In this episode of Event Experience by Bizzabo, host Rachel Moore welcomes back Oren Berkovich, Co-founder of Projectory, to discuss the art and science of crafting engaging event experiences. Oren shares insights on the importance of intentional design, personal agency for attendees, and the challenges of proving ROI in the events industry. Through analogies, practical examples, and discussion of audience diversity, Oren emphasizes the need for thoughtful planning, balancing choice with structure, and creating opportunities for meaningful interaction.
The conversation explores strategies for audience engagement, such as facilitating peer learning, designing inclusive activities for both introverts and extroverts, and leveraging post-event impact. Oren highlights the value of continuous experimentation, signature moves, and focusing on outcomes beyond the event itself. The episode concludes with advice to start with the end goal in mind and work backwards, ensuring that every event unlocks real-world value for participants and stakeholders.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
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Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo. The podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events.
I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host.
In this special episode of Event Experience, I welcome back Oren Berkovich, Co-founder of Projectory and panelist from Bizzabo's webinar, the Future of Event Networking: Smarter Matches, Better Conversations.
Oren's experience as an entrepreneur and architect of choice in the events industry figures heavily into the insights you're about to hear surrounding the significance of personal agency in event participation, crafting experiences that cater to diverse audience needs, and the challenge of proving ROI to stakeholders. Examples are sprinkled liberally throughout this latest episode of Event Experience.
Rachel Moore: Welcome back to another episode of Event Experience, everyone. And uh, I'm very pleased to welcome back, uh, a guest that you may have heard on a recent webinar that Bizzabo did and I'm very pleased we do these kind of webinar 2.0s if you will, uh, to invite panelists back to dig deeper and take more time, uh, that is available to us via this podcast.
Rachel Moore: Today, I'm really happy to welcome back. I, I think some of us can relate to this. Someone who has founder in their DNA, uh, someone who just really likes to create, uh, new ideas, launch companies and projects and things like that. So, if that's you, uh, in who's listening and watching the podcast right now, get ready because you're about to meet, uh, a kindred spirit.
Rachel Moore: As the co-founder of Projectory, uh, our guest's mission is to make our events reality, one with less talking heads and more heads talking. Uh, which we all like. We're about to have more heads talking right now. Um, he's also a Bizzabo veteran, so, you know, we have a little favoritism going on here.
Rachel Moore: Pleased to welcome back, Oren Berkovich, uh, to the microphones. Here on the podcast rather than in a webinar. But Oren, thank you so much for joining us on Event Experience today.
Oren Berkovich: Thanks for having me.
Rachel Moore: Let us segue into some Get to Know You questions.
Rachel Moore: There might be some familiar ones here, there might be some new ones here. But as we mentioned, you're an extrovert and you might be okay with being put on the spot.
Rachel Moore: So here we go.
Rachel Moore: First one. When you have a really long event, day ahead of you, what are you wearing on your feet? What are your event day shoes?
Oren Berkovich: Sure I have a lot of experience, but also many years of being alive, which now means I have to wear comfortable shoes.
Oren Berkovich: It will be some sort of sneakers that look kind of fancy and I could pull it off. As you know, I dress pretty casually, even for events. So, I'm, I'm, you're not gonna see me wearing a suit. I, don't own a tie.
Oren Berkovich: And I think that, that means I can get away with shoes that are, somewhat fashionable, but extremely comfortable, that's probably be my go-to.
Rachel Moore: Nice. Uh, hey, I am right there with you. It's all about the comfort nowadays, so. And really should be for everybody, y'all. If you're, if you're not of a certain age, uh, you're gonna get there, trust us. Your feet need to still work.
Rachel Moore: Is there anything that you are listening to or watching or even reading these days that you can't put down?
Oren Berkovich: I listen to a lot of podcasts and content. I'm sure a lot of the listeners read Priya Parker and, uh, know about The Art of Gathering.
Oren Berkovich: I think that is one of those books that helped really capture a lot of the things that I kind of knew by doing, but never really articulated in writing. And I think she did an excellent job in putting that together. So, if people haven't read that, that will definitely be a first thing to check.
Oren Berkovich: But maybe, uh, maybe a less known one is I think it's called something like, I, I can, I could pull it up, The Surprising Impact of Liberating Structures. And you are like, what is that? Is that physics? Is that, you know. And it's, it's all about events and facilitation and you can create different structures that unlock conversations. And it's, uh, it's a pretty, you know, pretty, uh, dense book, but it's not a hard read and it's more in a manual than, you know, thought leadership, uh, piece.
Oren Berkovich: So, I think that is maybe an, less known one that some people would benefit from that's maybe different than other popular things like The Art of Gathering.
Rachel Moore: I love that. Thank you. I, I, we definitely haven't heard about that one on the podcast yet. So, that's, that's a great one. Sounds, and a manual? Y'all go get a manual for how to do this stuff. I mean, it's essentially what we're trying to do right here, so it's awesome.
Oren Berkovich: Let me make sure I get the name right. Here it is.
Oren Berkovich: The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures. I was pretty close.
Rachel Moore: You were very close. But yeah, uh, I definitely would've thought of the Art of Architecture or something and you're like, no, but it is about events, which is like you said, architecture. So, I love that we're here.
