Designing the Conference Canvas and the Conference Workshop

The Conference Canvas is a tool for participants to map out their purpose and key actions to get most out of their conference. We also developed a workshop to make it even more actionable. 

The Issue:

Attendees of a conference struggle with participating actively and intentionally due to overload of input and wishes. 

The Desired Outcome:

Trying to solve the challenge participants have with pitching themselves or their products at conferences.

The Process:

We got the initial idea when in contact with the tech conference The Next Web - “contribute to a better experience for TNW [/conference] participants”. We did research with startup teams and tech teams on their experience and wishes and expectations around attending a conference. From there we started synthesising data toward the concept of a canvas. We structured the content and design over several iterations. We then user tested it internally and made some tweaks. We did the launch of the Conference Canvas at an official event for the TNW. 

Challenges:

To synthesize and map the core benefits and the processes for our audience. There’s also a saturated “canvas market” so we focused on a very niche market - conference attendees. Since the inception of the Business Model Canvas there have been countless other canvases. We knew we weren’t gonna be unique, so we teamed up with The Next Web to promote it.

Read more about the process and outcome here.

Startship - https://startship.nl/events/conferencecanvas.html

Participate with better purpose in any conference (Medium) - https://medium.com/startship/just-another-canvas-to-participate-with-purpose-in-any-conference-647d5ca95ab

Conference Canvas Workshop - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-next-web-2019-conference-canvas-workshop-organised-by-startship-tnw-tickets-59753402034#

TNW Event - https://thenextweb.com/conference/side-events/tnw2019-canvas-workshop