Seminar, conference, meetup: studying the statistics of 18000 events

Boiling Points hosts up to 800 events a week. Some find their audience and cause resonance, others get lost in the information noise.

Below the cut there are some statistics that will help both visitors and organizers get answers to questions: how are events held by others, where and how many people come, what formats are gaining popularity and what is their planning index, i.e. what percentage of those registered in eventually they will take part.

Most of the figures were obtained through analysis of Boiling Point statistics from January 2016 to May 2019.

Before we get into formats, a couple of general metrics.

In total, about 18 thousand events took place at Boiling Points during this period. At the same time, statistics for 2019 alone indicate a multiple increase - according to preliminary data, from January last year to mid-December we held 19 thousand events.

Amount of events by month for 2019 (as of mid-December)

However, this data has not been subjected to in-depth analysis, and all the figures presented below are processing results for the period 01.2016—05.2019.

The audience covered by Dots is growing every month, and currently more than 880 thousand people are registered on the platform.

What events are held most often?

We are talking about the demand for formats. It can be represented on a coordinate plane, where one axis shows the frequency of use, and the other shows the average number of participants.

The five most popular formats among organizers are the transfer of knowledge and exchange of opinions in various forms:

• Seminar and training. The goal of the seminar is to disseminate new skills through exercises during the event. Typically, the seminar is led by one or more experts, and there are about 30 participants. Often there is a coordinator responsible for communications during group work. In total, from 2016 to mid-2019, 5651 events of this format were held at Boiling Points. The average duration of a seminar is three hours.
• Meeting. This format involves an exchange of views between participants with the development of some agreed position on the stated issue. One of the participants also leads the meeting, but there may be several speakers. In total, we hosted 2245 events of this format.
• Лекция. An expert presentation in this format serves to convey the knowledge, ideas or opinions of the lecturer to the audience. As in other formats, in addition to the speaker, there is often a presenter. During the mentioned period, we held 1900 lectures on a variety of topics.
• Working group meeting. Unlike a meeting, the purpose of which is only to make a decision, this format involves experts working together to achieve a certain result. Depending on the task, a working group may have a complex organizational structure, including a chairman, co-chairs, secretariat, etc. A total of 1473 working group meetings were held at Boiling Points.
• Round table. This format helps to determine what points of view exist on the issue under consideration. Unlike a meeting or meeting of a working group, it does not imply the coordination of these points of view and the development of some kind of decision. However, the set of roles used is the same as in the meeting. During this time, we held 1433 such events.

Below is another rating of formats sorted in descending order of the average number of participants:

• Forum. The average number of participants is 121. This format is used to exchange opinions on fairly global issues. Sometimes the result is a decision, and in other cases it is just an agenda setting. There were only 397 events of this format. The average duration of the forum was six hours.
• Celebration. One of the new and, perhaps, the most free formats in the Boiling Points network. On average, such events are attended by 96 people.
• Signing agreements. There were only about 25 signings in our network, but the average number of participants exceeded 72 people.
• Conference. This is another mass discussion of a problem or issue from different sides, but in this format the emphasis is on the exchange of experience. As of mid-May 2019, we had 799 conferences, and the average number of participants was 60 people.
• Exhibition. This format is intended to demonstrate achievements in a certain field in order to attract end clients or investors. We have held just under 100 exhibitions. On average, 51 people attended.

For large-scale events, we did not indicate typical participant roles because their role structure is often complex and varies depending on the task.

Interesting Facts:

• Seminars and trainings form the longest chain of returns. This means that a person who has attended an event of this format is more likely to come to Boiling Point again, and not necessarily specifically for the seminar.
• It would seem that the longer the discussion, the fewer people will agree to come and sit until the end. But there is no characteristic dependence of the number of participants on the duration of events in our statistics. You can plan long-term interaction with the audience, the main thing is not to make them bored.

• Among the variety of formats, there are several that attract a young audience - up to 30 years old. These are surveys, competitions, briefings, press conferences, exhibitions, film screenings with discussions, competitions, excursions and hackathons. Most of this list has the widest range of ages among participants. And people over 35 have a clear craving for sessions. They dominate strategy sessions, design sessions and pitch sessions.

