I’m an introvert. Think about me, too!
Five lessons for planning events with introverts in mind.
We recently shared a report about the lessons we’ve learned from running Spark Camp — an event we created to spark diverse, multidiscliplinary conversations about current issues in media and society. The report has inspired a number of excellent responses. One of our favorites came from YouTube star, Soundslides creator and former Everyblock CEO Adrian Holovaty, who said, “Unconferences are extrovert paradise, introvert hell. Fix that and good things happen.”
This definitely reflects some of our discoveries from Spark Camp. Some of the conventions that have sprung up around conferences in general — and particularly conferences where the attendees set the schedule — can be unfriendly to people who are more introverted. We know this because Spark Camp’s cofounders are regular attendees at these events, and because one of us is a bonafide introvert. If interacting with strangers wears you down, an event that requires you to spend days on end having long conversations with people you don’t know can truly be a circle of hell. (Introversion comes in many forms, of course. Introverts can be highly gregarious or talkative or outgoing. For the purpose of this post, we’ll use the definition of introversion that defines it, over-simply, as needing energy to interact with others, as opposed to deriving energy from being around others.)
We’ve discovered that introverts are the secret stars of Spark Camp.
At the end of our last Spark Camp, we asked people to tell us the most valuable connections they made at the event. We were amazed to find that the names that came up again and again — the people who others were most consistently blown away by — were some of the most introverted people in attendance.
We’ve made several adjustments to make the event work for folks who score high on James McCroskey’s introversion measurement scale. If you’re hosting an event, here’s some of what we’d recommend based on our experiences.
1 — Make sure you have a critical mass of introverts in attendance. In our report, we emphasize the care we take in selecting invitees to Spark Camp. Part of what we assess is how invitees will interact with each other. Introverts provide an essential synthesizing factor to big-think conversations. We’ve all probably been in meetings where one participant spends the entire time quietly observing, then manages to distill the conversation perfectly with a concise comment as the meeting winds down. Extroverts tend to focus more on what they can add to a conversation; introverts tend to focus more on what they might take away from it. Both contributions are necessary, and a healthy mix of the two makes for the best discussion.
2—Don’t make your guests introduce themselves. As we say in our report, “We’ve learned that asking Campers to introduce themselves during opening-night festivities can be nerve-wracking, so instead we, the organizers, deliver a highly personal, whimsical introduction for each person, ending with his or her name.” The fact that nobody knows who’s being introduced until late in the description means that people listen more closely. Plus, it takes away the stress factor of having to come up with a creative or interesting way to describe oneself.
This approach to introductions extends to our one-on-one intros, too. Before campers even arrive, we connect small groups of people via e-mail — which might help an introvert feel on a level playing field. When Campers arrive at Spark Camp registration, we try to connect them right away with a few other attendees, making intros so they don’t feel the need to find a conversation and introduce themselves. And at the outset of the weekend, we extend a standing offer to Campers: Find one of the organizers if there’s someone in attendance you’d like to meet; we’ll be glad to introduce you.
Allow introverts in the crowd to take some needed downtime in the middle of a demanding day.
(Chances are good your extroverts will appreciate some downtime, too.)
3—Provide plenty of time for people to recuperate. When we started Spark Camp, our instinct was to pack as much session time into the weekend as possible. Of course we knew, even then, that people tend to find the time in-between sessions especially valuable, but we also knew that sessions often provide the ballast for those in-between conversations, and so we didn’t want to skimp on them. We’ve changed that approach, cutting down the number of sessions and upping the amount of time people have to gather their thoughts. At our last Spark Camp, we explicitly made one slot in the schedule optional, allowing the introverts in the crowd to take some needed downtime in the middle of a demanding day.
4—Favor small discussions as much as larger ones. As we explain in our report, we started off by thinking the success of a Spark Camp session could be gauged by the number of folks in attendance. We don’t think that way anymore, after discovering from attendee feedback (and first-person observation) that small, intimate sessions are often among the most valuable. Those sessions also provide an ideal context for sharing among people who don’t like having to vie for presence with dozens of others in the room.
5—Good facilitation helps. At Spark Camp, we favor discussions over presentations and panels. When discussions get bombastic, as good ones often do, a facilitator can help to make sure the conversation stays vibrant, but orderly. This can mean scanning the room to make sure that people with something to add to the conversation don’t feel they need to shout over someone else to say their piece. It can also mean watching for moments when attendees might feel like they’re on the spot, and steering the conversation in a different direction.
Unconferences are challenging for introverts. At Spark Camp, we carefully help participants form their own sessions collectively using a convening framework that we developed.
A perceptive person might say, as Mark Ng did on Twitter, that these are all just practices that make events better for everyone. We tend to agree. It’s one of the great outcomes of striving to make an event that’s valuable for many different types of people — that effort makes it more valuable for all of them.
If you’re interested in what else we’ve learned from three years of running Spark Camp, read our full report. We’re eager to learn what introverts think about our findings, and what other conference hacks they’ve developed. Please share your thoughts with us here and on Twitter @sparkcamp.
Matt Thompson wrote this story for Medium. He cofounded Spark Camp along with Amanda Michel, Andrew Pergam, Jenny 8. Lee and Amy Webb.
