Will Workshops
Replace Keynotes?

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:14

Welcome to the experts' journey. For years, the keynote speaker was the centerpiece of every conference. Big stage, big ideas, and big energy. But audiences are changing and attention spans are changing too. And of course, AI is changing how people access information. So in this episode, we're asking a serious question: how long before conferences start valuing workshops more than keynotes? And I must say, I wish they would. Are people still paying to hear ideas? Or are they paying to leave with results? And if that shift is already happening, what does it mean for speakers, experts, and thought leaders moving forward?

Good morning, Dixie.

Dixie Carlton 00:55

Good morning, Brad. What an interesting conversation we're going to have today. I was at a conference just two weeks ago in Singapore, and it was with mostly keynote speakers. And the conversation came up about the concept of key shops, keynotes that are really more interactive and more workshops rather than keynotes. Okay. A lot of this comes down to how long you get in front of your audience. Yeah, I think it does.

Brad Hauck 01:26

Yeah. Timing is a big thing. Keynotes anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. I've heard some people say you've got an hour and a half, which is honestly, in my terms, a nightmare. If it's a keynote, because that's a long time. That to me smells like a workshop.

Unidentified speaker 01:39

Yeah.

Brad Hauck 01:40

You've got to be doing more than being interesting and having an interesting idea if you're going to be that long in front of a group of people. I think that what I'm starting to see online as well as offline is that conferences seem to be chasing outcomes for the attendees more than inspiration. Yeah. Maybe that's because there's so much inspiration available online. We've all got our podcasts we listen to. You can listen to Anthony Robbins every day of the week if you want to, if you need inspiration, or Alex Ramosy, or whoever it is that you follow.

All that stuff's available. So is there something more that would bring people to a conference? And sometimes a workshop makes people feel productive. They've actually achieved something for the money that they've paid.

Dixie Carlton 02:25

I think this comes down a lot to what it is that the conference organizer is trying to achieve. So I had a conversation with someone just a couple of days ago about their pulling together a one-day program that was going to feature eight presenters. Eight presenters all doing workshops, but only having 45 minutes per workshop. Now, for me, that's not long enough. I'd rather have workshops that run at an hour to an hour and a half each or even 75 minutes, because that gives you time to absorb, take things in, and actually get into something more solid.

Whereas if you're only doing a 45-minute workshop and you're doing eight of them throughout the day, as an audience member, I'm going to feel overwhelmed. And I think coming back to, well, what are you trying to achieve? And do you need to have a hybrid or a mix of? And do you really need to think first about how long each person's going to have and how much you're going to pay each person to present?

Brad Hauck 03:26

Yeah. And I think also it comes down to how many stages have you got. So if you take some conferences, you've got a main stage and then you've got breakout rooms. And traditionally, breakout rooms is where people would run workshops and those sorts of hands-on practical sort of sessions. Whereas when you came into the main stage, that's where you get your big ideas and your keynote speakers. If you're running one stage and you're running it all day, that changes the whole dynamic of the conference. Now it doesn't mean you can't have a keynote speaker, often you'd have one to start the day.

But I've always not been a keynote speaker. I've always been the breakout or the ideas person that's hands-on training sort of ideas. And so for me, I feel like if you're on the big stage, even if you're teaching people stuff, that's the same as the keynote speaker, but people don't pay as much. And I have a problem with that because the keynote speaker is giving people maybe motivation or some direction. But I'm getting them results. I feel like that's pretty unfair when in fact when they leave my session, they actually have steps to take, and they will have taken some of them already to move on with their business or with their life.

Dixie Carlton 04:41

Well, so when you spoke at the GSS recently, you were on the main stage, and that was how long was it? 40 minutes? 45 minutes?

Brad Hauck 04:53

30.

Dixie Carlton 04:53

30 minutes. That was fast-paced and there was a lot of information. And as a breakout, you were on the main stage. So I was in the audience as a breakout. I thought, yes, that's great. Is it going to be takeaway information? Am I going to have to do something or just pay attention? Now, if you're in the in on the main stage and you're in the audience looking at the main stage, I feel that you're automatically wired to pay attention rather than necessarily get out the notebooks and and start to make a lot of notes the way you would in a workshop.

So there's that confusion dichotomy to start with. But also if you are presenting from the main stage and you are only doing a breakout session, then are you somewhat obligated to give people a handout to make sure they do something while you're presenting or is part of your presentation? So there's a there's so many moving parts to this whole question. From the perspective of the speaker, what is your obligation in terms of delivery? And what is your obligation as an audience member to take away whatever is being presented from where it's being presented?

