ICI’s Spring Conference 2022 received top scores
A new world of interactivity, knowledge sharing and learning!
Digital transformation is an overused keyword nowadays. But how does it affect conferencing and lifelong learning, especially in the field of CI/MI?
The ICI recently held its third online CI/MI conference after 13 years of on-site conferences. But is the online conference better or worse than its on-site equivalent? We took a look at our evaluation sheets to compare our participants’ feedback for online vs. on-site conferences.
Our on-site conference used to be a two-day event, while our online conference is now a journey of five very unique events including a traditional conference day and four additional interactive challenging and inspiring events.
While both online and on-site conferencing have their strengths and weaknesses, the overall verdict of the participants clear: the new online format wins – due to the new and interactive events.
Interactive events compared
The online conference journey started with a lively panel discussion about innovations in today’s CI/MI analysis tools. We asked experienced practitioners for their favorite tools beyond Porterian Analysis. This event overall scored 4.29 out of 5 points, and thus scored in the top tier compared to previous on-site panel discussions.
The second event was the smart tools battle, a unique format invented by the ICI in 2021 playing out the strengths of online events, like many parallel rooms that allow more direct communication, and interactive features like polls.
Five practitioners showcased their favorite CI/MI tools. This event scored 4.67 out of 5 points and thus way above any scores that we had with ‘similar’ on-site formats in the past. But ‘similar’ is an overstatement, since this new format is simply unique.
At the conference day, seven CI/MI practitioners shared their experiences for both basic and advanced CI/MI topics. The overall score for the conference day was 4.67 out of 5. The second best result in 16 CI/MI conferences.
Our bar camp format on May 13 was rated 4.5 out of 5 points. It proved to be a very engaging networking format that truly enabled the sharing of experience and knowledge. This event makes intense use of a virtual whiteboard tool that allows us to quickly identify the interests of the participants and create groups that not only discuss a topic, but also visually create and document the results of the discussion.
Traditionally, our final event is our case challenge, where individuals and groups try to find a solution to a real-world CI case. The event allowed the groups to work on the case interactively and create real results during the event using the ACH methodology. The event was again strongly supported by our virtual whiteboard tool and allows us to create results much faster than we could achieve in an on-site session. Consequently, the events format was rated 5 out of 5 points by all participants - a score that we never achieved before in the last 15 years of on-site conferencing.
The verdict:
Online conferences are very different from what you would expect from on-site conferences. The formats that work best online are just very different from what works best at on-site conferences.
So if you’re expect something similar to what you know from on-site conferences, you might be disappointed. But you’ll be surprised at how interactive and intense the knowledge sharing and learning aspect of online conferences can be.
The new formats in particular won over our audience, while the relevance of the topics and networking opportunities are ranked as good as the long-term on-site conference average.
On top of this, there are many very obvious advantages like no travel, recordings and flexibility regarding your individual schedule.
Best Speaker Award Spring 2022
All presentations were rated excellent with an average of 4.55 points out of 5. The best speaker on the conference day was Ana Fagulha Almeida talking about geospatial intelligence, very closely followed by Carolyn Klinger with a presentation about win/loss analysis and Markus Ott, showing how market model visualization can be done via dashboards.
We’d like to thank all presenters, facilitators, and participants for being part of our active community and we hope to see you again at our Autumn Conference 2022.
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- Bar-camp: Best Practices in CI/MI (Re)search 2022
- ICI’s 2nd Smart Tools Battle for Effective Competitive & Market Intelligence