This past March (2021), TiEBoston reached out inviting me to be the Chairperson for TiECON East, the largest conference in New England for the entrepreneurial ecosystem. I was honored by the call but a bit hesitant. I was not in the business of planning conferences, nor had I ever done something analogous before. Could I really help?
After several calls with the TiE President, a few Board members, and the previous Chair, I realized there was something I could potentially bring to the table. I am in the business of Designing product and service experiences for companies. i.e., Designing strategy, Building end-to-end customer journeys, and Co-creating experiences. Could I perhaps help “design” TiECON?! And so, I signed up for the undertaking! It would mean taking a large chunk of the next 6 months away from much client work (and my family!), but I knew it would be a great ride and experience. I would be working on something I am passionate about (designing experiences!) and at the same time giving back to the community. A win-win!
We started the journey: by putting the user, i.e., the TiECON attendee, squarely at the center of this puzzle.
All about the “user”
We would design the conference for the TiECON attendees by addressing “their needs”, i.e., great content, awesome networking opportunity and a day that would be all about innovation.
The pandemic was still prevalent, and “safety” would be a key concern for a potential attendee.
We launched the brainstorming by defining and framing our design challenge:
How might we (HMW) fill the room and provide a great TIECON experience for conference attendees
– HMW meet their needs (content, network, innovation)
– HMW provide a keen sense of “safety” for our attendees
We put a stake in the ground that we would design for an in-person conference. (We were also bracing ourselves to potentially going virtual had the CDC made an announcement prohibiting gatherings.)
The conference theme and tracks
Research quickly bubbled to the top some of the key top-of-mind pandemic themes – DEI, ESG, cybersecurity, economy, health, connectedness, and experiences!
It was early May. Multiple interviews and dialoguing with stakeholders, industry thought leaders, and the broader entrepreneurial community etched a clear picture of the sentiment:
Yes, we were emerging from the pandemic, we were securing ourselves, and now we were/are ready to accelerate into the future with the lessons learned. Let’s not lose this opportunity where there has been innovation at breakneck speed, collaboration at scale across industries, sectors, and geographies, even disrupting the disruptors.
How can we apply the lessons learned, keep the momentum, and continue to innovate? And this innovation was possible because of our increasing ability to (1) harness data. (2) develop insights with data analytics and (3) convert the new learnings into action in a rapid iterative fashion…leveraging modern technologies, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
And thus emerged the theme of the conference: Data – The New Language of Innovation.
Going through an iterative process painstakingly, with the user experience at the center, helped identify and distil the right topics that the audience was keen on learning/hearing more about.
The track on Next Gen Connectivity discussed cybersecurity, internet of Things, and ML in 5G. The Healthcare track covered Hospitals of Tomorrow, Future of clinical trials and AI Business Models in healthcare. The Industry Tech track spanned Fintech, Future of Work and Autonomous Vehicles. The Entrepreneurship track had compelling panels on scaling ventures (fast and furious during the pandemic) and Learnings from Founders’ Journeys.
Building diverse panels
Right at the outset, DEI/ESG was our core goal. And the hypothesis was unequivocally confirmed with our initial research. To address this objective, we instituted panel targets: (a) ½ women representation (b) ½ women moderators across panels (c) At least 1 person of color and (d) At least one ESG topic per panel.
The challenge seemed daunting, but I knew they were out there. There were so many awesome women and people of color that are beacons of inspiration – authorities in their respective fields, and at the same time serving their communities and taking care of their families. It was going to be hard to get them, and it was! 3x harder. But we succeeded.
In the end, the panels were strong – wildly diverse in demographic representation as well as in industry and thought leadership. For example, the Scaling Ventures 5-member panel of which 4 were women, had a female MIT prof who was a prior Uber exec leading the panel, a Chief Medical Officer who was a prior cardiologist building a company for the past decade focused on mental health, the President of CIC Health, a Tech VC focused on Future of work and Digital Transformation, and a Tech entrepreneur with the fastest-growing AI-powered contracting platform for legal teams.
We had several panels that had 60% representation of people of color, and some panels in which every panelist represented diversity. The cybersecurity panel was a highly diverse one, coming together to discuss how to best prepare for cyber risks and what it means for smaller organizations. The 5-member Future of work panel had 100% DEI representation. The same was true with the Learnings from a Founders’ journey panel.
Our focus on prioritizing the DEI/ESG goals made our panels and consequently the discussions highly thought-provoking and riveting. Panel topics included: How do we address diversity challenges in clinical trials; How do we make our hospitals look and operate like they should in 2031; How do we manage change with healthcare equity in mind; How should the clinical trials ecosystem shape its path going forward using digital technologies; Where is FinTech data headed and related social impact, digital currency trends; How do we design new work systems to take your/our teams into the future; AVs will revolutionize our world – when will it happen; How do we deploy IoT systems at scale; What will it take for AI Business models in Healthcare to win in the marketplace; Exploring ML in 5G: use cases, business models and ethical risks of these new applications…
We could hear the buzz of excitement out there starting to brim as we showcased these panels on the conference website and on social media.
Sponsorship strategy
Being a nonprofit, sponsorships were key. The ardent supporters from the TiE community stepped forward with donations. We needed to still fill the rest of the bucket. And we had to do this without compromising the quality of the panels, speakers, and themes. User Experience would be the be-all end-all. We would not make room for pay-for-play. We altered our approach and reached out to big corporations who readily supported us with generous sponsorships. The panels now became all about the content and innovation.
Mapping the Day-of experience
Early Sept, approximately one month to go. The team and I huddled in a conference room at the Westin to map out the day-of experience. We had 2 sets of “users” – The audience and the speakers respectively. We mapped the experience end-to-end. A lot was riding on the “buyer confidence” around safety.
We launched a marketing campaign with a series of communications outlining the safety protocols. Attendees were required to download the app. We aimed to build in “contactless” elements throughout the experience. We hosted high touch calls with all (54!) speakers and outlined the process and protocols.
Putting together an amazing registration team and thinking through the registration experience was also pivotal. Vaccination proof was required at registration increasing the chance of bottlenecks. The team made the experience so seamless that there were zero escalations on the day-of.
Based on user/customer input and feedback, we incorporated 6 networking sessions (yes, business gets done at the conference!). This also allowed for attendees to take breaks from their masks as they could network outside.
24 hours to the conference kickoff and we had 5 speakers calling in to cancel – One had a business crisis, a second had a medical emergency, and another had a baby (Yay!). When you institute an agile environment, “pivoting” becomes part of the DNA. And that’s what happened. Not a single member on our team even flinched. We went into “solve” mode and ended with fantastic speaker replacements.
It was a highly successful conference with 400+ registered attendees, 2 keynotes, 4 tracks, 6 networking sessions spanning 54 speakers!
TiECON East 2021 was one of the first in-person conferences in New England this year, and we had effectively designed the experience, a blueprint, for the “New Normal”.
Human-centric design is valuable and while (a classic case of) easier said than done, it works!
A couple of testimonials from attendees:
The most striking aspect of the conference was that it felt like the conference was designed for “me”. Ordinarily, I walk away exhausted and spent. At TiECON East, I emerged enthused and energized. Great content, networking and experience!
The VerteXD framework that we see in your projects was clearly coming through in the design principles that you applied for creating the vision & content for the conference.