I promised that I would write up some feedback on my day out in Cambridge yesterday, so here are some thoughts.

First, to set the scene, the event itself was being run by the Cambridge Business Academy (Kevin Potts’ company) and held the promise of both Russell Brunson and Chris Farrell speaking at the same event. Some of you will know that Chris is still in the US, as his wife is ill, and so this changed the format of the day slightly.

The venue was the Cambridge Corn Exchange, a building (presumably with amazing history) right in the centre of the town itself and I’m going to talk about the building here as a bit of a metaphor for the whole day. If I had to some it up, I’d say that aspects of it were superb, with a whole load of disappointments that dragged it down. Hopefully, what I learned about it all will help all of us put on better events.

First up, as a presentation venue it was excellent. High ceilings, banked seating, good-ish acoustics and a screen and stage setup that rivalled some of the best places I have ever spoken. This really was gold standard stuff. If you ever put on a show with low ceilings, small screens and even worse, long thin meeting rooms laid out lengthwise so the folk at the back can’t see, then the gods of presentation management should smite you where you stand! Higher, bigger and wider is the way to go for a comfortable audience. Even laying out your long room widthways with repeater screens is better than lengthways.

OK, so that was a plus point. Good presentation venue.

Flipside: As a conference venue it was mediocre at best…poor in places. It’s not just about the presentations folks! Your audience has to get there and stay there for a significant amount of time while you show them your awesome presentations. In this respect, the Corn Exchange is a dog.

Yes, it’s nice that it is in the heart of historic Cambridge – and maybe it is good to get away from London every now and again, but getting into town for a registration time of 9.30 is enough to try the patience of a saint…and the cost of parking is enough to make a grown man cry. Going with an out of town venue with parking onsite or nearby just makes more sense. Most big hotels can cope with conferences these days – just bite the bullet and book one. (Bearing in mind high ceilings etc etc.)

What do hotels also provide for their guests? Yes! Toilets!!

700 people packed into an auditorium for a day are going to want a comfort break at some point and it doesn’t matter what your audience breakdown (male/female) is, there just have to be enough places to pee! No excuses. In guy’s terms (as that’s what I’m qualified to comment on), 4 urinals for 500 men and a 10-15 minute break is a logistical calculation that only works somewhere like the Matrix where you can freeze time. Not only that, but when they’re done and they want to re-fill with coffee, a 2 spout coffee machine is also not up to the job.

Finally (for the venue). Try to get your audience inside the venue as fast as possible even if you have some monster logistical nightmare to handle for each person. Don’t funnel everyone through a linear bottleneck that is based on a split of surnames. This is guaranteed to be slow, as those whose name begins with W can’t see the desk for the queue and so never make their way to the sadly underutilized section with their name on it.

Scarily, this goes right back to my time in IT. We called it MSMQ…..multiple servers, multiple queues. It shortens the length of each queue but it does rely on folk finding their “server” for themselves. So, put a big letter sign up above each server (e.g. Surnames P-T), put them all round the room and just funnel folk into the room, telling them to find their surname letter for themselves.

Not only that, but let nearby queues interact. If one is empty, let the servers handle the overflow from next door – a simple duplication of namesheets lets this happen! Yes, I know it’s more work collating the sheets at the end, but as organizers you have all day while others speak. Take the burden on yourself and you won’t end up with people queuing out of the door and down the road on what was a pretty miserable, damp and cold October day in Cambridge.

And another thing! Don’t then film the queue you have generated! “Here’s a bunch of miserable people that we forced to stand in the cold at our last event” doesn’t feel like a good advertising ploy to me 🙂

Alright. Enough of the venue. What about  the day itself?

Strangely, it had the same kind of Jekyll and Hyde character. Kevin and Russell Brunson did the first two slots, delivered some good solid content and generally got the thing going very well. Some nice reminders of basics in marketing combined with a few hints and tips that had everyone writing notes. (Sidenote – damn, Russell speaks fast!!). When I look at what Russell delivered for the day, I’d say that this was the content that got me there and kept me there.

We moved on after the break to Paul Lynch. Paul’s grasp of traffic generation looks astonishing and as a lowly starter in this field I have almost no place to comment on his techniques for doing this – he’s a smart guy. What I do have the right to comment on was his delivery yesterday. I don’t know what posessed him to play videos at us for the whole of his speaking slot! Yes, they were very slick and showed a lot of relevant material but I could have sat at home and watched videos.

The pleasure (and the pain) of being on stage is that you get to be a real person. Your triumphs and disasters are both “writ large” for the world to see and I, for one, would have like Paul to actually speak to us. One of the videos was even one I’d seen in the previous week as a result of the promotion for the event. That’s 30 minutes or more of my life that I’ll never get back! Paul, man up. Do it live! I’ll train you myself if you feel you need it.

The other session of the day was given by Ian Judd(?), who works with Kevin and Paul. Along with Paul, he pitched a “done for you” business and traffic system that had some ups and downs for me. Traffic from Paul (up), membership site description (down) – and so it went. The components of the system seemed interesting, but we had another video and their passion didn’t come across for me. Not only that, but this was a seriously high ticket item. You need something a bit special going on in the presentation to sell something up in the stratosphere….no matter how much of a good deal it is.

I’d put it all down to it being the first time they’d sold from stage, if it weren’t for the religion factor. If you don’t know, Kevin came out of some kind of religious ministry when he started doing this. Ok, nice branding feature for the business, but it seems like everyone involved with CBA was  in the same boat. So I was expecting much more of an “altar call” for the selling, as they’ve all patently had practice before with speaking to congregations 🙂

So, there you have it. A mixed bag of a day, really. Learned a bit of stuff and spoke to some fellow attendees – as usual that can be the best bit of any event – and came away to face a stiff car parking price and a long drive home. Glad I went to see Russell and Kevin but I won’t be doing Cambridge again in a hurry.

Were you there? Let me know if you agree/disagree violently with any of my points.