Rachel Moore: Is there any particular social post or a piece of media or even a hot take about events that you found very interesting lately?
Oren Berkovich: Mm.
Rachel Moore: Or even, uh, polarizing or shocking?
Oren Berkovich: This might be a recency bias because I, I, I've, I've been seeing things around it. People are very worried about where things are at with the economy, with events, with the uncertainty that's in the market.
Oren Berkovich: And there's definitely, you know, a few event influencers or I guess people who are very active on LinkedIn that hit my feed with their point of view of what needs to happen or, you know, uh, their point of view of how coming out of the pandemic, and this is like another moment for the event industry and things along those lines.
Oren Berkovich: So, I mean, I can't say that there's anything there in particular that I'm like, oh, I'm gonna write this down and use that, um, you know, to plan my strategy. But it's definitely something that I think people are very much thinking about.
Oren Berkovich: Yeah, I think we all are in some ways, whether you're in events or not, there just seems to be increasing uncertainty with everything really, work life and whatnot.
Oren Berkovich: So, yeah, I think that's definitely top of mind.
Rachel Moore: I would agree, um, it's definitely what's in my feed lately and, um, you know, even like journalistic entities in the events industry that's are covering it pretty rigorously. So, let's all hang in there, y'all.
Oren Berkovich: Maybe one particular thing to call out, which will also enable us to get somewhere more optimistic. I listened to an interview with Sam, I think it was Sam Elman or yes, it was, it was definitely like one of the leaders in the AI companies with one of the reporters and journalists.
Oren Berkovich: You know what it was, it was, um, Hard Fork, you know, the podcast, Hard Fork?
Rachel Moore: Yeah.
Oren Berkovich: From New York Times. Uh, it's just two tech, tech, uh, guys talking through tech news and whatnot. It's very good, like it's one of podcasts. Definitely highly recommended. They're funny. They're smart. Everything is well researched. They recently had, uh, a leader from, I think it was, oh yeah, here it what it was. Sorry, it's coming to me live.
Oren Berkovich: They brought in, it was after Google's recent event. They brought in one of the leaders of, uh, Deep Mind. It's a, you know, it's part of Google's AI group.
Oren Berkovich: And they talked about where things are headed and things like that, but there was actually a segment there where the guy was talking about events and things that will happen in real life.
Oren Berkovich: And you and I had a quick back and forth on this as part of the webinar when you asked me about AI and where are think things are headed. And it was very encouraging to hear somebody who is at the forefront of this really call out the increase increase of importance and I guess the desire people will have for real life connection for uh, you know, meeting people in the same place, having a live conversation.
Oren Berkovich: Uh, that is something that I think the more AI becomes part of our life. The more live events and in-person experiences, we'll see, uh, increase in demand and value, so.
Rachel Moore: Good one. That's, that's really good and very timely and like you said, it drives back to what we were talking about in the webinar and having you back here too.
Rachel Moore: Um, I gave, you know, the founder stuff and, and where you are right now.
Rachel Moore: And I wanna give you the opportunity for our audience to know a little bit more about you. Tell us, uh, where, you know, what are you doing in your day-to-day role at Projectory? Kind of what led you to that and, and just, uh, more that you wanna share about it, please.
Oren Berkovich: Yeah, absolutely.
Oren Berkovich: So, yeah, it is true. I, you know, if I kind of look back and connect the dots, a lot of the things that I've been involved with was things that I founded and started.
Oren Berkovich: So, it took me a while to kinda call it out, but I think now from a track record, I feel complete calling myself an entrepreneur.
Oren Berkovich: Uh, I think I've done enough to justify that title. Uh, so I'm an event entrepreneur. I, I created, uh, different projects, different companies, different products in the event space.
Oren Berkovich: And yeah, the day-to-day now is very much focused on this kind of recent company called, which in some ways really brings together. I'd say over a decade of different things that I've done, uh, in events and also brings together different people that I've kind of, um, made friends with, did work with over the last decade.
Oren Berkovich: But, uh, Projectory is very much like the thing that right now keeps me busy, very busy all day, every day, uh, and is the thing that I'm most excited about.
Oren Berkovich: Mostly because I think in the decade till starting Projectory. A lot of my work was, you know, in some ways, uh, services. I was selling my time, I was selling my expertise, uh.
Oren Berkovich: Even when I was selling tickets and sponsorships, at the end of the day, the events that I've put together were an experience that, you know, I, I was selling. And now with Projectory, we're very much in the product space, in the physical space.
Oren Berkovich: We have a warehouse, we have a shipping company, we have, we're actually moving physical things and it's a whole other business and that's, uh, that's why day-to-day now is moving that forward building more scale, more products, more ideas, uh, and keeping the momentum.
Rachel Moore: Well, I, I would say, for anyone who is into founding things, uh, you gotta keep that momentum. And so, it sounds like you are the right person to be doing all that.
Rachel Moore: I'm so glad you let us know more too, just about kind of where, what brought you there. I know we even talked offline a little bit about a huge, uh, draw for, uh, these podcast episodes is experience and it's all in the name Event Experience. You have Event Experience. We're about to draw that from you, and I hope you're ready because, uh, I, I'm gonna. I'm gonna make sure that, uh, we are conveying all of that to everyone who's listening and watching.
