PRWD

@Libby – not sure how to give people more time to deliver their talks and not have 2 tracks… a 4 day conference is probably a bit excessive!

much better than last year content wise. the crowd could get going when prompted. well done for all your work paul!

As a conference virgin, it comes as no surprise that I was extremely impressed. Admittingly, it did exceed all my expectations and agree with all the comments above. So without nodding and agreeing with all the above positive elements (yes, the speakers were embaressingly intelligent – made me feel less of a man – and yes, Harry Brignull was exceptional) the, I guess, “weirdest” thing was the atmosphere.

Why did no one ask any questions? I didn’t purely because of social proof. The general lack of involvement was disappointing. As I said as a conference virgin it’s hard to compare against anything but I would have thought people would have got more involved especially to an all-singing, all-dancing Ling.

All in all a great conference and thanks for speaking. As usual, ridiculously compelling.

I’ll join in with the head nodding on your points Paul and have a few more to add:

- this was my third year running. I attended the first year Tim Ash brought the event over here. In Year 1 there were only 20-odd people in attendance and I was concerned it wouldn’t be coming back. I’m VERY glad it now appears to be an annual event, as it seems the numbers just get bigger each year.

- the ‘any questions?’ part of each session is definitely weird, but its been like that every year. We’re so freakin’ British about audience participation – and I count myself amongst that criticism. Not sure how to overcome that, though as David Mannheim points out, the social proof element may be in play. I noticed that when the moderator kicked off with the first question and/or some of the more recognisable ‘names’ joined in, then the audience relaxed and started asking more questions. Perhaps next year prep the moderator/notables to lead off with questions. Or there is always alcohol instead of coffee with morning registration.

* Bring back Nathalie Nahai, the Web Psychologist. She’s an engaging speaker who clearer knows a lot about a fascinating subject – I could have listened to her speak on both days.

* I thought the mix of subjects was good this year – from concepts such as psychology to practical advice on implementing conversion programmes into your business, through to tactical advice on specific tests, it gave a good balance and avoided stuff being too same-y.

* Tracks – I like the fact that 2 tracks enabled more speakers/subjects to be included, but there were a few sessions where I missed out on talks that I would have liked to attend. That said, I’d rather have the wider choice and miss a few than have 1 track and have to listen to a talk that I wasn’t interested in

* I also wondered, having read tweets from attendees like Anita Marsh who were there for the first time, whether it would make sense to have a ‘newbies’ track – discussing benefits of testing, tools to start with, hands on reviews of attendees current sites, etc. – and then an intermediate/advanced track where attendees with some experience can deep dive into some meaty topics. That might also help out with the audience participation, as the newbies wouldn’t feel like they’re asking a ‘stupid’ question.

* Finally, I didn’t like losing out in the competition to the sleeping man – what do you think that did to MY confidence Paul…?

See you all again next year (and I’ll try ask more questions)

Gary

Hi Paul,

For me, I thought it was good but not great. I agree with your point about having 2 tracks and the fact that people have to choose which presentations they will miss out on. On the other hand, it made me feel like I was able to tailor the day to meet my own needs which was a positive thing.

The part that I felt was missing was ‘practical use’. Whilst the day triggered a lot of thoughts, it didn’t produce the kind of tangible detail I was expecting to find when paying for my ticket (but maybe that’s because of the lectures I chose to go to!). For example, the keynote presentation about Whisk was disappointing because it didn’t discuss optimisation and how they use it to improve conversions other than to say that they use machine learning to present products which they know people will prefer. This is similar, but not the same and certainly not what Optimizers like me would probably have been expecting to hear about.

On the flip side, it was nice to see Dr Blanks from Conversion Rate Experts describe a practical template for website copywriting – not to mention his very sage advice of “don’t include anything on your website that you wouldn’t actually say to someone in a face to face sales negotiation!”

So overall, it was good – but not great. Next year I would like to see a 2-day format that uses day one to cover seminars with day two being used for workshops. These workshops could be practical demonstrations covering specific aspects of optimisation that are either ‘bread and butter’, topical, or unique to a particular tool or client problem.

For those who are there to sell – what a perfect opportunity to gain professional exposure. For those who are there to learn – what a great way to take something tangible away from the day other than “you should test”.

Just a thought (written at 5pm on a Friday!).

@Gary – I really appreciate your quite in-depth comments. I can imagine after 2 days out of the office you’ve had some catching up to do, I know I have!