Brad Hauck 06:09

Well, yeah, I think you're leading towards the fact that we've been trained as an audience to react a certain way to a certain situation. Big room means keynote, small room means hands-on or whatever. And maybe it is time that changed because, for example, AI has made information cheap and instant. It's available to us. So getting information and ideas is actually really easy these days. Yes, okay, AI is not the answer to everything, and I totally agree. A human perspective is always very interesting because we pull things from different areas and put them together. And also, as an expert in an area or a thought leader, you're looking across one topic across a whole range of areas and getting ideas that AI wouldn't give you.

But maybe people are no longer paying to hear ideas, maybe they're paying to apply them. I think that's the question we need to ask ourselves.

Dixie Carlton 07:04

Well, one of the other things too is that when you are sitting in a workshop, you have an expectation about how much writing you're going to do, how much action you're going to take. So you are pre-prepared for that. And going back to what I was talking about with this woman who was organizing eight people in a day, 45 minutes each, that's a lot more people to organize for the on stage side of things for an event. If you change that and you say, look, I'm going to have four people, or maybe five people, all do 75 to 90 minutes each, that gives everybody a lot more scope to work with.

It gives the presenters something that they can say, right, I can do, I guess coming back into that concept of the key shop, I can do 45 minutes to 60 minutes or so of presenting what it is that I want you to know, and then 15 or 20 minutes of let's get busy and pull out the pens and make things happen. And then maybe still five or ten minutes for QA. And that for me is a really good way of learning and having my mind opened up to something. But it's not necessarily what everybody wants.

Some people want to go and hear a TED-style day of bang bang, lots of people doing 20-minute, 30-minute presentations.

Brad Hauck 08:28

Yeah, look, I think there'll be places for that. And I think some conferences will be about ideas and some conferences will be about application. But I really do feel that when I talk to people, they're yearning for useful training, useful hands-on application of concepts because there's lots of YouTube videos, there's lots of AI, there's lots of stuff coming through the press, there's all your social media flowing all the time. So you're constantly inundated with a range of information. And one of the things that I've noticed of recent is that obviously once you start looking at a topic, you get advertised the heck out of as well on your social media platform.

And that has a whole lot of other effects, I reckon, mentally, because suddenly you feel like I know nothing because look at all these experts. And I think it puts a whole lot of stress on you. But it is interesting the way the algorithms will actually inundate you, but you're not necessarily learning anything at depth. You're reading stuff, you're hearing stuff, but you're not applying them because so much information is flowing through so quickly. So when it comes to having a conference and people are sitting in the room, they've actually stopped for a certain amount of time, they've devoted their attention to the stage, whether that be virtual or physical.

And then just having an idea is great, but I think it's getting to the stage where we need to go, yes, I get ideas by the thousands being pummeled to me in shorts, videos and reels and stuff. How do I do something with that? And I've got time right now to actually sit here and write something down. Whereas normally it's like scroll, scroll, scroll, move, go and do stuff, whatever.

Dixie Carlton 10:13

Yeah, you're right. One of the other things too is that when you go to a two or three-day conference, or even in some cases a four-day conference, if it's jam-packed with a combination of keynotes, breakouts, workshops, and then of course your conversations in the hallways. You're mentally exhausted at the end of that. Regardless of whether you've attended everything, attended half of them, maybe balanced it with a bit of time at the pool and relaxing as well. But you've paid all this money to go and get all of this extra information. So you put pressure on yourself to feel like you have to get as much out of it as you can.

And so you come away and you are exhausted, you are confused, you've heard so many new ideas. And let's be honest, how often do we actually then come away from that conference and put all of that into action? So maybe sometimes it's just a simple matter of less is more.

Brad Hauck 11:09

Yeah, I would hazard to put a bet on the fact that most people go to the conferences because they need a holiday. I know, like I go there and I listen to speakers. Obviously, being involved in the industry, I like to watch speakers and listen and learn things as well. But nine times out of ten, I'm looking for one or two key things that'll help me move forward. The rest is interesting, but I'm never going to get to apply it. Now you never know which room or which session is going to give you those little key points that you're looking for.

But for most people, I honestly believe that the most important part of going to a conference is having time away from the office, talking with people and just enjoying human interaction, and going and having a meal somewhere and a drink, and then going and getting some sleep.

Dixie Carlton 12:02

Yeah.

Brad Hauck 12:02

I truly believe that is 90% of what actually happens at conferences, but no one wants to admit it. Because I think back to when I was working for the government and we get sent to conferences because we're always quite isolated. So there was quite a large budget for sending people away for training. And for me, it was a way to get out of town because I lived in a town that had 300 people in it. And suddenly I go to another to a city that had 10,000, and there was so much to do and see, and it was just a break from the situation.

And I don't think that changes for most people. If you're you're the organization you work for sends you to a conference, it's like, well, I better take some notes, but look, honestly, while I'm here, I am seriously switching off my phone. I'm not looking at work.