Rachel Moore: So, as I mentioned, this is a Webinar 2.0 if you will. Uh, we had you on as a panelist, uh, in a recent webinar by Bizzabo called The Future of Event Networking: Smarter Matches, better Conversations.
Rachel Moore: In that webinar, we had a segment where we had you all to ourselves, and when I say "we", I mean me. I was moderating that webinar. It was just you and me digging into some audience engagement questions.
Rachel Moore: But, I think we all realize that webinars have time constraints, you know, where there's only, everybody shows up at a certain time and then we've gotta get through all the content within like a half hour or an hour.
Rachel Moore: And so, let's dig deeper. We're using this opportunity to expand and take some more time with you. I'm very excited about that. So, during that, when, when we were had you in that segment, you brought up a common pitfall of event organizers when it comes to engaging their audiences. And you mentioned that there's lack of intention and thoughtfulness.
Rachel Moore: Now, everyone listening right now, but would be like, wait, I have tons of intention. I, I totally am thoughtful about this stuff. And it's like, we all strive for it, but we still can fall short. Uh, and I think we can all be guilty of that too, particularly like with bandwidths and time and team sizes and things like that.
Rachel Moore: I don't wanna spoil anything for anyone who didn't see or hear the webinar, but you made a great analogy to a very common experience folks have. I'm talking about restaurants, so I'm gonna, I'm now gonna lob this over to you when it comes to being thoughtful and having intention with audience engagement.
Rachel Moore: Tell us more about that. I, I just wanna hear your, your take on that, your philosophy.
Oren Berkovich: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I, I can kind of briefly repeat that analogy for those who might be listening and haven't, uh, seen the webinar.
Oren Berkovich: Yeah, so, you know, when you think about it, walking into a restaurant, you immediately feel a certain way. And you might not realize that, but, a lot of it is a result of many, many, many design choices that people that put that restaurant together, that experience together made.
Oren Berkovich: Anything from the type of furniture, the volume of the music, the, know, what's hanging on the wall? How strong the lights are? What tone the lights are actually. Who's greeting you at the door and what is that like?
Oren Berkovich: Like, all of that is our design choices that somebody made. And you walking in and you might not be an architect or an internal designer or none of those, uh, you know, experts, but, because of the accumulation of all these different decisions, you feel a certain way and you have a certain experience.
Oren Berkovich: And in some ways when we, you know, any, anything that we do is basically a result of some design choices that people have made. And when you think about kind of bringing it back to events and whether it's networking or whether it's a keynote or whether it's a walk-in experience or whatnot. It's ultimately down to the event planners, the production company, the program designer, the different stakeholders involved.
Oren Berkovich: There is a set of decisions that need to be made that are going to create a structure, uh, create a place, create a time for people to lean in and what you've put together.
Oren Berkovich: And so, the analogy there is really around thinking about all these little details. It really, the magic is in the details. And if you think about all these different, uh, elements, well in advance with intention, with thoughtfulness, and we can provide some examples, you're gonna end up creating a better experience for your audience.
Rachel Moore: So, I do wanna hear some examples, actually. I thought of one myself even. Um, so my stepfather used to, uh, be a hotel manager, for a major chain.
Rachel Moore: And, they, uh, created a steakhouse or built a steakhouse on one of the properties.
Rachel Moore: And he did something like this. So, it was a steakhouse. And so, as you can imagine, everyone uses steak knives to cut into steak. Those of you who eat steak, and you've done this before, and you know.
Rachel Moore: He would do a thing where they'd bring out a selection of steak knives. So, the person could hold the knife in their hand and kind of decide like, yes, this, this is my jam, or this fits my hand, or this feels weighted and feels nice.
Rachel Moore: And it was just that little thing that kind of set it apart from other steakhouses, uh, locally that you know, "Hey, this is part of that really kind of exclusive experience you want."
Rachel Moore: That's just one example. And again, it correlates to what you were saying about like a restaurant where, hey, that was an, they didn't have to do that, but that's what they decided to do.
Rachel Moore: Do you have some other, uh, examples relating to events that. Love it, bring it.
Oren Berkovich: I think that just to build off what you shared, what happened there is a decision to give some personal agency to the person who is about to dine to curate their own experience.
Oren Berkovich: And I think, you know, it could be choosing a knife at a steak restaurant, but it also could be which breakout to go to?
Oren Berkovich: At the end of the day, giving people personal agency enables them to curate their own experience and ultimately, go through something that, that they're the most curious about or they're most interested to go into or have, you know, the most learning opportunity or whatnot.
Oren Berkovich: But even there, like if you double click that, I assume that, you know, your, that in your example there weren't fifteens take knives to choose from, right?
Oren Berkovich: Because that also could be a bad experience for people, when there's decision fatigue or choice overload. Uh, and you see that in programs too, where you have, you know, seven different breakouts to go to.
Oren Berkovich: And then, it's gonna end up not leading to the best experience because, it might take a long time. If you would put like seven different knives in front of me, it'll take me a while to pick one and I will definitely wonder if I pick the right one.
Oren Berkovich: You know, and I might regret it. And then, you know, bringing back to the event space, you see people going to this breakout and then like two minutes in, "No, I, I should really have gone to this other breakout and they leave the room and go to the other breakout."