Yes it is certainly an annual event now, and in truth its a subject and discipline that is only going to get more popular & mainstream. There were certainly differences in moderation style and Rob Jackson had particular success in the approach you mentioned. Yes Nathalie is a fantastic speaker, she is one of the ones I suggested when we had a planning session earlier this year. Engaging is one the strengths of her presenting style.

One of our team Paul Postance certainly deserved having a longer session on his subject of developing an optimisation strategy within an organisation. Trying to distill years of experience in a very specialist and still relatively unknown area in to 15-20 minutes is tough.

You make a good point about there being 2 tracks, I know for me personally this worked for most of the time but I still missed out on some excellent talks (from what I heard).

You also make an excellent point with Anita about the idea of there being a ‘newbie’ and ‘experienced’ track – this is certainly something we can consider for 2013 and as you both said it could help in the audience participation.

If its any concelation your tweet was a close second to sleeping man Maybe next year I’ll have some fetishes to talk about…

Oh and yes, excellent to see some of the dark arts explored and exposed. See you next year Gary.

Very much enjoyed the conference. I’m not a conf newbie, but CRO is a new subject for me, so it was interesting to be introduced to the “industry” somewhat. Meeting and seeing some of the people who’ve been involved for years was great.

Highlights for me:

– Dr Karl Blanks’ – he is an *excellent* speaker, coming across as very humble but such great talks.
– Nathalie Nahai – very engaging as already pointed out.
– The Dark Patterns talk – it was nice to have some more “entertaining” talks in the conference along with the other stuff.
– Paul Rouke, Rob Jackson – great personalities to interact with, interesting talks and takeaways.

Lowlights:

– The conference mix – it was a little confusing. Especially the first 10 minutes before I realised that the paper schedule needed to be turned round.
– There didn’t seem much opportunity for mixing with other attendees; would’ve been nice to have some kind of mid-schedule mixer type event.
– Slides / presentations of the event not being more easily available. Yes there are some posted on Twitter, but I would really like to see something a bit more organised. After two fairly packed days of presentations, it would be nice to have a bit more reference material. Have you guys thought about getting speakers to use joind.in?

Oh, and there wasn’t enough free goodies. But the food was better than expected!

Looks like I was just being impatient about the slides – just received the email with details on getting them. Ace!

Hi,

Very interesting comments all of you. I did some thinking and here are some random mixed observations:

(1) Why so few questions?

This is complex – as it depends on audience, speaker, room ambience, size of room, lighting and the audience facilitator. One of the rooms at CC was darkly lit, very large and had the audience spread out very far from the stage. I’ve seen equally good content in a smaller and better lit room, when the audience was more tightly packed (e.g. econsultancy) – where many more questions were asked.

In the end – I’ve always had to push harder for questions in Europe than Australia or America when presenting. Hard one to unpick the equation at work here as it is a complex set of variables – I think the energy levels in the room depend a lot on the distribution of the audience and size of room & lighting. If these make it easy to hide or stay ‘at the back of the bus’ then it feels less like a meeting and more like a rock concert.

Susan Weinschenk (@thebrainlady) writes some amazing stuff on her blog about presentations and audience psychology. Anyone organising or presenting at conferences should read : http://amzn.to/TgTssK

I enjoyed hearing Karl speak – I like the honesty and humility of their approach to understanding customers. I’ve seen plenty of ego and opinion beaten out of people through solid exposure to customers and product interfaces and he nails it and makes it real.

For the organisers – the best conference I attended this year at the design centre was the mobile marketing live one this year. Aside from some organisational issues, it was amazingly good content, speakers and audience interaction. They had smaller rooms and also opted for 20 minute slots – more of a TED style format. As susan weinschenk notes, this is around the optimal length for presenting an idea and encourages speakers who do longer slots, to break their ideas up. I personally prefer a longer session but I think it’s harder to make this work as well.

Anyway – I enjoyed speaking and being there and bumping into lots of you! Thanks to everyone involved.

Glad to see the UK show is doing well since I planted the flag back in 2010…

The multiple tracks are inevitable. There is just to much good content to present. For the US shows we are running 3 track in San Francisco, 2 in Chicago, and 3 in Boston next year. Many attendee companies send more than one person and split up the sessions to get better coverage.

- Tim Ash, chair Conversion Conference.