How To Make Your Event Education Schedule Less Confusing

Is an event loaded with education sessions a UX problem, a scheduling problem, or both? And is it solvable, possibly with AI?

If you find yourself at a huge event, odds are that you may be deeply familiar with this state of affairs: An app or event guide with a seemingly never-ending number of educational offerings.

Is it a user experience problem? Is it a structural problem with the event itself? Is it a problem at all?

Aaron Wolowiec, the founder and president of the meetings-strategy firm Event Garde, says that there is often a tension to go maximalist with the session count given the number of attendees you’re trying to reach. It’s especially true given the large number of submissions at play.

“I don’t default to more is more,” he says. “I also don’t default to this philosophy that just because we got all of these proposals that they’re good ones and that we should accept them and find a home for it.”

Sveta Fedarava, EventMobi’s head of Product Design and UX, says that a huge list of sessions can cause two separate, but related issues: cognitive load and decision paralysis.

“Too many options without guidance doesn’t lead to better choices,” she says. “Instead, it leads to disengagement.”

Both Fedarava and Wolowiec say that AI could help make a confusing meeting lineup more approachable, but Wolowiec also says that it’s essential to have a grasp on your target audience.

“It is really about being intentional about who the audience is, making sure you have something for everyone, and then identifying the number of sessions that meets those needs or expectations,” he says.

So, is it a scheduling problem, a UX problem, or both? Read on for the answer.

Events As UX

When you have more than 10,000 people in an event hall and dozens of sessions to sort through, it might feel extremely overwhelming.

The result, says Fedarava, creates a cognitive load on the attendee who is stuck trying to determine their next steps, which in turn can create friction.

“So if the user has to think about the session, figure out the timing, find the right track, etc … all that leads to frustration and poor user experience,” she says.

Among other things, that can force attendees to lean on topic familiarity to decide on events, rather than quality or actual need. Fedarava says that, for this reason, well-considered session names are essential.

“If the session names are abstract and don’t truly represent the session intent, they get skipped altogether,” she says.

Wolowiec offers a different point of view on this topic. While 100 sessions might seem like a lot for a three-day conference, many of those sessions are targeted closely on specific types of attendees.

“Do we have something for early, mid, and senior career professionals, or for the stratification of different audience segments that either we are planning for or who are showing up to attend?”

Striking the right balance and making it clear who the event is serving can be essential to making it work for the target audience.

How To Pare Down A Giant Event

Of course, it’s important to talk about the structure of big events themselves, including how they’re sourced. The call for events generally brings in hundreds of submissions by vendors, members, and other stakeholders. Often, that leads to multiple twists on the same topic, especially if it’s about an emerging trend.

This isn’t always a bad thing: Wolowiec says, for instance, that having more than one educational session on the same topic at the same time can challenge the attendee in a good way. But it can make a given event more complicated to navigate.

From a planner standpoint, Wolowiec suggests combining some of those similar submissions into a panel format. On top of being an effective way to make your session count more manageable, it also might help attract new voices to the sessions.

“That pairing up is what gives you the confidence and energy to potentially do more sessions either on your own or with others,” he says. “And if the organization planning can be the conduit for that … I think that’s a pretty significant service and does improve the quality of the sessions.”

Considering The Gaps

Maybe the problem your event is facing isn’t just too many sessions, but a session list that’s full of options, but offers nothing for an important segment of members. Submissions ultimately can create gaps like that.

“Oftentimes we get 10 or 100 or a thousand of one thing, and then we get zero of many other things,” Wolowiec says.

Wolowiec says that this fate often befalls senior members, who may skip the sessions only to hold court in the hallways. “Oftentimes, that happens because there are no sessions designed for them at the level they are,” he says.

Understanding those gaps and serving them, even if there might not be a dedicated submission, is an essential part of the educational offering discussion.

“Sometimes when we get frustrated, it really should be at ourselves—because we’re not creating the environment that’s gonna entice them,” he adds.

Another kind of gap in the submission model comes in the form of relevance. Sessions that might sound good on paper might become out-of-date by the time a session hits. Plus, some sessions might emerge in the days before an event. Wolowiec says it’s important to offer room for speakers to add or update material, and suggests leaving 5% of event slots open “to really ensure that we have the latest and greatest content or topics.”

A little flexibility goes a long way.

Can AI Help?

There’s often a risk of throwing AI at a challenging problem just because it’s there, but this might be an area where AI shines particularly well. EventMobi’s Fedarava points to cognitive load benefits.

“AI can definitely help here by matching interest with sessions without having to overload the cognition of users,” she says.

Of course, good interfaces for analyzing event listings existed before AI, such as session tracks. But Wolowiec says that there’s a risk of event planners getting too prescriptive, by pre-selecting sessions or tracks, for example.

“My tongue-in-cheek response to all of our clients is that attendees lie,” he jokes, adding that needs can change over time.

What can be a more effective result, on the other hand, is using the data that attendees offer through past attendance, app use, and surveys, offering personalized recommendations. That, according to Wolowiec, allows event organizers to think holistically about an attendee’s interest areas, “which could be more than just those one or two things.”

Fedarava says this kind of recommendation-driven layout can help avoid the clunkiness of complex searches, guiding attendees instead. “That makes the whole event experience smoother for everyone,” she says.

Combining our data-driven understanding of attendee needs with the technical benefits of an AI-driven interface could make picking a session less about guesswork and more about guiding the attendee.

“The best interfaces are the ones that feel obvious,” Fedarava adds.

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