Oren Berkovich: So, I think choice is one of these levers that is definitely like net positive if done well, and I would put that in the Giving People Personal Agency Category.
Rachel Moore: I love that. Thank you for sharing that too, 'cause I think we can all relate. Uh, we've probably all attended events as well as designed them, but you know, you really are trying to create this, "Oh, let me give you this whole buffet of things to choose from."
Rachel Moore: It is absolutely possible to go a little too, too much, too many choices where the person's like, I dunno, I dunno. Some of that can correlate. Maybe they met somebody there and they're like, well, I'll go with you to this one, 'cause I just really wanna sit and chit chat some more and go to this event or to the session.
Rachel Moore: Or maybe it's like, "No, I came here specifically to learn this thing or to be able to see this speaker or even to be in this room and I'm gonna go over there."
Rachel Moore: So, but I totally agree, like, and even in that, that situation that I was describing, you know, you had people around the table, this can correlate to events too. They made a different, uh, steak knife selection. So now you can actually, like, how's yours? Well, how is yours different than mine? And stuff like that.
Rachel Moore: But that happens at events, right? Where again, that audience engagement, not only is it about the choices, you know, being intentional about here's letting you choose your own destiny, but now, and also talk to other people about, well, what destiny did you choose? And then they wanna be like, well, did I choose the right destiny? And so, they're, they can compare notes a little bit that way too, right?
Oren Berkovich: Yeah, absolutely. And, and more than that, you can even facilitate that. Because I think in some ways, it will happen organically. Especially if people, you know, there's a team members that go together and one go to this breakout, the other goes to that. They might connect after and say, "Hey, what did you learn there?"
Oren Berkovich: But there's also a way of doing that at scale and really celebrate that and creating space for people to share more of their experience.
Oren Berkovich: So, I think ultimately, and we can definitely spend, you know, this entire time and a lot more time digging into run of show design. Because at some ways that is that single document that holds in it huge potential to create and experience and a lot of these design choices are gonna reveal themselves in the run of show.
Oren Berkovich: So, specifically, on this breakout, example that we've been building on. Deciding that we are gonna start everybody together in a general session and then break into breakouts and then come back into a general session, which is now a pretty common best practice I would say. You wanna start and end together everybody if possible.
Oren Berkovich: But you know, you could also decide that when you come back from breakouts, you do some of this sharing that you refer to, that happens organically.
Oren Berkovich: You can do it with the entire room. If there's 3, 4, 5 breakouts, there's definitely people in the room that decided to go to one, and we'll benefit from some of the conversations that happen in the other.
Oren Berkovich: So, how do we create some of that share up when we come back to the room? It's not necessarily that the general session in the main room is only for information download.
Oren Berkovich: You can absolutely create conversations in that room and maybe if, especially if people are sitting in rounds, you know, maybe in a single round table, there'll be people from three, four different breakouts.
Oren Berkovich: How do you create some structure that enables them to share what they learned and maybe share with other tables? All of that is possible, and honestly, none of this is complicated, but it requires intention and it requires thoughtfulness, and all of it is going to be found in that run of show document. That is the single thing that I would look at to get a feel for what the event is like.
Rachel Moore: It's such a great point, and hopefully everyone is creating that runner show, uh, at whatever stage you are in your career. But, uh, one more analogy that made me think of. I don't know if you know, for anyone who's ever gone to like, a community meeting or even like a church or something like that.
Rachel Moore: There are so many times they'll say, "Hey everybody, now take like a minute or two to greet your neighbor." You know, or, or say something to them. But maybe like an event could do that. "Hey, we're back in the room. We're gonna give everyone, uh, you know, two minutes to say Hi to the people around you. And not only to introduce yourself, but also say what session, session did you just come from?"
Rachel Moore: And maybe that could be like, okay, you maybe you don't have time in that two minutes to say, "Oh my God, what did you get outta that session? 'Cause I, I wanted to go to that one."
Rachel Moore: But like you said there, there's just those moments you can actually say, yep, in addition to organically letting this happen, let's, let's set the stage so that people will wanna connect later. Um, you know, and maximize like, hey, now, now you've got an in into that person who went to the session you didn't go to compare notes and you know, compare steak, compare those steak knives.
Oren Berkovich: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I, I honestly, I think that in some ways, event planners and people who are putting runs of shows together and whatnot, like, their role at the basic level is to make sure that the event runs smoothly.
Oren Berkovich: You know, that AVS is working fine and people show up and nobody gets injured. It's almost like the Maslow's, you know, pyramid of, of needs in some ways.
Oren Berkovich: The higher up you get there, the more I think you as an event planner can see yourself as designer of these interactions. A creator of structures that enable it, right?
Oren Berkovich: A lot of that stuff will happen organically. But how, what can you do? In your control, which is massive. Ultimately, if you're the event planner, like you're gonna design all these details, you have all these levers to pull on.
Oren Berkovich: How are you gonna set this up to make it the most likely for the most impact to happen? At that table, at conversation, doing that break when people walk out. All of that is in our control as event planners.
