Shorter is better. That was the thinking behind this year’s Mashable Connect conference, which wrapped up Saturday at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. The two-day agenda was packed with more than 20 general sessions, but each one ran no longer than 30 minutes and some were as short as 10.
“People are used to digesting content online and on Twitter and on their laptops, so we wanted to give them something that is easy to consume and also entertaining,” said Jennifer Diamond, Mashable’s marketing director and a member of the event’s planning team. "Our speakers have strong points to get across, and often the shorter the presentation, the more powerful it is. We also wanted to steer presenters away from talking too much about themselves, and I think the less time we give them encourages them to get right to the point and talk about what matters most.”
The roster of speakers was a who’s who of the digital community, including Klout founder and C.E.O. Joe Fernandez; June Cohen, executive producer of TED; Storify co-founder Burt Herman; and Mashable staff like founder and C.E.O. Pete Cashmore, editor in chief Lance Ulanoff, and others. To keep the 300 attendees engaged, organizers varied the program, scheduling shorter presentations in between the longer ones and offering a mix of single-presenter talks and small panel discussions.
On Friday afternoon, one hour was set aside for breakout sessions. Attendees could choose from three topics: digital branding, design, and entrepreneurship. (A fourth breakout session on social TV was for a select group of attendees: “We have a lot of big leaders in the [social TV] industry who are here, but not as many attendees in that field, so we wanted to curate the attendees,” Diamond said.) Unlike the general sessions, where the audience sat at round tables in front of the stage, the layout for these breakouts had attendees facing each other in hollow square configurations to facilitate dialogue. Each breakout included a few speakers with expertise on that topic and Mashable staff as moderators.
Conference attendees included senior-level executives from digital firms, technology and social media companies, brand leaders, senior-level marketers, and entrepreneurs. “One thing they all have in common is they are leading digital in some way,” Diamond said. “We want them to walk away having formed meaningful relationships with one another, feeling like they learned something practical that they can use in their everyday lives, and feeling inspired by learning something new and interesting.”
To facilitate networking, organizers created a scavenger hunt Saturday night at Epcot. Working in teams of five, attendees had to identify things in the park based on a set of clues and post photos of their findings on Instagram, tagged with #Mashcon.
