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Jenny Sauer-Klein: [00:00:00] It was an opportunity to really reward strength as well, and that balance and connection, and that essentially we can do more together than we can alone. So that was a big way that we started really experimenting with what was possible when you combine unlikely elements and take them to unlikely places.
Podcast Host: The world is changing For most humans, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address financial and political uncertainty. Friction with back to office mandates and challenging hybrid workplace collaboration. Not to forget important environmental social responsibility and governance. Initiatives combined with the rapid pace of digital transformation and the need for human-centered AI integration, change is happening and fast.
This rapid change has highlighted the need for increased speed to innovation and long lasting change adoption in [00:01:00] many organizations. Whether you are a startup working on agile process or a mature organization, navigating change within existing complex structures, the skillset and need to adapt has never been more vital.
The team from Strategy Table wanna help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management. Helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible, it often starts with a meaningful conversation. Welcome to Accessible Disruption.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of Accessible Disruption where we ask challenging questions like, what is change management? Why do human beings gather in the ways that we do and how can we make impactful experiences that push the world forward? Today we've got an exciting conversation coming where we're joined by Jenny Sour Klein.
But before we jump into it, I'm [00:02:00] Anthony Vade. I'm the Chief Innovation Officer at Strategy Table, and joining me as always is our Chief Experience Officer. Tira and Dean Tira, you have brought another amazing mind to our little podcast here. Give the listeners a bit of a view into how you met Jenny and who Jenny is to you.
Tahira Endean: Pretty sure that Jenny and I just online flirted on LinkedIn as we do, and realized that we just immediately had a lot in common and had a conversation, and by the end of that conversation I was jutting off to San Francisco at a completely inconvenient time because I had to. Overnight from New York where I was speaking at Skiff to get to the conference for conferences that Jenny organized in San Francisco, and it was delightful and worth it, and I'm so happy I did that because it really took me back to the days of.
When there was a small group of US planning event camps in 20 10, 20 11, and really trying to break the mold on at that time how we were working with hybrid, but also [00:03:00] how we were just creating different kinds of spaces that really went deep into dialogue, and Jenny did that and along with a lot of people that helped you.
Along the way to bring it to life in a very short timeframe. So I was just like, we need to have Jenny on this show and we need to talk. We need to know more about her and her history. About the conference for conferences and where she's going next. Welcome Jenny.
Jenny Sauer-Klein: Thank you Tahira. And Anthony. I'm so happy to be here.
And I love the concept of accessible disruption. I feel like a lot of my career has been about how do you take the, how do you take the fringe into the mainstream and how do you make change accessible and appealing to people? 'cause it's always a tricky process. So I love this concept.
Tahira Endean: So tell us maybe from your past, something that was a favorite way that you have disrupted.
Jenny Sauer-Klein: Probably. One of the things I'm most known for, or the biggest part of my career before getting into the events world was AcroYoga. And if people are not familiar with AcroYoga, it's a [00:04:00] combination of yoga, acrobatics, and time massage, the three unlikely compatriots. They're like, what are those three things doing together?
And that's part of what I love is mixing unlikely combinations and seeing where the connections are. And so if you've ever played airplane with a kid and put laid on your back and put them up on your feet, that is a lot of what AcroYoga is built upon. And so I think that was a huge opportunity. We were in the yoga world, and in the yoga world, there's some people who are very devout purists, right?
They're a strongies, they're Iyengar, they're holding these. Ancient lineages and traditions in a very pure way, which is beautiful. We need those people. And myself and my co-founder we're the opposite. We were like, we wanna learn the traditions and then we wanna mix them up and turn them upside down, quite literally.
And so I think that was one of the first times of really going to these yoga conferences, which in most rooms were like. Very somber and [00:05:00] focused and quiet and internal and individual and isolating. And then we brought this very exuberant, playful, partner-based, community-based practice. And I remember people saying to us like, there's just so much joy.
In that space and so much togetherness and so much community inherently in that practice, that really broke the mold of what most people knew as yoga. And so we have this inside joke that we would say AcroYoga is full of strong women and sensitive men. And it was just, we were looking at really balancing those polarities.