Oren Berkovich: And so, you know, I, I love to see when people kinda step up to seeing themself as those kinda architects of choice and designers of experience beyond sure everybody gets fed and, uh, put bumps in seats, so to speak.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, I, I love the phrase you just used, architects of choice. I think we're gonna make sure that's a soundbite out that everyone takes outta this one coined by Oren Berkovich, everyone, so.
Oren Berkovich: Can't claim that I've, you know, made this up.
Oren Berkovich: But, I, I do think that architecture is, uh, a good descriptor there, because ultimately it's not just about selection. You know, I think you are actually designing something there that requires intention.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. Well, and I, my next question really kind of, uh, pivots nicely off what you were just saying. You know, as, as event planners are, you have all these choices you can bake in, you, you really can craft how your audience experiences every moment of the event you're designing.
Rachel Moore: It figures in that now we need to consider the audience itself and, and what differences they might have between one person to the next. Um, so I'd like to, I'd like to ask you a question that I was able to ask our other webinar panelists in a different segment of that, of that webinar, but I didn't get the chance to ask you.
Rachel Moore: Do you identify as an introvert, an extrovert, or something in between? And then I'd love you to share like, why does that matter to event planners when they're considering this audience engagement and you know, crafting or being the architect of this experience for each person who attends.
Oren Berkovich: I can definitely be introvert in certain situations, but generally speaking, I'd say I am, I'm, I'm an extrovert. Like I, I love talking from pe.. with people. Yeah. I figured, um, love talking to people, I, you know, get a lot of energy from getting people's perspectives and points of view.
Oren Berkovich: It drives a lot of my decision making is. I I'm not going like deep into, you know, research and kinda, I don't know, deep thoughts on it. I'm like, I'm going out and everywhere, you know, I want to hear what everybody has to say. I wanna get all the information.
Oren Berkovich: And then, that's a lot of time drives my decision. And when it comes to meeting new people, for me, and again, like I've, I've only been the experience of being myself, so I don't know how it's like for others, but, uh, a lot of what's driving I think what's driving me being an extrovert is actually curiosity.
Oren Berkovich: I'm actually interested in people, like understanding how other people, what other people do, what, why do they think that way? Like I, it just, if I'm in a room full of people, I, I feel like there's such a huge learning opportunity that drives me stronger than maybe the awkwardness of asking somebody how he's doing and you know, why they're here. I think that is definitely how I would identify.
Oren Berkovich: Well, even the example you, you provided earlier around, turn to the person next to you and ask them to share their experience from the breakout. It's gonna feel different to different people.
Oren Berkovich: Some people might not be into that as much, uh, and some people will laugh the opportunity to turn to the person next to them and talk to them about it.
Oren Berkovich: This is why a lot of times I think creating activities that match to people is oftentimes, in some ways less inclusive because it's more prone to having people who feel differently about it.
Oren Berkovich: Like, what if you are really shy and you are turning to the person who actually is, you know. Maybe the person next to you is, uh, I don't know, maybe you're, uh, there's just so many dynamics that could go wrong, you know what I mean? That I, I feel like that's going to, it's more prone to things going wrong, or, or, or even if not wrong, perhaps not as optimal.
Oren Berkovich: This is why from a design perspective, I, I always lean towards, it depends on the scale, but rounds, you know, round tables that have more people around them. There's no good or bad when it comes down to sharing and talking to other people, right?
Oren Berkovich: You can't really design for one particular kind of attendees though, when you have a few people around the table, I think even if somebody who is really shy and you know, introvert and doesn't wanna participate, you give them an opportunity to not do it right?
Oren Berkovich: And at the same time, you know, you might have somebody at the table who ends up being like the loudest voice and take over the conversation.
Oren Berkovich: So, you know, I think there's just more rounds that you could kind of smooth out when you have more than two people.
Rachel Moore: You know, it makes me think of, uh, another friend of mine. She does leadership development in team building and there's always, so I, I can be one of those people. I, I, hopefully I've, I've, uh, metered myself, uh, over the years to where, you know, I'm, I'm more than happy if I'm sitting at a round, and you probably can relate to this too.
Rachel Moore: Like, if, if nobody's talking first, we're ready to be like, okay, I'll go first, you know, just to get the ball rolling or whatever.
Rachel Moore: But then, there's the, the person, and I have definitely done this in the past where we just prattle and prattle on and nobody else has a chance to talk because, well, I'm just, I'm so used to talking and obviously, and you, they might assume, well, nobody else wants to talk, so if somebody should fill this dead air and it's like, well wait, there, it might, we might be able to elicit some conversation out of an introvert given the right set of circumstances.
Rachel Moore: One thing that my friend has done is she's got like, and this, anybody can do this. Uh, and I've seen this at events as well. If you're talking like a typical, like a round table, you're letting people kind of gather, maybe you've assigned them to sit there or they have just kind of gravitated there. But now you're sitting near possible strangers, maybe some people you've already met, but to actually have on that table, say optional or maybe you mandate it, but say, "Hey, everybody talk through the points on this card. You know, ask the question. Everybody has to go around and answer", but they're also able to not.
Rachel Moore: But you can, like you said, like you can bake that in to say, I am setting this up to where you don't have to feel like, "Oh, I'm at now. I'm at the behest of the loudest person at the table."
