“We knew coming into this one that there was a lot of gravity to it,” Ken Holsinger, Freeman’s senior vice president of industry research and insights, told Convene about the “Freeman Learning Trends Report,” the latest in its XLNC (experience, learning, networking, commerce) framework. “We’re all kind of trying to figure out what are the big shifts that happened based upon the pandemic and what do we do going forward?”

To gain insight into how expectations around learning at events has changed, Freeman analyzed the responses of 4,729 attendees (65 percent from conferences and 35 percent from trade shows) and 185 event organizers who participated in the research, of which more than 1,500 are in the health-care sector. The results, he said, are multi-layered — and the 71-page PDF is only Part One of the “Freeman Learning Trends Report.” This first report focuses specifically on learning that happens inside sessions; Part Two will focus on the other environments where learning happens.

Convene asked Holsinger to walk us through some of the more surprising results of the study and to share how those findings can help event organizers rethink the way they design their education programs.

Let’s start with general sessions. Only 14 percent of attendees said that the most compelling learning comes from keynotes/general sessions/ and plenary addresses, yet we know a great deal of effort and money goes into planning those general sessions. What are your thoughts about that?
Attendees are not in our general sessions as much as they used to be. [The report revealed that general sessions only attract half of event attendees, on average.] Some of that’s generational. The big shift that we see still comes to this generational conversation of the loyalty that has been engendered by the tribal nature of the boomer and the Gen Xer. [When an event says] I want you to jump, [they say,] “How high?” The younger audiences, they yell, “Why?” That’s the fundamental rift here. When it comes to looking at the future of events, it’s not about retaining [my generation] — it’s bringing in this next generation.

[Overprogramming is another factor in skipping general sessions]: “Oh, you’re going to overpack my schedule. I’ll make room. I’ll do it when you’ve got a keynote on the stage I’m not interested in. I’’ll go connect. I’ll walk the floor. I’ll do other things.”

Other key findings from the study: the majority of attendees (59 percent) would rather hear from industry experts than celebrities — only 6 percent preferred celebrity speakers. And nearly 70 percent of organizers recognize that changes are required for general sessions to meet audience preferences but struggle with their organization’s precedent or tradition and boards, committees, or other groups that influence event programming.

Only one-third of attendees say meeting a new expert mentor or peer is a goal for learning at events. But then 65 percent say better interaction and 36 percent say forming connections is a face-to-face differentiator. Is it just that they’re not connecting the value of those things to actual learning, but more about their overall experience?
We’ve talked to almost 7 million event attendees over the past five years now. And so we know where some of the contradictions are, where some of the landmines are. And much of that comes up over and over again: Organizers need to be really looking at the things that can only be done in person. That’s where the true value is. If it can be done in another channel or format, don’t look at that as competitive. Look at that as opportunity because the No. 1 complaint of attendees when it comes to learning around most of these things — and you see it come up in their answers — is they’re confused. Which sessions should I attend? There’s too much going on. Do less. Give me clarity. And we are a tribe as planners of more is more.

I think the filter for that is the things we can do in person — the interactions, the connections, the collaboration, the demonstration, the interactivity between the conversations, the body language. If you want consumption of quantity, do that online. If you want retention, you want a transformation in a space or action, do it in person. And I think that you see it, if you look at that lens through all of our research and then look at this report, you begin to see, they’re not just telling us, they’re shouting at us that we need to focus on the prime value.

Planners, particularly in the professional society space, have used CEUs, CMEs, whatever CE label we put, as the way to gain a captive audience. [We think] they have to come here to get [those credentials] but that’s not true anymore. And the pandemic accelerated that trend. But you know what the good news is? They’re still coming to our events.

Most of the questions that we ask attendees in pre-registration, registration, various marketing efforts are really candidly selfish. They focus on what we need for logistics. Instead of asking the attendee, what are your core objectives? Editing and curating content is more important today than ever.

Yes, I saw elsewhere in the research that helping attendees figure out what sessions to go to, giving them some guidance, especially for what you call the “NowGen” attendees, is important — but this points to a big disconnect between planners and attendees. Forty-two percent of attendees said that they would value suggested “next session to attend” notifications in the event app based on sessions they already attended, while only 14 percent of planners thought this feature would be useful.
I think it engenders loyalty — “You’ve helped me.” Even if it’s an agent that’s doing it, the differentiator in events today is going to be this editing and curation of content, the sessions you must attend.

Another gap I noticed is that 36 percent of attendees want to be able to access on-demand content recordings, but only 22 percent of organizers offer them. In fact, 91 percent of attendees said they value on-demand session playback.
I’ll just tell you, very few people actually go watch them. It’s an investment in peace of mind. It’s an investment in truly giving people choice. Say there was one conflict throughout my day where I needed to pick between [two] sessions. I can’t go to both, but oh, they have them on demand. So, you’re not going and watching 30 sessions. You go watch [one] in person and [the other] online. That gave me enough value that it differentiated your event.