And for a lot of people that had found yoga boring. It was an exciting way to enter for people, especially men who felt like yoga really rewarded flexibility. It was an opportunity to really reward strength as well, and that balance and connection and that essentially we can do more together than we can alone.
So that was a big way that we started really experimenting with what was possible when you combine unlikely elements and take them to unlikely places. [00:06:00]
Tahira Endean: Uh, I love that. I also love that Anthony now knows what AcroYoga is.
Anthony Vade: I do. I, yeah. In the lead up to this before, before we jumped on and hit record, shared my ignorance to, to what it was, and now I'm deeply interested 'cause I, I am quite proud of my strength and definitely have a sensitive side too.
And if I hear another ambient whale song, piece of music as part of some sort of meditative practice, yeah. I dunno what I'll do. I really, I hear that in this concept of this forced connections. I'm interested in this idea of creating a fun, joyful experience to something that traditionally felt the devil's advocate here, yoga feels either too new agey, fluffy, airy fairy, or it feels a bit culty and a bit weird as well.
So as you went into dealing with some of the prejudices around. That perception of it. And as you forced this new connection for this fun and joyfulness, what did you have to do to get people [00:07:00] to understand that? To buy into it?
Jenny Sauer-Klein: Yeah, that's a good question. Anytime you're pioneering something, you always have to overcome that initial resistance.
And for us, sometimes it was fear, like people would see oppose like a, something that we were gonna be working on in that class or that workshop, and they would see it and right away think, I can't do that. That's not for me, right? And so we would have to take them over the time that we were teaching. I learned more and more how to make that transformation gradual and useful and incremental, right?
So every step of the way, people are gaining confidence, they're gaining trust in themselves, in each other. So you're taking these very small steps. That are adding up to all of a sudden you're flying in the air and you're like, oh my God, I never thought that I was capable of doing this. But because we went slowly and gradually and you're positively reinforcing each step and making it like each little rung on the ladder, I like to think about now that when I do curriculum design or I design agendas for events like this, so much [00:08:00] informs how I think about it.
Because when you do a physical practice. You can see where there's missing rungs on the ladder, where you made people reach too far too fast and they get afraid, they lose trust and they literally fall and potentially hurt themselves, right? But we bring that into other kind of environments. Then we're looking at psychological safety and how do we create those places where people feel safe, emotionally, psychologically, and perhaps spiritually.
So all of that translates. So I think part of it was overcoming people's own. Fears, resistances, limiting beliefs about their own ability. And part of the beauty of the practice is, yeah, you're not doing this by yourself, you're doing it in community, you're doing it with other people, and we're all trying our best.
So we would say like the only thing you have to bring is like a willing heart and an open mind, and anything is possible. Like we can teach you how to do this and you are capable just as you are. And that was really helpful. And then I had a whole body of work that I now call play on purpose that I developed over the years that I would [00:09:00] do these kind of just playful icebreakers, tee building activities that weren't acrobatics, they weren't AcroYoga, it wasn't yoga or acrobatics, it was just get to know you, right?
Be vulnerable. Some storytelling, some movement games that would create that psychological safety, that trust and rapport between strangers. That would give them the confidence and the willingness to say, try some more risky physical things. So we had to do that first. And oftentimes we would start our sessions in a circle, we called it circle ceremony.
So people would be sitting in a whole circle and we would do some coordinated movements like putting our hands on each other's shoulders, doing some leaning or standing up and leaning on each other in different ways. So you start to feel that. Unified field of the group and that we're all here to support you and to help you access feats of daring that you wouldn't be able to do by yourself, and to give people the confidence and willingness to try that.
So that was like, I think part of how we overcame some of those obstacles.
Anthony Vade: That's really [00:10:00] fantastic to hear 'cause it's such a visceral way in the nature of Aura Yoga, you are physically involved, there are physical risks. You can really connect with the body experience of that. But it's such a strong metaphor for change in general, that we need to put trust in others.
We need to trust our own strength and to hear, we often talk about this. Challenge we have with especially big corporate teams, not seeing the change as needing that trust and that level of belief in both the individual and the organization and the team. And then we talk about how can we make it fun to help that come in.