• In general, boiling points are characterized by seasonality. The total number of events, as well as the number of visitors, decreases during the long New Year holidays and during the summer holidays (from May to the end of August). However, a lot depends on the type of event. The number of visitors to seminars and forums, for example, is reduced by more than half compared to the active period. And for more intimate meetings, such as workshops, the seasonal decline is almost unnoticeable.

What is easier to plan - a seminar or a hackathon?

Organizing an event is a difficult task. In order to somehow evaluate and calibrate the efforts required to organize each of the formats, we compared the number of registered participants with the number of actual visitors, obtaining a convenient characteristic - the planning index.

The average planning index for all activities is 83%

On average, the most predictable were excursions, signing agreements, master classes, workshops and meetups. At the other end of the “predictability scale” are holidays, exhibitions, webinars and hackathons. From a practical point of view, this means that hackathon organizers need to expect that out of 100 people who register, just over 30 people will come to them, and scale the event’s advertising campaign accordingly. With excursions the situation is different. According to our statistics, even more people come to them than announced. Perhaps the organization of these events simply misjudges the audience. The formats where organizers work best to attract visitors turned out to be in the “golden mean”.

Although our statistics do not reveal a connection between audience popularity and the average duration of events, there is a correlation between duration and planning index. The most predictable formats (those with a high planning index) have an average duration of 2,5 or 3,5 hours. And, as a rule, they gather an audience of 15 to 35 people.

There are other interesting dependencies here:

• The planning index for short events is higher if they are initially designed for a small number of people. But for long events it all depends on the specific format. There is no obvious connection. However, Boiling Points hosts virtually no events for audiences of more than 300 people that last less than four hours.
• Regardless of the average duration of events, the planning index of more than 80% is found in formats designed for an audience of less than 40 people.
• A planning index of less than 50% is more common for short events for large audiences.

Interestingly, the planning index is weakly related to whether everyone is invited to attend or whether closed lists are formed.

Among the popular formats among organizers, there are both typically open and typically closed. For example, in the vast majority of cases everyone is invited to a seminar, lecture and round table. And for working group meetings and meetings, they either create completely closed lists of participants or expand them only upon request.

Among the event formats that gather the maximum audience, mostly open ones. Which is quite logical.

Interesting fact:

• If an event is closed, this does not mean that its planning index will immediately become 100%. Among the typically closed events, there are weakly predictable ones (the same hackathons held for members of a club). The opposite is also true: among the formats with a high planning index there are open formats.

Experimenting with formats

The most resonant formats of events of the last year include seminars and trainings, lectures, master classes, meetings and forums. The master classes and meetings included in this list are not included in the ratings of popular formats mentioned above. That is, we can assume that it is these formats that evoke the most vivid reaction from visitors - reviews appeared on the Internet more often (the formats ranked among the top in terms of the number of reviews, despite the relatively small total number of events).

By the way, the meeting is a new format for the network, which is not yet available in the default registration form. Together with the business game, meeting, program and festival, it is one of the five most replicated new formats, which are used in four or more Boiling Points.

Average number of event formats used at Boiling Points

It came as a surprise to us that the regions are most actively experimenting with new formats. For example, Boiling Points in Chelyabinsk and Tomsk host events of 27 different formats. If we analyze all publications on social networks that mention Boiling Point events and their formats, it turns out that Belgorod provides 20% of this information flow. Another 18% come from publications from Veliky Novgorod and Yakutsk, where they work with 16 formats.

Some Boiling Points in the regions have already developed their favorite new formats. For example, Boiling Point in Veliky Novgorod provides 100% of references to apartment owners throughout the entire network of branches. 75% of mentions of a film screening with discussion come from Tomsk, 67% of mentions of the course come from Ulyanovsk.

Interesting Facts:

• The increase in format diversity is not directly related to the increase in the number of Boiling Points in the regions.
• The 80/20 rule applies here just as it does in business. During the entire network operation, 80% of the variety of formats always provides no more than five Boiling Points.

What remains behind the scenes

In general, we collected a lot of statistics, built graphs showing connections between event formats and participants, and also conducted a morphological analysis of the descriptions in an attempt to find a correlation between topics and formats. One of the fruits of this work was Atlas of formats (pdf, 10 MB), prepared by our team from Tomsk. You can find a lot of related and additional information there. We hope these figures will help organizers decide on formats and correctly correlate the planned number of participants and the amount of effort that needs to be made to attract them. And participants can have a rough idea of ​​what awaits them at certain events.

See you at our Points!

Source: habr.com