Rachel Moore: No, there's a guide here that you, you are able to provide to people. So just one example of how yes, you can, like you said, make sure you're allowing for those things to organically happen based on the type of engagement that person is comfortable.
Oren Berkovich: Hundred percent. And even, even, you know, I would say tweaks, like first having people write down something before you actually have a table conversation because a lot of times what makes people feel uncomfortable sharing is the fact that that they're put on spot.
Oren Berkovich: And so, saying, "Hey, we're gonna do a 10 minute tape conversation. But first we wanna take a minute for each of you to write down, what is the most important thing that's still unsaid in this conference. Write it down"
Oren Berkovich: And then you, you know, you could go a step further and have, there's just so many things you can do. So, to me, like this is the thing that I am been very passionate about, is thinking about every, you know, little tweak, little experiment, little design choice that you can make that will make this experience better.
Oren Berkovich: Even if it's a 10 minute table share out. How are you gonna do it? So then, more people will participate, so more output will be captured.
Oren Berkovich: So more good conversations are gonna happen. I could spend just wondering about that. And then, come up with an experiment and then, you know, this is really how we roll at projectory. Like, we would design a lot of these little interactions and then do a full debrief and come out with like a list of experiments that we wanna try next time.
Oren Berkovich: And we would do it again and again and again until we basically over the years came up with a lot of what we call, signature moves. You know, it's these little things that we have perfected and we now know they work. You know what I mean?
Oren Berkovich: If you do this thing, it will work. And it will work with at a conference with 350 coin collectors and the average age is 70, which is, you know, a real event that we were part of at some point.
Oren Berkovich: And it will work with, uh, you know, a very young demographics, startup that brought their users together because we've perfected these moves.
Oren Berkovich: In my world, like it's, it's, that is the work. It is understanding how the dynamic work. So, then you could make it more reliable and more impactful every time we run it.
We'll be right back with more event experience. After the break.
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We're back with Oren Berkovich to accept the challenge of proving the ROI of audience engagement.
Rachel Moore: Uh, That sounds like a goldmine list of your signature moves and everybody's probably like, what are those?
Rachel Moore: So I, I, we'll, toward the end of the episode, we'll have a means for people to find you online and they can harass you for, uh, don't harass him on anybody. Just, you know, ask him nicely. And he might, he might share it and, you know, you could carry on that conversation.
Rachel Moore: Speaking of signature moves, , things that, you know, work. I wanna ask you this because I think what we're, what I'm about to ask you is probably a bit of a problem area for a lot of event planners out there.
Rachel Moore: You know, you need audience engagement. You know you need it to happen and that's, it's, it's so the audience feels like, "Hey, I had a meaningful experience, um, at your event,"
Rachel Moore: But there's also this lingering question in behind the scenes and sometimes maybe more, maybe more front, front, front and center is, um, ROI.
Rachel Moore: You've got stakeholders who are like audience engagement, that's nifty. How is that helping my bottom line? How is that proving this event was successful? How is that figuring into the, the, um, net ad of this event to our business, our brand. Are we glad we did it? Is it worth doing again? Is it worth investing more in or keep investing in it?
Rachel Moore: So, I wanted to ask you this like, have you ever, do you have examples like of how you've had to prove the ROI of audience engagement? How do you confront that question? You know, and maybe even share, like, has it been a struggle or you're, you're like, "Hey, but no, I, I have a way that works."
Rachel Moore: But I would love to hear your take on it, regardless. Because it, it's a nut hard nut to crack for, for all event planners to, to bring that vibe. ROI in.
Oren Berkovich: Yeah, I mean, I think this whole category of measurements in events is, is, is tricky and also depends from event to event.
Oren Berkovich: A lot of events that I'm involved with, no. Like, I think ROI is particularly relevant for maybe external events, maybe events that are trying to drive business outcomes that are monetary and therefore stakeholders feel like, "Oh, we should be able to measure it, right?"
Oren Berkovich: You know, how many leads have we generated? How many of these leads actually ended up in a deal? Like, why can't the event people tell me what is the ROI on this event?
Oren Berkovich: And the reality is, and what this is what makes it difficult, right? And I, I, I don't think this is like groundbreaking, uh, insight here. But, a lot of times, you know, you might run into somebody that you haven't seen in a while and three months down the line that reminds you a conversation that you had way before and it's hard to attribute that whatever deal or or interaction to, oh, it's because I ran into you three months ago at that event.
Oren Berkovich: But it could very much be because of that. And so, I think there's a lot of that challenge that's going on when it comes to measuring ROI.
Oren Berkovich: Internal events are less of an issue, right? Like you're bringing people together to talk about your strategy, to talk about, I don't know whether it's a sales kickoff or whatnot.
Oren Berkovich: So, to answer specifically your question about how do we measure ROI using engagement. At the end of the day, any information that's sharing from stage is going to land better when people are immersed in it.
Oren Berkovich: Because if you're just talking at them, they're not paying attention. They're gonna be on their phones, they're gonna be looking at something else they're gonna like, and you see it.
Oren Berkovich: There's so many events that I, that I'm part of and you know, we are waiting for our session and whatnot, and we're in the room and you just look around and nobody's looking up. Everybody is on their phones.
Oren Berkovich: And so, you know, if you wanna, if you wanna talk to people about ROI. And, and the, the people who are asking you about ROI as an event planner, they're people too, and they've attended events too.