And it's a big challenge in some of the business teams that fund is seen as a risk factor rather than. Rather than an opportunity. And ra in your book, uh, our KPI is Joy Plug. We talk a lot. You talk a lot about how you bring this joyful element into interchange and in into the experiences. Do, do you have anything to add along those lines in this transition between the physical experience, the uncertainty in the role of fun and [00:11:00] joy when it comes to that
Tahira Endean: there just clearly there's a need for fun and joy.
There's so many things I appreciated about the conference for conferences and we go to a lot of events. That are designed for event planners and we all kind of test things. We all have a lot of design constraints, whether that's the sponsors must be shown appreciation on a general session stage, or the audience is on headsets.
So we all have these constraints. But we don't show off stuff or try stuff, but then we don't talk about why we did that. One of the things that we had done a million years ago, it feels like at event camp that you did as well. At the beginning, you told people a little bit about the structure and the why of the things that would happen, and then at the end of the day, you broke it down into your framework and showed a very clear pathway as to where we had started and the steps you had taken along the way to get us there.
And. That could, that anybody could apply. It's not, it's not a secret formula that only you [00:12:00] have. And yes, of course you can come in and help people do that, but really it's a gift to the community to say, here's something that you could also do to enhance your events and make them stronger. And play is part of it.
So one of the things we did at IMEX this year was we incorporated a lot more community sessions, but that was really a direct response too. At the beginning of the year when the US Surgeon General left, he wrote a prescription for America, and that prescription for America said, gosh darn it, you people are lonely.
And we thought, gosh darn it. Events are the antidote to that. So let's really lean on that and give people lots of ways to build community, show belonging, show people that they matter. We brought in some speakers really specific to that, created a track around it and shared why we were doing that. Along the way made it very purposeful.
And we also brought in play. So you know, we had Brent Bushnell who has a company where they [00:13:00] build virtual playgrounds and he just showed up and people could just stop what they were doing and just virtually play a game. But with against 10 or 20 people, it's like really, I think intentional play.
Connection over that intentional play is something that we just don't do enough of and that we're humans and play does build trust. You don't wanna play a game where somebody cheats. So if we can set it up at the beginning with a bit of play, build a bit of trust, and then go into those deeper conversations or moments, it makes a really rich difference to that.
And in any size of group, it's, you had about 150, we had over 15,000. We don't need to be so focused on the size of the overall group in order to bring in intentional play, thoughtfulness, vulnerability, different conversations. To it. So I think I just, I feel so many like bravo moments and I can see Anthony's eyes lighting up and knowing that we have [00:14:00] indeed found a kindred spirit.
Yay. Which I think is really amazing. So you also, for a while you did the culture conference, which was more focused on HR and bringing things through. One of the things we talk about here is accessible disruption and change management, and. You've talked a little bit about the culture conference, definitely had its time, definitely served its purpose, did all of the things you wanted it to do, but now you're thinking maybe it's time to try something different.
Do you wanna talk a little bit about that with us?
Jenny Sauer-Klein: Sure. Yeah. Even going backwards. So after 10 years of building AcroYoga, we built it into a global movement with millions of practitioners around the world. And from the outside it would be like, why would you ever walk away from that? But inside. I was feeling like complete in some ways and I was feeling called to do something else and for whatever random reason I was called to consult for corporate America.
It was like the farthest thing from what I had been doing, and I think that's part of why it interested me [00:15:00] was being in a totally different environment, working with totally different people. I'd never had a corporate job in my life, so I didn't know what it would be like at all to be in that world, but I was curious.
How could I take the values of AcroYoga, which were a trust, connection, playfulness. How could I take some, the essence of some of these practices, not the yoga acrobatics and time massage, but again, that sense of playfulness, joy, fun connection, teamwork, community, and how could I make that relevant in a corporate context?
And so the culture conference was a, a very big avenue in which to do that. So I ran the conference for two years in 2017 and 18. Learned a lot, but there was a, we were thinking about accessible disruption. It was like I was such a newcomer to the field of culture that in so many ways it allowed me to take certain risks and do things differently because I had a fresh perspective.
But I also knew about creating psychological safety, creating groups and teams, like there were certain things I knew I felt like I could leverage. And having done events within AcroYoga for [00:16:00] FIF 10, 15 years, I knew some of that. But then the culture field and translating what I knew into corporate relevancy, that was new for me.
