Stop Networking! The Secret to Events That Build Real Community

And when we think about the new rules of event leadership, we think about how do we change from being transactional spaces to be transform transformation spaces for our attendees. And so what we want this panel to be is all about sharing stories, giving advice, giving you these little nuggets that you can take back with you and implement immediately based off of what we do. We all have different things that we focus on. So, you know, I'm going to have the ladies introduce themselves, but you know, Judy's in the more experential realm, while Jessica's more in the corporate realm, and I'm in the everything realm. So, this is you're going to get a little bit of everything from this discussion. But, um, Judy, and Jessica, if you would like to introduce yourself and when you do, say the one thing you love about your job.

>> Okay. Hi everyone. I'm Judy Lee and I work with Pinterest. I've been there for about eight and a half years. Um, and I would say one of the things I love about my job is I honestly feel like I have a dream job because my job is to bring inspiration and creativity to real life and there's to me not a better time where we've needed that even more today. >> Love that. Hi everyone. I'm Jessica Charles. Um, I'm the VP of programming events at Forbes. I've been there for nine years. What I love is that the gathering power forbes and I feel such a responsibility to it, but also the people who take their time. I'm truly appreciative of everyone's time that they utilize. We we there's an oversaturation in the market of events and the opportunity to choose so many. So that's what I love is that people are saying I love a Forbes events and I feel an obligation and a need to always go above and beyond when they come to our events. So that's what I love. I love everything about my job, even when I hate my job. And I I'm going to be a panelist and a moderator a little bit. So I'll be sharing some stuff, too. What I love about my job is I facilitate experiences where we create the playground for the curious. >> And I think it's really important when you know, we've talked about the stressors and some of the challenges that we have in this industry. And sometimes when you're in that space, it's really important for you to come up with that one line about why you're doing this. Because believe me, honey, if I didn't love it, I wouldn't be here. And so you need to think about that, too. What's that one line that you would describe your job? Mine's playground for the curious. What is yours? So, think about that when you need to fall back on some positivity when we're going through the struggle. All right. So, I have my little iPad because I need my fonts to font. And um I have a couple of questions. And so I want to start with you, Jessica. You attract a very high level of executives to your events and I know they've seen it all, done it all when they go to their events. >> What are some of the things that have popped up, the feedback you've gotten that they were just blown away by that you created the wow for them? Because it's very hard to do that for them.

>> It is. And we execute over a hundred events a year. So, it's constantly innovating and trying to figure out what's next, what's going to make people say, "Oh my god, this is amazing." I think the best feedback we've ever gotten is that they feel seen and heard by our feedback. We have our events, I'm going to one later today, um are older, like one of our events is 21 years old. It's our CMO summit. It has moved across the country. It has evolved and innovated and we haven't grown the audience, by the way. The audience has stayed hundred people. Heavily curated. One of the most like my favorite event. It's truly like the experiences that you get to do. We're doing it in Aspen. How are we showing up in Aspen? What are we doing for the the executives? And these are CMOs whose time is very important. So, if they're taking the time out of their day to fly all the way to Aspen, it's not easy to get there to be with us. How are we showing up for them? What are we giving them in terms of networking opportunities? How are they seeing Aspen? How they're doing a hike today? That's why I'm here because I was like, I'm not doing a hike. Um, but don't tell them that. I've I said I had a very busy meeting. Um, but it's things like that that are truly important for me when they when people tell us their feedback and we can incorporate them, but also make things easier, make make it an opportunity for you to network with each other, make it opportunity for you to ask questions of the speakers. All those things are truly crucial. Um, and that's where when I hear somebody say, you know, I went to the women's summit last year, there were a few notes I had. I see you've incorporated them and have enhanced my experience. That's when I get excited. >> That's great. Show showing, you know, forward facing that you listen to them and that you've made those changes. What about you, Judy? What are some of the wow things that you hear back from your attendees? >> Yeah, I think um for us it's a lot about like, you know, the immediate joy that I see of people when they're experiencing what we do. Um it's everything from like this is one of my favorite moments. I don't know if you have this moment for a CMO summit, but it's like the opening of doors and literally watching people run in so excited. I would love to see CMOs do that, by the way. But, um, I honestly do kind of feel like with the CMO summit event, people are like that. I was with a few CMOs last week and all they were talking about is um, looking forward to the event, uh, this week. Um, but for us it's everything from people sharing it on social, people actually engaging and making things with it. It's almost just as important of a sign that people weren't on social because that means both their hands and their whole attention were fully engrossed in what we're doing, what we're sharing, what we're saying. Um, a lot of what we try to do is with Pinterest being the manifestation app, we're all about getting, you know, giving people what they need online, but then getting them off. We we don't win by keeping you online all day. It's more about going to manifest those things that you wanted to do while you were on Pinterest.

