And why every association should consider hosting their own just like it!
Co-creating a topic-driven summit with members
Historically, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) has held an annual technology conference that covers a broad range of topics. This year, they decided to offer technology education consistently throughout the year, including deep dives on worthy and more extensive topics. As Chief Information & Performance Excellence Officer, Reggie Henry, CAE explained: “What better topic than AI, which is quickly transforming the framework of almost every profession and industry in the world.”
Prior to the event, ASAE gathered questions and resources directly from their members in the association community, describing their most pressing questions about Artificial Intelligence (AI). With this knowledge, each session was then curated with the community’s needs in mind.
What the AI Summit looked like:
The event held sessions over two days, and featured a blend of:
- Keynote Speeches from leaders in the space
- Breakout Sessions focused on practical applications
- A Town Hall facilitated open-floor discussion
- Product Demonstrations with educational components
Once the event was over, all sessions became viewable on-demand in Matchbox’s platform, designed for easy perusal. Not only do attendees now have access to each session they attended, but they also have the ability to view the sessions they missed. The platform also continues to hold relevant resources, articles, and presentation slides for on-demand access. Later, the session recordings will be added to ASAE’s LMS for those who could not attend the summit, therefore adding more value to their paid online education subscription.
What left ASAE smiling:
- A Quick Turnaround. The entire summit was planned and organized in less than two months, and this was the first of its kind.
- Strong Participation. ASAE surpassed their registration goal by 150%. Given that crucial question, “are members willing to pay for my educational content?” – this showed that when the topic matters and the need is pressing, there is an even stronger willingness to pay.
- Value-Adding Sponsorships. The summit’s event model was filled with opportunities for non-invasive sponsor spotlights which brought genuine value to the community. Some of these included live demos, keynote sponsors, and supporter sponsors. The attendees looked forward to seeing what sponsors’ products had to offer.
- High Engagement. Not only was attendance high, but session retention was applaudable. Most attendees were joining and staying to the very end of each session, and contributed deeply to the chat conversations (which only enhanced the experience for others).
- Expansive Collaboration. Directly in the platform, ASAE included a way to easily share members’ use cases, along with a place to curate AI resources. Get this… ASAE also used a great AI tool that was generating summaries of the sessions in real time. The info will be combined as a great takeaway document for all.
How Matchbox helped to build this digital initiative:
Beyond the event being designed and hosted in our platform, ASAE leveraged several Matchbox resources to help bring the event to life:
- Especially given the pressing turnaround time, ASAE used our “Team Extender” managed event services, partnering with Matchbox to expand the scope of their internal team. This included services like speaker training, agenda consultation, live webinar room management, live in-session support, attendee email communications, and more.
- Although the sessions were streamed live, our video production team edited the sessions before uploading videos, significantly increasing the quality of the on-demand viewing experience. This creates greater value for attendees and members accessing content on-demand.
- So many learnings! Since this was the first summit of its kind, Matchbox did a deep dive into the engagement data to share suggestions for how the format could be improved in the future, including looking at differentiating this program from others that ASAE offers digitally. This strategic analysis was particularly helpful to ASAE, given their desire to continue hosting topic-driven summits with regularity due to the AI Summit’s success.
- We were avid cheerleaders! Summit organizer Reggie Henry built out his program and agenda directly in our platform, using our intuitive tools and resources. As he shared,
“The key to planning any event is being intentional about the member experience. This is even more critical in a virtual session. Designing the event in Matchbox’s platform allowed me to imagine that experience as I was building it, challenge my thinking about member interactivity, and be thoughtful about other resources needed to make the event come alive. Thankfully, the platform provided all the tools I needed to accomplish that.”
What We Learned Together
- Topic is everything. ASAE saw a need and ran with it. Not only are their members thanking them for providing much needed and timely education, but the event generated significant revenue for ASAE.
- Sponsorship can not only be incorporated, but is greatly beneficial. Hosting product demos as part of the summit turned out to be really impactful, as attendees got to benefit from the questions of their peers as they wrapped their heads around the buying process of new AI tools. Each sponsor solves for a need, and placing them in front of community members with matching needs is mutually beneficial.
- On a similar note, ASAE had the experience of having more interested sponsors than dedicated slots to provide. Given the enthusiastic response by attendees, this is enough evidence to support ASAE hosting a dedicated AI vendor showcase as part of their regular Demo Days line-up (a whole other type of programming they do with us. You can learn more about it here!)
- This type of event works. Plain and simple, a topic-driven summit is one of the most effective post-covid virtual event models we’ve seen. Bringing together a group of members to focus on a defined topic of interest or challenge they are facing, at a time of need, is a successful model for elevating the association learning experience, increasing member engagement, and providing value to members and learners.
We asked Reggie to contribute some thoughts to this section. He added:
“Although some see AI as a technology issue, the cross section of attendees proved otherwise. Also, there were more than 15 organizations who sent more than 3 people to the ASAE AI Summit. Not only is AI not a technology issue, it is an enterprise-wide issue and needs to be treated as such.”
What an AI Summit Could Do For Your Association
Thinking of hosting your own AI Summit? Inspired by ASAE’s summit, we now have an easy-to-use template to help you generate your own just like it. Our accompanying resource guides in our Education module also include:
- tips and best practices,
- suggested sponsor benefits,
- recommended AI speakers,
- data-driven suggestions for a truly engaging experience for your members.
We’d love to talk with you and explore how we can help you to build a successful digital initiative for your organization!
Use the form below to share with us your vision for an AI Summit for your organization and set up a one-to-one demo of our digital initiative modules.