It’s kind of like saying there are too many features in event apps, but which one should we remove? Well, people only use 10 percent of the features, but they don’t use the same 10 percent, right? So people are only consuming maybe 10 percent of your content online, but you’ve got to have all the whole for them to get their 10 percent.

Another gap between what planners think attendees want and what attendees say they value is providing AI summarization and key highlights of sessions: 47 percent of attendees say it would improve their learning experience; only 11 percent of planners offer that technology.

The report shows that organizers overestimate the impact education sessions have on retention — 83 percent of planners think education sessions will make attendees want to return to their event, but only 42 percent of attendees say the same. The report attributes that to a lack of clear objectives for learning session design, content, and evaluation.
That disconnect troubles me as well. Imagine what you could do if you shaped the value around what will bring them back to the event. I think the rest of the report tells why, though.

Online is for consumption and quantity. In-person is retention and transformation.

The brain has a methodology of learning that’s engendered from birth. It’s not about anything other than really looking at quality and making sure that we’re designing the content correctly.

And I think it’s often about lifting the speaker. Some of the most consequential content at a medical association is shared by someone who abhors public speaking. They do it once a year. They’re a data nerd with Excel sheets on slides. And we’ve got to step up. If we could move the needle to retention and transformation by 10 percent — we’re talking about people that cure cancer. We’re talking about people that are doing consequential things in technology and in all aspects of science. But we are leaving it to somebody who speaks once a year and then not doing anything [to help them] other than “you’ve got a slot and here’s your template. You have a title slide and a closing slide with our stuff on it, our QR code.” [But we don’t] make sure that the key takeaways are in there, that they’ve been given an upfront understanding of what we’re going to accomplish. We do that in the abstract process, but how does that follow through to the actual session?

Planners struggle. They don’t know their retention numbers. They don’t know their audience. Associations need to pay attention less to the engendered loyalty of the “how high [do you want me to jump group” and focus on] the why. “Why should I come? Why should I join? Why should I learn? Why should I be in your session?”

I’m passionate about this. This learning study gives us the tools to begin. This is the beginning, not the conclusion of a conversation around learning. And there’s so much around the brain science, behavior, how we design and consume content. And I think that the blueprint’s there.

Another insight I found surprising is that only 35 percent of attendees said that big screens and visual appeal make the general session a better experience — although 48 percent of planners think that’s true. One of the things I think we’ve been told is that we need to have high production values because our audiences expect it. What do you think this stat tells us?
We have to start with the fundamentals … focusing [on making sure] that the environment is designed correctly, that they can hear and see in every seat, and really getting the fundamentals down is core. Then we can add the layers on top. Nobody wants to go to a restaurant that has just tons of mediocre food. But if they get really great food and great atmosphere, it’s a winner. And I think the great atmosphere piece is let’s get the fundamentals right, and then we can layer on those atmospheric elements. But if we put the atmospheric elements in place to cover up for poor programming, poor learning, poor planning, then it actually backfires because it’s lipstick on a pig.

I would have expected based on everything we have been hearing that interactive sessions would be rated higher in terms of learning than lecture-style presentations. But in fact, lectures and presentations, just by a small margin, are still ranked at the top. Do you think that speaks to needing a mix of sitting back and absorbing content and active participation?
I think it’s all of those things, but I’ll tell you, from observation of both speaking at a lot of events, designing content for events, designing for our own events and doing this for clients, I think it has to be a “both and.” The answer is when you ask attendees — and it’s hard to put this into a data study — what did you think of the interactive sessions? I think we’re still crawling out of the primordial swamp of ideas on how interactive sessions should work.

How many really great interactive sessions have you gone to that you think, wow, that was something different, that was amazing? We can probably count it on one hand.

I think the balance that I’ve seen is that people still want an expert. So it’s a both and. It’s maybe … talk for a few minutes and then we will interact.

I’ll present the topic, we’ll send a challenge, then we interact. Because we’re not asking everybody to come up with the topic, we’re actually saying, “Here’s what it is, how would you apply this? What shifts would you make? Where do you disagree?” It’s funny to me, attendees also tell us that they love Q&A sessions. And yet, how many Q&A sessions have you been to where it’s crickets?

I get an opportunity on a regular basis to speak to college students. I do some work as an adjunct. I watch, I get to participate in various classes. The professors that lecture for an hour, the students are putting their phone out with an AI recorder, and some of them leave the room. The professors that drop a topic, talk about their opinion, and then make the students interact around it, those are the ones that are getting the attention. And we need to pay attention to that. It’s unpacking the expertise of the crowd.

What’s a main takeaway from this report?
The event is valuable, but not for the reasons that it’s historically been valuable. Some of that’s generational. A lot of that is technology changes and shifts in the way that we consume things. But the good news is they’re still coming. And if we can just move our attention to the things they do find valuable, boy, we could dominate, whether it’s competitively or just within our own retention. We could do amazing things.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.