Two very different experiences at conferences this week.  One where, I think I have seen the death of the traditional Panel and one where I have seen the future of engaging with delegates using technology.  

First the good news...  

I start with a prediction.  18 months from now all professional conferences, workshops and training seminars you attend will be run on an iPad.  I worked with some smart people this week who have developed some nice apps that allowed Powerpoint to be "pushed" to 100's of iPads simultaneously.  The participants could vote on issues raised (the votes nicely dropped into voting boxes), or find out more about speakers, other delegates, browse through further reading on a smart bookshelf, check out hotel information, (even) find out what time lunch had been put back to - real time, updated live on the iPad.  There were a few clunky limitations when participants could not access the internet during coffee breaks but other than that it was slick, modern, easy to navigate and a million miles on from the old days of a chunky heavy "Lever Arch" file full of handouts, printed slides and bios.  The team were smart at making the iPad a perfectly normal way of engaging with content, faculty and one another.  And no trees were killed in the process.  

This followed close on attending London Business School's Global Leadership Summit.  I was completely underwhelmed this year.  There was nothing wrong with the content - a good mix of speakers, academics, business leaders.  The sponsors, Deloitte, coughed up a huge contribution to the work of the School which was rightly applauded.  But for a conference on the theme of INNOVATION it was an epic fail on the part of LBS.  They are my favourite School and I regard some of the faculty there amongst the best people you could ever meet or work with...but LBS need to liven up the conference department.  I wrote to them directly afterwards, so no tales "told out of School" here.  Interminable, long 90 minute panels of 40+year old men talking about innovation was just dull, dull, dull.  No women speakers seen in a seven hour programme?  When the rather wooden host from CNN went to the "interactive voting device", he made it feel like we were re-programming a boiler while trying to land a man on the moon.  Dull.  Thud.  

So, well done to the guys we worked with this week and "must do better" to LBS.  There is something of a buzz given when you try something new.  Where you put the whole of a conference in the hands of the delegates and they can tell you instantaneously what they think.  If they had used 500 iPads at the LBS "GLS", I am not sure it would have made much of a difference though.  Nil point.