>> Yes. >> I think for for Ted, the biggest compliment we ever get is you are always so thoughtful. >> And I think when you start with a foundation of being thoughtful that these people are people, not cattle. And what does that mean when you execute that from an operations and logistics standpoint? You know, when you come to our conferences, we don't cue lines. You know, you come and someone greets you, they know your name, and then when you get to the desk, they have your badge. They say, "Thank you, John. We appreciate you coming." All of that good stuff. That's a thoughtfulness there. You never go hungry. We feed you all day, every day. All types of snacks all day. You never have to look for anything because there's a thoughtfulness. So, I think when you think about being thoughtful, how can you make that in an executionary way for your attendees? All right, Judy, this this next one is for you. It's very specific to you. So, I don't know how much me and Jessica can answer this one, but it's very specific for Judy. You

know, with Pinterest, you are known for your very rich intent driven user data, right? Um, and a lot of actionable insights that come with that. Can you share examples of how your team leverages that data for your event? Yeah, first let me do a quick poll. How many of you here use Pinterest? Oh, great. Oh, excellent. Love that. Okay, so I don't have to do too much product explaining there. Um, so for Pinterest, a lot of our data, it's all about planning because I think in a room of people who plan things. That's probably not surprising that a lot of you use this and being very visually inspired. And so for us, it's all about people saving what they want to do in the future. So, we're able to really understand intent. We're there for the planners. I think um people who like to be organized. And so, like two examples I'll share. Um we recently noticed with our insights that there are a lot of people on Pinterest who love going to music festivals. I believe one out of four people who go to music festivals plan their whole um experience on Pinterest. So in the US that means like if you're familiar with Coachella, it's kind of the era beyond flower crowns now. And so it's really about people discovering their own taste. And with that we're really able to deliver on what people want. Um one of the key insights we found around music festivals is that uh people can be their most them themselves. Um that they can be at a music festival. So that might be having purple hair, dressing up like DOAT or whatever that might be. Um wearing their best uh uh western gothic from Beyonce, all of the things. And so with that, we really decided to focus on how can people style themselves, how can people remix their looks, knowing that people were so interested in fashion um as they were attending. And the other thing that we also know is we really like to develop our um experiences just like our products to be as inclusive as possible. Um if you're not familiar with them, we have a few inclusive AI search tools on our platform. One is the hair pattern search tool where you can search for your hair pattern and different looks for your um hair texture. Another one is for your skin tone range and then there's another one for your body type range. So you can find exactly what you need. And the thing that we're finding and it's kind of links back to what you were saying about being thoughtful. It's like our inapp product is also very thoughtful because when you feel like you belong on our platform when I'm not having to append hairstyles for Asian women, then you feel like you belong. If you don't have to append like makeup that looks good on dark skin, tattoos that work on my skin tone. So that's how we really feel like we're generating that sense of belonging. And the other thing is it's makes for good business because we find that everyone who's using those inclusive search tools are spending more time with us. They're using more products. They're saving more. They're getting a lot more out of our platform because they simply feel like they belong. And this helps customize the um results that they're finding um in in their search. So I think with that, those are all some of the elements we use to not only think of our experience, but also what's trending, too. Just to jump off of that thread, belonging. Jessica, how do you create an environment where people feel like they belong?