Oren Berkovich: And i think they know that events that are super information dense are a drag to sit through. Nobody wants to sit there and be talked at, and listen and look at slides for all day long. You should just record it and send it to people.
Oren Berkovich: So, if you are bringing people together, it is about getting them connected. It's about peer learning, it's about networking. It's about working through objectives. It's about ideating. It's about prioritizing. Like, you wanna give them something to do.
Oren Berkovich: So, by the end of it, you have. You lean into the modality of people being there in real life. And the ROI there in my mind is, I mean, sure, like you can measure NPS scores, but you can also read the reviews of what people, those who answer the survey will tell you they want less content, they want less presentations, they want more connection, more, you know, Q and A, more discussion.
Oren Berkovich: And so, a lot of times I'm not the person that needs to pitch to people why engagement is necessary. They get there on their own. It's really the question of, how do you do it well, that I'm trying to answer, and it's the work that I do.
Oren Berkovich: People come to us typically when they either heard it from their audience or they experienced it themselves. They don't want a full day of presentations.
Rachel Moore: You're bringing forth all these examples I can even think of in my own experience. My family goes to our local Comic-Con here in Denver every year.
Rachel Moore: They don't call it Comic-Con anymore 'cause San Diego took that name and trademarked it so nobody else can use it. That's okay. It's a pretty big deal than San Diego.
Rachel Moore: But, one thing I always think about. So, in those in, they have sessions, they have panels, and there a lot of them are celebrities or there's, there's fandom associated with each person that's on the stage.
Rachel Moore: One thing I've always appreciated about that kind of thing, because I feel like this can still correlate to a very like a B2B event that is just super rich of like, here's how to, here's about technology, here's maybe there's a session about AI and you've got an a couple experts on the stage about AI.
Rachel Moore: But at the end of every session at Comic-Con, they always have a Q and A, uh, with open, you know, there's mics on, uh, on the aisles and people can just walk up and ask a question. Are the questions sometimes a little like off into the cosmos a little bit? Yes.
Rachel Moore: But the whole room, everybody's reading the room and stuff, but it still gives that person like, "Hey, I got to get up. You see me from the stage and acknowledge me, and I get to ask the question that is on my mind."
Rachel Moore: And what's great about that is, inevitably there's gonna be someone else in the audience that had the same question or a similar question, and they're like, "Oh, that's a great question. I was wondering that too"
Rachel Moore: But I, I, it just makes me think of that, where it's like, like you said, if you're just all, if all you're doing is just shoving a presentation of slides with some voiceover on it, then why aren't you just recording that, sending that out later?
Rachel Moore: Audience isn't getting anything outta that, that is more important than what's on their phone right now. And so, so I to, I completely agree. So, I, I think this is, this is still something we all need to tackle as event planners is how are you making that a meaningful session?
Rachel Moore: People are getting what they wanted out of it. You, you listen to them, you know, and you gave them what they wanted. And then that is, uh, manifesting in the overall ROI that you're getting out of the entire event. Which, which is what we all want and what our stakeholders want.
Rachel Moore: So, yeah.
Oren Berkovich: Let me offer a couple of things that come to mind with your example there. Because I think the thing that it does that Q and A example that you've mentioned, it enables something else that is engaging in nature, which is, um, it's happening live. It's not scripted.
Oren Berkovich: And that is in nature, more engaging. Presentations, I mean, whether people use speakers notes or not. They have slides most times they know what they're about to say. A lot of times they have delivered this presentation a lot of times or they have rehearsed and whatnot. And so, people see through it immediately.
Oren Berkovich: Even panels, like a lot of these panels have the conversations predefined and discussed and whatnot. And so, it's just another form of presentation.
Oren Berkovich: Supposedly more engaging, realistically, a lot less in some ways, uh, because there's usually no slides that could be some visual engagement. It's just like the same thing happening on stage.
Oren Berkovich: But that moment where somebody from the audience gets up and ask a question, it has some drama associated to it, and that's engaging. And they can ask a stupid question that you know nobody else is thinking about, but who is that person? They're walking into the mic. What are they about to ask? is going to address it? What are they gonna say?
Oren Berkovich: You know, I think there is some suspense there, which makes it engaging. Now, the second thought that came to mind as you were, I was listening to your example, is in some ways the Denver version of Comic-Con has it easy. Because, they have group of people who are very excited to be there and are coming there, already free, and you know, they're already engaged.
Oren Berkovich: And the people who they put on stage, they're celebrities, they're people that those people want to hear from. Now take this over to the typical conference, which will be a company that is doing a user conference and there's no celebrities on stage. Maybe they'll invest in a keynote, but it won't be Brené Brown or you know a huge celebrity, right?
Oren Berkovich: And sometimes, I mean, I've definitely been in a lot of events that had that level of, uh, celebrities and yeah, people will pay attention. it requires a huge budget, and it's likely not going to be your typical keynote speaker at a typical user conference for, uh, you know, most companies.
Oren Berkovich: It will be somebody from the company, you know, or, uh, or a kind of lower level keynote speaker, and they're gonna wanna talk about their features. Or their, you know, product or other things like that. And so, like you are already at a huge uphill battle.
