therefore, using the same logic to level up post-event engagement for your academic events is a given. It is an overdue step.
Lesser Challenges To Write On and More Engagement With Dryfta
If you want to quit having to read dozens of materials online trying to figure out where you are going wrong, choose action today. Don’t take a dozen steps at once but at least one step that you are fairly certain is headed in the right direction.
How does one figure if they are taking the right route down post-event engagement? Look at your figures.
Pay attention to data that is churned out of your post-event analysis strategies. Read your event sites from the POV of a user. Sit down like an attendee at your event. Embody their rationale and ask yourself, what challenges might I be facing?
Once you’ve done this, return to your element. Take action, however small or seemingly insignificant. You will only ever know if a certain post-event engagement strategy works for you if you try it in the first place.
If you are an academic event organiser who is serious about hosting great academic conference that leave behind lasting scholarly impact, Dryfta is privileged to associate with your vision. In the past, we’ve helped notable academic institutions like John Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics (JHPIEGO) and Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) host impactful global events in the past.
As an all-in-one academic event platform, Dryfta brings together abstract management, attendee networking, program scheduling, hybrid conference engagement tools and post-event analysis in a single place. Our event sites are built to remain active even on the days your manual workforce may need a break, before, during and after the event. Visit our website or sign up for a demo, completely free of cost, no strings attached, to see how it can work for your next big academic event.