Dixie Carlton 12:49

My mind is boggling at the idea of going to a city of 10,000 people and thinking that's a big city. But I don't hear what you're saying.

Brad Hauck 12:59

After some of the places I've left, believe me.

Dixie Carlton 13:02

So doesn't this come back to what the conference organizing industry is focusing on? Or does it come back to what we as speakers and presenters and workshop facilitators can be inputting into the industry think at this stage? Where do you think the shift is going to start to really happen?

Brad Hauck 13:20

I'd really be interested to see. Like you put a topic up, obviously, about what you're going to speak about or workshop about. I would like to see more people come into the room and say, okay, here's 10 things. What do you guys want to learn about? What do you want to talk about today? I think it would be really interesting. And I know some people like Keith Obens does that sort of stuff. He has a very long PowerPoint and he can jump all over the place based on what the room says, which is a very clever technique.

But I would like to see more people start to go that way, where you could switch from a keynote to a workshop or to a key shop, whatever, based on what people actually have come to learn from you. Obviously, the title gives people an idea of what you're going to talk about, but they really don't know what you're going to say until you open your mouth because they don't know the stories you're going to tell, they don't know the examples you're going to use and all those sorts of things. I know you want control over the situation, and I totally understand that because you want to practice what you're going to do.

But on the other hand, if you're an expert, one of my favorite things is being on a panel where people just ask questions and you give answers. Like that to me is like one of the ultimate tests of an expert, is how you handle questions. So I think that maybe I suppose we're stepping a little bit off our topic here, but maybe we need to look at, yeah, how conferences are run. What do we need to offer? What do people really need? Not just what do we want to offer them?

Dixie Carlton 14:55

I was at a conference in America last year where they defaulted almost by accident, because as the day progressed, it was only a one-day conference, and there was a lot of speakers. Like I think maybe over the day, I didn't count, but there would have been 20 speakers. Some of them were literally 10 minutes, and some of them were half an hour or 45 minutes. And what they ended up doing was a lot of them became panels and fireside chats. And even a couple of the keynoters who were supposed to be there for the longer presentations, they said to the organizer or to the MC, you know what, I really like what they did with that conversation.

Let's not do this as a keynote. Let's just sit down and have a conversation. So a couple of the speakers directed that to happen, which was interesting to see. And then this year, the conference is being specifically marketed as more fireside chats. There will be more panel groups, there will be more fireside chats. I think there's only going to be about three con three keynotes. And the rest of the day is go it's actually now a two-day, the rest of the two days is going to be primarily focused on conversations with experts. And I think it's a really nice thing to be able to look forward to, and I'm going to it.

But it just takes the edge off feeling like you have to sit at your table and take lots of notes and be driven through a process, which I think is how a lot of conferences start to feel from the attendee point of view. You are being driven through a process of getting all this information.

Brad Hauck 16:38

I think that brings us back to the old thing of stories, to be honest. Yeah. I think that what we're seeing is that one of the most fascinating things is where you get someone sitting there and someone asking questions and taking audience questions. So you might have an author or a movie star or whatever, and they're just taking general questions. And it's like, how did you get into this? Well, this happened. Oh, okay. And then someone will be, well, what was the biggest problem you had to deal with when you were growing your business? And that's where you get these random stories about, well, people used to hassle me all the time because we had this problem with the email, and I'd always have these problems.

So I did this thing. And you learn so much more often from those conversations because they're not written down like anywhere. So no one's ever heard them before, or maybe heard a bit of the story but never heard all the story. They aren't the sort of things that anyone would ever say on stage. And you see the reasons why people say certain things as well. You see why they talk about a topic or why they talk about a topic a certain way. And I'm often interested in that because I think it's far more interesting. I think the audience enjoys it more when you've got that random mic going around the room asking questions.

And that's an entirely different format again, but it's as powerful as a keynote in many cases because you're getting story after story and yeah.

Dixie Carlton 18:03

And then you've got the issue where there's an awful lot more pay-to-play happening in the world right now, where people are being invited to present, but they're being invited to present on the basis that they pay to be there to do so. Which is a frustration, and th that is part of what we're talking about, in as much as the different variety and style of presentations. And if you are being driven into the knowledge base by the conference organizer so they can maximize what the person who's paying to be there is going to get out of having the audience focused on them, then you've got another part of this whole process where it either works or it doesn't.

And it comes down to how clever the organizer can be to mix it up. Because you don't want to be paying just to go and see a whole bunch of people who have been paid who are paying to get in front of you to do a cell fest.