>> So, it's difficult and it again with 100 events there's different verticals. We are it's live journalism. So, we're looking at different personas. So, we have CIOS, CMOs, CEOs, creators, entrepreneurs. So looking at what each person likes to do and I use Pinterest quite a lot um to do this and I look at I use AI I'll look at I'm on Tik Tok way too much. Um I'm on different platforms kind of just looking at what people really like. Um using just CMO as an example. CMOs love free stuff. They love it. And we at first didn't realize. We were like, "Okay, like we shouldn't give CMOs free things because they're CMOs. Like we should give that to the CIOS. CIOS hated it." And they were like, "What? Like I don't want this." And so we were like, "We have to start paying attention and really like thinking about this crowd and realize CIOS like customization." Like they want to look at something and say, "Okay, I don't want this notebook, but my daughter might like it, so I'll put her name on the notebook." Meanwhile, CMOs are like, "Give me all the free stuff that you can give me and I'll ship it home or you ship it for me," which is something we offer. Um, and so being intentional about that, but then jumping off on belonging and Monnique was able to come this year. We have our 30-50 summit in Abu Dhabi and it's a mix of our over 50 community and our under 30 community. >> I'm in the middle. [Laughter] I'm 22 a child. Um, but it was it was hard for us at first because we were like, okay, how do we put these two groups together? They are have conflicting priorities. Yes, the core is mentorship. That's what's bringing them together. But what do they like? What do they need? What do they need to feel? How do they want to encounter things? And so, we were very intentional with when when did we start programming? when did we end programming? How are people getting on and off the bus? Which is actually an idea from my mom because the first year we didn't have a stool to get off the bus. And I didn't think anything of it. I was like, I'm just getting off the bus. And she was like, you know, a stool would have been nice. And I was like, oh, okay. Next year, the over 50 crowd was like, yeah, that stool was great. Thank you so much for adding that to the bus because the buses are higher. Um, the other thing that we realized is, and I don't tell Skiff, I don't like downloading apps. I just don't can't be bothered. And our audience was like, we don't want to download apps. We were like, no problem. So, the first year, nobody downloaded the app. So, the mentorship and networking wasn't hitting the way we wanted it to. The year after, we were like, I have an idea. Well, I said, I have an idea. We have this beautiful place on the beach that people can go. We'll give them food and drinks and we'll have a table where somebody will take their phone and download the app for them. >> So things like that that we're thinking about. You know, we need to meet everybody where they are. People have different technology levels. People have different comfort levels with certain things. People want to network in different ways. And also they want to not network in different ways. they want to just like have a moment alone in a wellness room just for a second because it's overwhelming. So, making sure that we're keeping all those personas in mind as we're crafting events and also listening to our audience, listening to what they want. And, you know, I I looked at our postevent survey and Mon'nique had filled it out and I was like, you know what, these are valid things. Like, let's start implementing you. I mean, you can't take everyone's feedback, but there are some valid things in the postevent survey. I will say that. >> Can I just jump off on the the part

