One of the risks of running an event is that, once you’ve got people into your Phuket conference venue, the inactivity of sitting and watching a lecture with combine with the comfort of the seating and the satisfaction from a hearty lunch to put attendees to sleep. Getting people moving and interacting is essential for a successful conference – it’s basically the whole point of the event. But how do you get the ball rolling? Here are a few suggestions to incorporate into your planning.

The Fishbowl

This one is a little unusual, but bear with us. You have about 30-40 people in a large room, sat on chairs which form a ring around four chairs in the centre. You have three people sat in the middle, leaving one chair free. You then throw out a question. Only the three people in the centre can speak. Any of the other attendees can step up and take the empty fourth seat to speak, but one of the original three people in the middle must voluntarily leave the centre if that happens. This keeps the discussion dynamic and on-topic, making it a lot more impactful. It’s also a good use of large meeting rooms in your Phuket conference venue.

Body Voting

Plenty of speakers incorporate a ‘show of hands’ style of voting into their presentations, but this lacks dynamism. It takes virtually no effort to raise a hand and even less to be lazy and not bother – after all, who’s going to notice? One way to prevent that kind of lethargy is to get people to physically move in order to cast their vote. For example, the people who agree with a statement on the left of the room and those who don’t agree on the right. Obviously this requires that your Phuket conference venue be quite spacious but it certainly gets people moving.

If you want to take things up a level, you can bring in degrees of agreement, where one wall is 0%, the other is 100% and the mid-point is 50%, so attendees have to stand at the point that represents how much they agree.

The Camp Fire

Once again, you’ll need quite a big room at your Phuket conference venue for this one. The idea is that smaller groups are usually a lot more animated than large audiences, so get a handful of people sat around a small table with an expert. To add a bit more dynamism, you could rotate the experts at intervals, kind of like a speed date. If you are going to do this, be sure to leave plenty of time for all of the attendees to pick the brains of the expert.