innovative meetings

sourcing a venue to accommodate more attendees. From 2009 until last year, the conference was held at The TimesCenter, an event space located on the first floor of the New York Times Building. “[It] is a really beautiful conference center that was designed by [Italian architect] Renzo Piano,” Glei said. “… 99U is very focused on design, so the design of the space and quality of the space is really important to us.” But when organizers looked at the 1,085- seat Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, they knew they’d found the right fit, and started planning an expansion accord- ingly. “Once we decided to go with that venue, which is one of the most beauti- ful concert halls in the world,” Glei said, “… for us the content and the overall structure of the event was able to stay largely the same, but we had to expand certain offerings.” Since its inception, the 99U Confer- ence has sold out well in advance of the event — sometimes up to nine months ahead. Despite the huge increase in capacity, this year was no different. “The reason that’s worked is that it’s not just a conference, it’s a larger brand and it’s an editorial property,” Glei said. The website 99u.com shares articles and tips geared toward creative-idea execu- tion, and so attendees (and potential attendees) stay engaged year-round. “[Attendees] really identify with the mission, and they are themselves peo- ple who really want to make their ideas happen, so it makes it a much easier task than if we were just saying, ‘Hey, you bought a ticket last year,’ then we contact them nine months later and ask them if they want to do that again.” A natural fear with that much

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expansion is that it might dilute the content or experience for attendees, Glei said. That was not the case. She heard from a number of people who have attended multiple 99U confer- ences that this was the best event yet. “It was kind of amazing to have people who had been to the conference in a smaller setting,” she said, “come to the larger event and feel like it was even better.”

MIXING IT UP

The main conference presentations are structured as 20-minute general- session talks, both as a way to get speakers to distill their information down to action-oriented takeaways for the audience, and so the content is easily sharable online — 99U makes nearly all conference sessions available on its website. “When you start to get a little bit longer in online video,” Glei said, “it’s kind of a lot to digest.” What isn’t recorded are some of the Master Class programs — multitrack, 75-min- ute interactive presentations that go more in-depth for a smaller group of people. Attendees pick one of the ses- sions — like “Creating a Digital Strategy That Actually Works” or “Using Improv to Embrace Risk & Take Action Quickly”

— which were held at various buildings around Lincoln Center this year. Glei expanded the Master Class sessions from three last year to six, all of which take place near the end of the confer- ence’s first day, always on a Thursday. Earlier on Thursday morning, before the conference even begins, are Studio Sessions, organized at various creative studios around the city. Groups of 50 to 60 attendees gather to learn about top- ics that range from “User Experience

for Non-Designers” to “Branding Your Startup Business,” where the idea is for “people to get to do something sort of cool and learn something and meet people in a smaller setting before they show up at the conference and there’s a larger audience,” Glei said.

CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS Theme and speaker selection aren’t the only innovative elements of the 99U Conference — Glei also takes a targeted approach when it comes to sponsor- ships. “One of the things that makes 99U so special as a conference is that we really think about every little detail, whether it’s design or the actual flow of the event,” she said. “That extends to the sponsor partnerships.” She tries to come up with solutions that make sense for sponsors but don’t feel like a cookie- cutter approach for attendees. Creatives often need professional

headshots, for example. So this year, through its partnership with Pantone

— best known for its series of color swatches regularly used in design and manufacturing — 99U took free headshots at a booth in the hall lobby; huge Pantone chips served as back- drops. “It’s something that provided a cool service that the attendees were excited about and also was really great exposure for the brand,” Glei said. “The conference itself is all about providing some kind of utility, so it fit in with that.”

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Katie Kervin is an assistant editor of Convene.

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