about um belonging for TED? So, a lot of people don't think about the first timer's experience. >> And so, with TED, we have an environment where a lot of people come in with impostor syndrome. I mean you have certain these people that you're seeing on the stage who are entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, but the richness is the community, the attendees. You think what you saw on the stage was amazing. It's the person that's sitting right next to you. So we decided like in order to build community, and we care about community. We don't I don't like the word networking. It's community. And I really we lean into that, right? And so to build community, we had to create a first- timers program. Not just an experience, a program. And so what does a first timer program entails? First of all, we send you an email acknowledging we know you're a first timer to our event. And we want to list these things that you should be aware of. The next thing is we actually have virtual events before they come on site saying this is what you should think about before you come. This is what you should wear. People love to give fashion advice. Oh, yes. When they're going to a first-time event because they don't even know what they're supposed to be putting on. Um, this is where you can go. No, you don't pay for your food. These things. And then, you know, as the organizers, we're on there to answer all of the questions that they have. And then when you come on site into this environment and you are an introvert or you're you don't want to network, you want to connect, we have something called a first- timers experience. And so we just build this event, right, just for the first timers and we incorporate play. >> And so what what does it take to let down your guard? People love play. So we had the biggest rock, paper, scissors competition this year at our first timers event and it was hundreds of people and you got down to one winner. And so everybody had to battle each other and then those winners battled the next people and those winners battled the next people. Oh my god, you would think we invented something. They were screaming and cheering and those became their friends throughout the entire event. And then we gave them something a little sticker that was like, I'm a first timer. And boy did they look for each other and look for those stickers. So you really have to think about the richness and the belonging in the community building to connect. But you got to come from a human perspective, not just saying, "Oh, have this meeting. Here's this in the app. Do this or whatever." It takes more than that to create that. So, just jumping off of community building, you know, like I said, we don't like to use the word networking because we feel like, you know, we're not a transactional place. We're not a B to B or B TOC conference. You know, people come to TED because they're looking for not only development in a larger sense, but personal development. How do I start to think different? How do I am inspired? The last thing people ask for is your title. Nobody cares what you do. >> Um, and so it's really about the connection part. How do you build connection at your events? I'll start

with you, Judy. >> Yeah. >> Real connection. >> Real connection. Well, before I jump into that, I did want to just build off of what you just said around the first timer's experience because I think that's just as important as behind the scenes as you're making things because, you know, we often look for, hey, do you have 20 years of experience in this? Do you have 10 years of experience in that? Well, guess what? Things have really changed in the last 10 to 20 years. So, how we experienced events from that first moment of Coachella or KN or Forbes is very different from how people are experiencing it now. So, I think a first timer's view on the working team is just as important to kind of highlight some of those things that you're like, "Oh, yeah. I've been doing this forever. I forgot that so and so might want didn't realize that there's no iced coffee in France or whatever the thing may be." Um, so I think that's just equally as important. And then, um, from a community perspective, you know, from the get-go, I really think community and connection is the antidote for a lot of bad things going on in life, in business, and everything else. And I think, you know, I often call it the before times, but things have been radically shifted in the before and the after times, especially with younger audiences, because those are we definitely work with a lot of Gen Z in our consumer um experiences and B2B. It's kind of all different ages. But what we've really found is that we really have to create something that's valuable to people either personally or professionally. and and quite often there's something likeminded in a lot of the people that come out to our events whether it's the affinity with Pinterest, the affinity of fashion or it's something that they want to build or just you know people really looking future forward. So I think with a lot of our experiences they tend to take that um into consideration. So for instance at can where it's a lot of marketers, a lot of creatives, everyone already knows each other. How do we break down the walls just like a a rock paper scissors thing? Well, we also invest in play. And so at Can Lion, we found it's a festival for creativity and not a lot of people were creating. It was a lot of talks. We love talks, but it was just talking. And so there we brought back things where people could make things, create things. So for instance, we had a RSO printing workshop where you could make these really cool posters and but we made it a workshop. So everyone had to sit around a table and do it together. And there I am creating a print um a print with someone from Lego and we're just chatting about like you know play and building cuz they're from Lego. And so I think by focusing on something else, people are less worried about looking cool. We're all trying to make this thing together. Um it might also be bag charms. Oh, I don't have my bag with me. But, you know, I make a really ugly bag charm, but when I work with an artist, they make a brilliant one. And so, I think it's all of that fun of experimenting, trial, and playing, which really kind of binds our community together. >> I love that. And I think for us, it's

something that we're still working on. It's event by event because the focus is the stage for us. Um, live journalism, again, our editors love to talk. So, it's hard to find the time to interject that play. I think we do it well for certain events, 3050 being one. Um, our se our under 30 summit which is coming up being another, but it's something that we do have to work on. And some of the ways that we do it is bringing a lot of the conversations offstage. So we have roundt conversations. We make sure that we um integrate uh the app and umbrella or biso we use either one for u roundt networking and so people really love that. So that's where we kind of try to have community, but a lot of it is just like informal conversations that we have with each other and I see attendees really create with each other for the most part. Okay, that's great. Listen, I know we're between you and some food. So we have the last five minutes. We're going to take a couple of questions and do our best to answer them. Um, so the first one is as an