So that was a huge project. And then after having run that for a couple of years, I went through a major burnout. I had was going through IVF and fertility procedures at the time, so my hormones were totally out of whack. I was, I, because I have a history of being a perfectionist, I was putting so much into the conference.
And I had a board of advisors and one assistant, but otherwise it was really all me, and I took it so seriously and every design decision was so important that I just was working all day, all night, every day. It was insane. So anyway, after the second conference, I just had this huge burnout. I had to put it on the back burner, then COVID, then I had two children during COVID, so I have two little kids.
So it's always been this like, am I coming back to it or what's gonna happen with it? And after having done the [00:17:00] conference for conferences this fall, that just felt, and I, I just shared the idea with someone the other day and they were like, oh my God, that is so, so I think it's just peel, peeling back the layers of the onion where you're finding, I'm finding more and more what is my gift to give.
What is the thing that I'm most passionate about? I have limited time on this planet. What do I wanna do? And so even coming up to conference for conferences, I still had this question about what is the role of the culture Conference in my life and in my work? And it became clear to me through that process that while I really enjoyed the Culture conference, and I think it was a powerful experience for me and so many people that attended.
The conference for conferences is much more in my zone of genius and my zone of joy and the thing that I'm like so excited to iterate on. And so that was clear. Okay. Sunset, the Culture Conference brand. And I think that having left AcroYoga and going through that just such a deep and wide identity crisis after I left, taught me so much about [00:18:00] letting go, uh, letting go of even beautiful things that were really meaningful things.
I put so much time and energy into. And being able to recognize when it's just not the right fit anymore. And so when I left AcroYoga, I made a commitment to myself to follow what was most alive, even if it meant letting go of something that I had invested a lot of time and energy into. So I think it also taught me to not identify with my projects as much and to know that I'm a very creative, generative person.
And so I love creating new things. And that's just the. Nature of who I am, and to not fight that or be sad about letting things die because it's just transmuting form into something else that still carries those principles of trust, connection and playfulness. Teamwork, togetherness, like the purpose is still the same.
The forms are gonna change over time, and that's totally okay with me. So I try to be fully committed to each project and completely unattached. To where it goes, [00:19:00] and I found that is a really good way for me to work in the world.
Tahira Endean: I love that so much. I think I, I, yes, I would say that I would have done the same thing.
So it's when I started working in the industry, you know, I'd had a full other career first, but when I started in events, I thought I would just gonna have one job. I was gonna work in that job forever. I was gonna be amazing. And when I left that first job, there was a little bit of, oh, is this the right thing?
And, and since then I have changed jobs. Not just jobs, but actual entire trajectories every few years. And it's the same thing like each one has, some have been what you might consider an upward move, some have been lateral, but every single one of them has taught me something different that I then can bring forward into what I do next.
And I think that is much more satisfying and I think in the creative industries and in events. It's very easy for us to get married to the idea, but no, this is exactly how [00:20:00] my a b, c event is gonna look, must feel. Every detail must be exactly perfect, like you said. And it's impossible to have a perfect event 'cause all those messy humans show up.
So as soon as all the messy humans show up, we need to, it's not even to have planned A, B, C, and D, but there needs to be a, an allowance, a letting go of the idea so that it can be experienced in each individual's unique. Way. And, and I think again, just looking at, at IMEX and just watching all of those social feeds during and post show and everyone has their own experience with it.
And I think that's really beautiful and everyone's experience is different than everybody else's experience, which is really the way that events are meant to be, and especially at scale. And I think even although the conference for conferences was a much smaller group, you still didn't have just one thing people could do.
There was many pathways for people to follow. Different types of conversations. [00:21:00] Things that were gonna be meaningful to people, different types of experiences in what we could call break codes. But that's only 'cause that's a term that's familiar to us. I not very often, I get to color at an event. I still have my coloring up on the board that somebody else created a picture with me.
And interestingly to me, they wrote two words on the picture. They didn't know me at all. They literally sat down beside me. One minute before, I'm not even sure we knew each other's names at that point. And, and the words that she wrote it were intention and joy. Wow. I have a book that's called Intentional Event Design, a book that's called our KPIs Joy.
