In “Continuous Reinvention: ASAE’s Experience Design Project,” Amy Ledoux, CAE, CMP, senior vice president, meetings, expositions and special events for ASAE, explained overcoming roadblocks to an experiential redesign.
Ledoux knew the pivot from their 40-year-old Springtime conference to XDP would ruffle some feathers with stakeholders. Her team held dozens of internal and external training sessions explaining the design approach, using an outsider to facilitate. Even she and her team needed to be convinced—the redesign proved to be the most work they have ever done, and also the most rewarding.
Ledoux explained that XDP is all about learning and trying new things, and not all elements would be successful. She urged them to start small to enact change, showing how some design elements didn’t need to increase the budget, contrary to what most of her stakeholders assumed. She intentionally changed the vocabulary of the event to reflect the spirit of the design, such as “get your ticket” instead of “register,” “co-creators” instead of “attendees” and “zone captains and faculty” instead of “speakers.”
Another learning for Ledoux and her team was that even when business partners said they wanted the change they still measured the success of XDP by the traditional number of business leads. Using videos and webinars, the ASAE event team trained business partners to measure success differently—by brand engagement on site—so partners needed to be more intentional with design choices. Ledoux also learned that attendees didn’t always understand some of the XDP design components, so the events team explained the elements more specifically, including how attendees could use the same ideas back in their organizations. She even explained ASAE’s own journey of piloting and testing XDP design elements in a smaller space, calling out their “Lessons Learned” in the playbook.
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If you’re ready to take the next step in experience design, enroll in one of our upcoming Event Design Certificate courses today.