event leader, how do you balance the expectations with senior stakeholders with the workload that comes with it and the well-being of your team? Spicy. Joey, raise your hand. We calling out names. >> Who wants to go first? >> Sure. I can kind of jump in. Um, I think for us it's not something that's been done overnight. Like I I think Jess and Jessica and I both mentioned we've been at our businesses for a long time. And so we've earned certain things that happen and with us it's a lot about trust and so we've got a lot of trust with senior stakeholders that we deliver no matter what's going on and we'll deliver really really well. Um, and for us uh well-being is huge. It's not always attained, but I think we try to do everything knowing we have this super busy period that basically starts now until June. And I encourage everyone to take holiday not during that time and really to like look out for each other and think of ourselves as one team cuz I can't be there for everyone. So I try to uh instill that in the team to really care about each other and um look out for those moments where there is burnout. And then also just sharing because sometimes it's easy to be in a silo in this hybrid work environment because you're not all next to each other anymore. And so we do a lot of sharing to see where there might be efficiencies um that we can learn from each other and just making sure that we're actively doing that so people can also feel connected as they're building the work. Can I just jump off on that? So, one of the things that I talk about a lot when I think about leadership and how you should um talk to your

leadership is to understand how they like to receive information. >> And so, some people are like, I just want to get all the things out and explain everything to you and they have shut down five minutes into your conversation because they don't process information in that way. And so, the first thing you need to understand is who is your leader? How do they like to receive information? Is it bite-size? Is it snippets? Is it context? Is it overall generalist? Is it just these three things they're always ask about? Money, money, revenue, money, or is it something else? Right? And then you need to shape what you're trying to say to them based off of how you need to communicate to them so they can hear you. It is one of the biggest issues with people. It's just like I want to talk from how I like to talk instead of understanding if I need to get something through, they need to hear you. >> Yes. >> And sometimes if they don't hear you, they're not going to listen to all of the seven things you said wasn't going to work. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, you really need to think about how you are expressing yourself and understanding the leader and how they like to receive the information that they get. >> Yes. And just to build off what Judy

said, I think as leaders in this room, what you need to understand is what your team is telling you and having that transparency and trust with them. My team, I have a calendar, a spreadsheet that I look at all the time. I can see it right now that I know exactly when they're out, who's doing what, what event is happening. And I tell them all the time, don't look at the dates cuz date, we had an event change three times before it actually landed on a date. Don't look at the dates. Just put in your out of office dates. We'll figure it out once the event is confirmed. And at first, a lot of people were nervous and they were like, well, if I miss this event, like you'll and I was like, no, your vacation comes first. Like if you tell me, hey, I put this in the calendar six months ago that I was going on my honeymoon and now we have this massive event that six months ago versus a massive I'm going to take six months ago. I'll find somebody else for that event. So, it's being really transparent and open with them and avoiding burnout, letting them take their vacation. And then for virtual work, we're fully remote, but we create times of just like let's get on a Zoom and just talk things out. We were on we were talking through f florals and I shared my screen and put pulled up Pinterest and I was like this is what I'm thinking but like I know I like a dark floral and I like very vampy and my colleague was like I don't think so. I think we have to go a different direction but it's okay. That's part of the process and being able to really ensure and instill the the importance of collaboration in the virtual realm is so important. Well, we're down to our last

10 seconds. There were a couple of questions here, but I know I'm going to be here all day, so you can come find me and ask any questions that you have. Uh Jessica, you are leaving your So, it's just me. Sorry, >> but I'll be here >> and Monique knows everything. Yes, I truly hoped you enjoyed this session and you got some type of nuggets. There's more to share, but I think it's really important. You know, this is a stressful industry. I get it. We have to juggle a lot. We're always dealing with fires. There's no such thing as perfectionism. But you bring people together >> and you give people something that they can't get anywhere else. And that's true community. And you just really need to think about it that way when you're putting your on your events. So, thank you. Thank you.