What Makes a Good Conference? Part VII: Entertainment.
Entertainment should be a socializing opportunity for both extroverts and introverts.
GSM:TABRITMIA
[Note: I will be citing the state, the theme of the conferences, and the month/year, but not the name of the conferences or the names of the host(s) or organization(s).]
As I said in the section about the Schedule within this series, it is okay not to include the entertainment in the skeleton schedule when people are signing up, but it is very important to have these venues included in the final schedule that is to be handed out or emailed to the conference attendees. Also, it is best to have these locations close to the main venue, and all of them not too close to major highways, as mentioned in the Venues section. I do enjoy a good hike or going out to a restaurant for fun, but it can be tiring to drive to entertainment locations that are far away from the main venue. I’m trying already to keep my bearings while attempting to socialize and network.
Maybe this is my autistic introvert’s quirk at work, but good entertainment venues for networking and socializing aren’t bars. (Cigarette smells irritate me as parenthetically mentioned in Part II: Planning and Announcements as do the breaths from alcohol drinkers.) Restaurants that are not too loud are great, especially for people that have a hard time hearing the conversations over the background noise. If the event is outdoors, and it’s meant to be a casual situation (non-survival related), consider the weather at the time of year for that venue.
Icebreakers are a great idea for introverts, and here I share two examples used in different ways. First, within the naturopathic venue at Utah in 2016, their end-of-day social events, which included simple carnival games, were very helpful for me as they created a relaxed environment for interacting with the other attendees. (I explained the positive results of this in Part IV: The Schedule.) Second, at Tennessee in January, where there were no entertainment activities scheduled, the instructor asked a question about your favorite flavor of a certain food as the means to pair people up for hands-on tasks. This was helpful for me because I usually go by myself to these training sessions, so I’m able to complete these tasks with a partner without spending an inordinate amount of time or energy trying find someone to work with and disrupting the class. (It was disappointing for me that on the last task we did, where people had the option to choose their teams, the other students didn’t recruit me to work with them, reverting back to their cliques instead and causing me to work on the task alone.)
It would have been helpful for the host and his organizer to have had these tips in mind when they organized the VIP and post-conference events in Texas, which could have enhanced the social networking environment for an exhausted autistic introvert on her period.
Read the rest (nine parts total):
Part I: Backstory.
Part II: Planning and Announcements.
Part III: Venues.
Part IV: The Schedule.
Part V: Presentations.
Part VI: Got Food?
Part VIII: Aftermath.
Part IX: Summary.