The Business Conference Is Back. Here’s How to Make It Better.

The pandemic has prompted a rethinking of many practices and routines of professional life, such as working from home, meetings and interviewing online. Now another such pastime is ripe for a reassessment: the face-to-face conference.

What do people actually want from their interactive experiences? The first insight from the pandemic era is that most formal presentations should simply be abolished. The sad reality is that hardly anyone is listening, or for that matter should be.

Instead, for better or worse, there is a near-infinite supply of Zoom calls. Zoom will not continue at its pandemic peak. But there are reasonably credentialed Zoom presentations just about every day, many of them open to the public.

I turn down almost all of these Zoom invitations. Too many of them embody presentations, and I prefer more interactive modes. Furthermore, I am too antsy and impatient. If I am going to go online for intellectual material, I much prefer YouTube, where I can stop the video whenever I want for a snack or exercise.

The next time you are attending a formal presentation at a conference, ask yourself these questions: Is this better than all of those Zoom calls I am turning down? Is this better than the next best YouTube clip I might be watching? For most people, the answers are obvious. Conference organizers need to be willing to pull the trigger and usher the presentation into a gentle retirement.

Charismatic presentations still can be important to motivate a sales force or to build the unity of a crowd. But informational presentations are obsolete.