Oren Berkovich: Sure, people will lift their head up and look at Brené Brown or, you know, another celebrity at a, a Comic-Con because they're so engaged and those are big celebrities. But how do you make your SvP from your company talk about your next set of features to a client base and prospects and make that engaging?
Oren Berkovich: I think that is where the challenge is. And that is most of the content.
Oren Berkovich: Even if you do have a big keynote, it is one session out of like multi-day events sometimes. And so, you know, I think that there is, there's, and there's answers to that.
Oren Berkovich: Like I absolutely am confident that you can even make that more engaging. Yeah, your example, I think in that way they have it easier than most event planners.
Rachel Moore: Absolutely. I mean, I, you know, we all, we all can name a celebrity right now we'd love to be in the same room with and ask them questions like, oh, and then you see me too. It's not like I, you're just asking like an anonymous person on the internet. It's like, no, but you've got to see me and there's something, you know, my little 15 minutes or, you know, five seconds of fame or whatever.
Rachel Moore: But, let's.
Oren Berkovich: Speaking about podcasts, this is just like a, a personal anecdote. Earlier this year, uh, Projectory was the opener for, uh, Scott Galloway. I don't know, if you
Oren Berkovich: Yeah.
Oren Berkovich: Yeah. So I, I spent like three hours with the guy in my ear every week, uh, or so because, you know, I've been, following him and listening to a lot of, um, his content.
Oren Berkovich: And so, I was super excited to just like be backstage and run into him. I made sure that I need to be backstage, that I have the wristband that will give me access to backstage, that I have something that I have to do backstage. So, I can run into him.
Oren Berkovich: And for days I was thinking, okay, if I do run into him and I do see him, what, what do I say?
Oren Berkovich: Like, you know. What would you say actually, who is your celebrity that you would like love to meet backstage, and what would you tell them?
Rachel Moore: Oh, I, I, so one of my favorites is, and this is gonna age me, Kevin Kline is one of my favorite actors ever. And I just have always wanted to like, meet him in person and just kinda, and just be like, you know what makes you awesome, dude? Uh, and which is such a fawning, silly fan question to ask.
Rachel Moore: Honestly, you just put me on the spot too. 'cause I'm like, "Ooh, I don't, I think I've just assumed I'm never gonna meet him in person, so why bother?"
Rachel Moore: But I don't know. I don't, I'd have to, I have to put some thought to that. But I see, even you, this circles back to what we were saying, you were thoughtful and intention, had intention with, you know, knowing you were gonna run into Scott.
Oren Berkovich: Did fail that one though.
Rachel Moore: Did you?
Oren Berkovich: I mean, I did meet him, but I could not come up with anything meaningful that I could, that I could tell him or ask him. I did come up with it after the fact, but, but, but not in that moment and not leading up to it.
Oren Berkovich: But yeah, I did, I did meet him and yeah, I'm not like a kind of person that will wanna do a selfie, like I'm not on social media and I won't do that.
Oren Berkovich: One thing I knew for sure is it doesn't really matter what I will ask him or what I will say. He will immediately forget a conversation we had a moment after it's done.
Oren Berkovich: So I, I, the stakes were not high. But, uh, yeah. It ended up being something very generic.
Rachel Moore: Or I'm just gonna throw this out in the universe. Anyone who's listening, make sure. If you know Scott Galloway, who knows, who knows.
Rachel Moore: Maybe he'll hear this episode and be like, "Oh dang! You know, he sounds pretty cool. I should go like reach out," which in a little bit, we're gonna get around to that about how people can reach out to you.
Rachel Moore: But, uh, who knows? I, like I say, we, the, there's power in the words here that we're, we're sharing on Event Experience.
Rachel Moore: um, but we are coming close to wrapping up our time together. Now list leads me to the easiest and final question. Uh, where can our listeners find and follow you online?
Oren Berkovich: Uh, I'm on LinkedIn. Oren Berkovich.
Oren Berkovich: Uh, A lot of, uh, my channel for, uh, sharing things is actually Projectory. Which, um, if you haven't been to our company page, you should definitely check it out. There is constantly fun videos of us experimenting different ways of yawn proofing events and, uh, making events more engaging.
Oren Berkovich: So, those will be the two best places, I would say.
Oren Berkovich: Generally, I'm available if you're in events, if you care about engagement. If any of the things that I've said resonated, uh, love to talk about it. Uh, I, you know, very much about these kinds of conversations, so.
Rachel Moore: While we all tend to focus on the event itself, Oren's Skill Up advice asks us to take it further.
Oren Berkovich: It may very much be to think about what happens after the event more than you think that you should.
Oren Berkovich: Because events are a means to an end. It's never about the event. The event is supposed to unlock something in life, in real world, and that should be the starting point.
Oren Berkovich: Your event could run smoothly, people might love it. But, if it leads nowhere, was it really worth it? Start with the goal and work backwards into how will that event enable it. Because I think that will be a very important filter to make a lot of these choices that we've talked about in this podcast.
Rachel Moore: Thanks again to Oren Berkovich for joining us on Event Experience. And thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you're listening.
Rachel Moore: Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends.
Rachel Moore: You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcast.
Rachel Moore: On behalf of the team, thank you. We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience.