Brad Hauck 19:05

Yeah, and that's the key thing there too, is that it will become a cell fest because if you've paid to speak, then you've got to get your money back. And that's really important because that changes the whole focus. I don't speak necessarily to get paid. Yes, that's a byproduct of what I do, but I speak to educate the room. But if I was paying, I would definitely switch styles to a more sell from stage model, which I have done in the past. And I have no problems with it. I still teach lots of stuff, but I'm far more mercenary about how I weave in the sales process.

And I think that's really important. And yeah, the other thing is too, when you pay to speak, you expect a certain size audience. Yeah. Like if you're gonna put me in front of a hundred people and you want $2,000, you're kidding yourself.

Dixie Carlton 19:55

Yeah.

Brad Hauck 19:56

You know, you need much bigger audience than that because I know it's a numbers game. So I know for every hundred people, five might buy. So I need to sell this many programs. So there's it just changes the dynamics. But look, the world's constantly changing. I know that. But I think that things like doing workshops and doing keynotes, they're different skills. And some keynote speakers who do say motivational stuff, for example, I had my leg chewed off by a crocodile sort of stories. I'm not referring to anyone in particular, I'm just in Australia. It's for them to actually run a facilitated workshop could be much harder because it might not lend itself to that, it might be more about beating adversity or whatever.

So some people won't be able to turn their stuff that way. Other people charge a lot more for a workshop than they would for a keynote because to work with them is actually using their time and to have that ability to apply the information, you pay a lot more for than the concept of the information. So there's also those sorts of things. It's this much to get me to talk about this, it's this much to do training with me, and it's this much to work with me individually. There's certainly uh a lot more towards it.

If conferences do move towards workshops, some speakers will adapt quickly, but others won't. And as you said, that shift may already be happening with the key shop concept.

Dixie Carlton 21:31

Absolutely. This also, you've just touched on the concept of when someone is a writer of a memoir, for example, versus someone who is a writer of a self-help book. You do a lot more thinking through what the results are going to be for you as a presenter or as an expert when you are writing something that is clearly going to have this is the concept, this is the purpose, now do the work. But a lot of people are writing memoirs and the concept of writing a memoir that doesn't have the ability to take some actions or pull some actions into this is what happened, and this is why it's important to you, the reader, to now understand what this is, this is what you can do.

This is why I'm wrapping my story around this being more self-help and more functional, and then making that something that works from any kind of stage rather than just standing and telling your story, is also kind of cool.

Brad Hauck 22:32

Which brings up the aspect of it really depends on who the person is that's speaking, who the audience is, what the conference is about. So, for example, if it's a group of authors talking, well, they might all be talking about memoirs, well, then they're just going to be talking about their memoir and answering questions about their life, aren't they?

Dixie Carlton 22:51

Yeah.

Brad Hauck 22:51

And that's that's a style in itself. So I suppose we need to look at what we're trying to achieve for the audience from the organizers' perspective.

Dixie Carlton 23:00

Which brings us full circle back to that whole concept of, well, who's the market? What are you trying to achieve? How many people do you really want to be wrangling in and out of rooms at both the stage end of the room and the back end of the room? And what is the purpose behind the learning for the day? Do you want people to do a superficial quick scratch of the surface or do you want people to go deep?

Brad Hauck 23:24

Yeah. And I think also we need to look at whether it's virtual or physical. It's far more easy to keep people interested in a physical talk when it's about a concept than it is to do that virtually to keep people interested for 45 minutes. If it's virtual, people are sitting in front of a computer, there's a thousand things to distract them. So having them actually do something, the key shop sort of thing, actually makes a lot of sense because it keeps them focused on what's going on in that one little screen while social media's over here, videos over here, emails coming in.

Dixie Carlton 24:02

I'm tied in my desk up and it's what I'm saying.

Brad Hauck 24:06

Some lunch and a cup of coffee. Like there's so much to distract you. So maybe, yeah, that's something to look at. So look, the real question is not whether workshops will replace keynotes, it might be whether speakers are willing to evolve from being presenters into facilitators of change. Because in a world where information is everywhere, the people who help audiences think differently, act faster, and make progress in real time may become the most valuable voices in the room. Yes. If this episode has you thinking about writing a book and you're not sure how to shape your ideas, reach out to Dixie at indiexpertspublishing.com.

She can turn what's in your head into a clear, compelling book that builds authority. And if you want to get more out of AI, join my authority multiplier coaching community at bradhauck.com. You'll learn how to use AI to grow your business and save time and money.

Dixie Carlton 24:57

And of course, if you love what we do, then please review us because we love reviews and that helps us to grow our message in our market. So thank you so much, Brent. It's been a fascinating conversation as always. I don't know if we've necessarily resolved anything or solved the problems of the conference world, but we certainly have got a lot of people thinking, I'm sure, about this whole dilemma. So thank you. We'll see you next week.

Brad Hauck 25:19

See you next week.