Crack The Code and Badgevilleย encourage attendees to visit as many exhibition stands and attend as many breakaway sessions as possible to gain points and claim prizes. However, if your goal is to increase interaction between attendees and exhibitors, there must also be incentives, or activities to ensure that people spend time at each station or stand, and network.
One way to ensure that attendees spend time at exhibition stands that they are interested in, is to include something called Beacon Technology that automatically pushes out notifications to them when they are nearby to a certain area or stand. This will prevent attendees from quickly rushing in, scanning the QR code or check in quickly to get the points without interacting and learning.
Ice Breakers & Networking
There are plenty of ideas to encourage interaction between delegates, speakers and exhibitors that will really help engage delegates and get them mixing and networking. Why not create your own social media feed using Hootsuite, place it up on a large monitor, and select the most creative and interesting posts to award with event related prizes?
Stations can utilize rented iPads or touchscreens to get individual delegates or teams to engage on topics related to the event and the industry.
Group activities like small breakaway sessions or an interactive themed phone charging station will engage further.
Encourage icebreaking ideas during lunch or cocktail hour, will get almost everyone involved. Incorporating ideas like 5-minute exercises as opposed to 30-minute coffee breaks will keep energy up without the usual sugar crash following ingesting biscuits with their coffee.
Picnic Baskets
Another cool idea I heard about was from a picnic conference. Lunch was served in picnic baskets for four people, but you could only claim your lunch basket if you found three complete strangers to share it with. Simple, yet effective.
