Seth Godin says that so many conferences fail to inspire people to change their behavior because, in trying to reach the “average” attendee, they rely on just teaching the facts. Godin says, “Facts don’t change people’s behavior. Emotion changes people’s behavior. Stories and irrational impulses are what change behavior. Not facts or bullet points… Human beings are irrational.”

While I agree with Marc E. Babej’s contention that the whole rational/emotional thing is a lot more complicated than Godin’s post suggests—that there’s a whole continuum of rationality and emotionality, with a lot of overlap—adult education theory tends to back the idea that what you care about sticks with you. Or what you fear, or what you [insert emotional state here]. And attendees who are emotionally connected to the conference content also have more reason to take action based on what they learn, because it’ll make them feel better in some way, and we all want that.

Why wouldn’t you want to encourage that connection to the material? Why not elicit a little emotion? All too many conferences rely on some motivational speaker to do all the emotional heavy lifting, and when it comes to the real learning part, it’s all droning and PowerPoint. Hence, average experiences at best.

How do you inject emotion into an event? Get attendees involved. Make it their meeting, not yours, not your CEO’s. Do something radical. Give up some control (yes, I hear your teeth grinding at the thought!). Instead of throwing facts at people, let them inspire each other—that’s why all those surveys say networking is among the top reasons people go to a conference.

The rub, of course, is that when you do get them involved in their learning, attendees then get upset, saying that “they’re making us do all the work?” and “I came to learn from experts, not Joe Blow”? Why? Most of us, including your attendees, say we want one thing when we really want another. Tom Asacker has a great post about all this. One snip:

Marketing experts continue to advise getting rid of the hype and, instead, providing more depth. For example, if you’re running a business event or meeting, give people content. That’s what they want: content and connections, which will help them improve their businesses and their lives. But the information says otherwise. That’s why the highest fees go to the biggest celebrities, and not to the most insightful presenters. Don’t believe me? Look it up. Halle Berry receives $100 -$500k for corporate appearances. Wal-Mart paid her six figures to appear at its 2004 shareholders meeting. Trying to get paid attendees to your next event? Who do you think will draw more people, the Desperate Housewives or Peter Senge? Be honest.

Which circles us back around to the emotional/factual scale. We may want to learn how to do our business better, etc., but we really, really want to see that celebrity. So, how do we make the factual end of the scale have the emotional pull of star-gazing? I’m not sure, but I’d start by making it fun, making it real, and making it theirs. (See 10 Ways Not to Have a Boring Meeting, by speaker and futurist Jim Carroll, for some more ideas.)

P.S. Tradeshow marketing expert Rich Westerfield nails it when he says of all this blogo-talk about conferences: “I care less about whether Godin or Babej is right and more about the fact that we’re having the conversation at all. In the tens of millions of conversations happening in the blogospehere every day, discussion about the role and value of conferences in marketing and continuing education is virtually non-existent. So if top bloggers and thought leaders are bashing conference organizers… as they say, all press is good press.” I’d add: Now, let’s give them something a little more positive to talk about.

A lot of marketing folks do, like David Burn and Katharine Stone. The offending slogan?

Atlanta: every day is an opening day.

I have to agree—couldn’t they come up with something a little snappier, especially for those of us who aren’t baseball fanatics (except when the Red Sox are playing well, of course)? And the new theme song, well, I agree with one of the Metroblogger commenters that it “sounds like a poorly performed piece from American Idol.”

But who am I to judge? The best I could come up with for a name for this blog is “face2face”!

© 2005 Alex Gregory - cartoonbank.com

Being a dog-loving blogger, I almost lost it when I first saw this cartoon in the New Yorker earlier this fall—I cut it out and put it up on my bulletin board by my desk, and it still makes me smile. But I didn’t want to join in the general pirating of the cartoon I saw all over the Internet. Then, late Friday afternoon, I spoke with someone from the Cartoon Bank (more on that another time), and she said it was fine to use as long as I included the copyright line.

Yay, or should I say, Woof woof? Here’s another all-time favorite:

© 1993 Peter Steiner - cartoonbank.com

The new AAA Diamond ratings are out. Some facts about the 2006 list:

• Only 0.26 percent (about one-quarter of one percent) of all rated properties attained the exclusive Five Diamond level, AAA’s highest rating.
• Only three properties have kept their Five Diamond ratings for 30 years: The Broadmoor, Boulder, Colo.; The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.; and Camelback Inn, Scottsdale, Ariz.
• The Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch is the first new Five Diamond in Colorado since The Little Nell was added 15 years ago.
• Florida has more Five Diamond restaurants than any other state (six).
• New York City and Chicago tie for the most Five Diamond restaurants in any city (five each).
• California leads the list with the most Five Diamond lodgings (15) followed by Florida with nine.

I just got a note from the blog-hosting service Typepad, where this blog used to live. It sounds like they had a lot of technical difficulties last month. They not only sent out a letter apologizing and outlining what the glitches were, but today sent around another note offering to let customers choose how much free service they should get as compensation, depending on how much the disruption affected them (from 15 to 45 days).

I hope their faith in their customers to be fair about it bears out, and people like me (I’m not using my Typepad account much these days) will take the lowest they’re offering, not grabbing for all the freebie service we can get, because I love that they’re doing this.

Wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment to offer a conference, and people paid afterward for the amount it was worth to them? It’ll never happen, but I bet conference organizers would be surprised at just how people really value their events. I’d be curious to apply a similar model to our magazines, which are free to qualified subscribers. If people had the option to pay what they thought the magazines are worth, I wonder if they’d still be free, or if some would willingly pay a buck or two or three, depending on the value they got from each issue?

Being the starry-eyed optimist that I am, I’d like to think people are willing to be paid, or pay, based on the value lost or gained, but the cynic in me says there’s no way that’s going to happen. Think we’re ready for something like that, or would it be a step toward the road to financial ruin?

Some businessmen at the Holiday Inn in Richmond, Indiana, got a little rowdy last week and, somehow, it appears that Oliver, a big stuffed bear the staff dresses up and keeps hanging around in the lobby, did something to annoy them. So they beat him up. From the Palladium-Times:

Hotel employees recovered the bear later that morning after watching the incident unfold on a security tape from inside the hotel’s elevator chamber. The bear lost an eye and had tears in his stitching.

“We dress him in different outfits,” Eberwein said. “The kids love him.”

He’s a little worse for the wear, but back at his post now, bandages and all. (Thanks to HotelChatter for the pointer.)