It's not, those are not words that just, I think spew out of people naturally when you sit down and just meet them. So that was really fascinating to me that the kind of environment that was created when I watched similar things happening in that space. And so it was really interesting how every piece did feel like it fit together.
But everybody did have an [00:22:00] individual journey. Again, I just think it was just a really, there were so many lessons in that that could be taken forward next year. Anthony, you'll be at the co, the conference for conferences 'cause we know it's gonna happen again.
Anthony Vade: I, there's something I'd like to, I'd like to unpack a whole bunch of that we just looked at.
I'd like to look at a bit more. The conference on conference and what makes it so different and where things are heading in the future. Given that I've also been through a lot of change, which I think is interesting that we all seem to embrace it in the way that we do. But of course, we're gonna transmute this form quickly from a conversational podcast into a quick, short break so we can hear from some sponsors if you want to hear ad free versions of this.
Here, extended versions, get access to a whole bunch of really interesting resources as well. Head on over to strategy table.co.co to sign up for your seat at the table and get access to all of those amazing resources. But we'll be back in just a second.
And we're [00:23:00] back. Okay. I need to know more about the conference on conferences. What made it so different to hear? You've shared a little bit, but perhaps Jenny, how do you see the conference on conferences being unlike other conferences, and what was your approach to that sort of intentional disrupting of a well established and honed model?
Jenny Sauer-Klein: Yeah, I think going from the. AcroYoga world where I was in the health and wellness industry, going to conferences in that format, and then transitioning into corporate kind of business conferences. That was 10 plus years ago. I was like, oh no, this is terrible. It was so disembodied, so intellectual, so heady, and frankly just boring.
So boring. And I think going back to this sense of play and fun, and one of my goals is to make learning fun again, like learning should be fun and children learn through play. It's like we are literally built to and through play. And so I wanted to bring that [00:24:00] sense of joyfulness and fun and playfulness back into the learning space and to subvert the paradigm.
I think there's something, I have three kind of event models that I talk about that I've coined just from seeing in the first one is what I call the flat line. It has a beginning, middle, and an end, and there's literally a flat line. Not much happens, and if you look at most conferences, they're built from four elements.
Keynote speakers, breakout workshops, fireside chats and channels. So mix and match in whatever order you want, but that's basically what it is. And then you stick on a happy hour at the end. So this is part of the reason why conferences are so ubiquitous, why they're such a low barrier to entry, because the model is plug and play, and audiences have low expectations because they're like, it's just gonna be the same.
Droning PowerPoint, slideshows talk at you, sit and listen. Passive observer bs. So I'm like, I think that there's just so much room for innovation and creativity, and I'm [00:25:00] not saying that we should throw out the conference model altogether and that there should never be another keynote. I think there's value to that, but when we look at, we have this, some conferences are online, some are virtual, some are hybrid.
But if we're thinking specifically about in person, and this is true either way, how can you think about maximizing the live? Group in-person experience, what can you do in that container that you can't do virtually, that you can't do asynchronously, that you can't do alone, or that you can't do in a one hour meeting?
So anything that could be done in those circumstances needs to be, not necessarily eliminated, but minimized, right? So you wanna minimize the information dissemination. And you wanna really play up the collaborative, interactive, engaging learning. And so part of the shifts I talk about in my company is called the primary shift, and it's one of the.
Main design frameworks that I work with when I consult for companies on events and or create my own events is what is the primary [00:26:00] shift? What is the main change you're trying to create with this event or experience? And usually people have their two, they know what their goals are, they know what their outcomes are, but they're not necessarily starting.
With the, from like, where is my audience? Or where is the paradigm like? And then once you have your from and your two, then you can track the arc of the experience and say, okay, now that I know where my audience is starting from then where I want them to end up, how am I gonna reverse engineer this journey?
And so for me it was really thinking about. Just like we're saying, I think there's some many people who are dissatisfied with the current conference paradigm, don't know how to change it, are afraid to make mistakes because once you get into this interactive, engaging, multi-directional conversation, wow, you're opening a big can of worms.
It feels really scary for most speakers, facilitators, organizers, because they don't necessarily know how to put parameters on that to keep it safe, to keep it focused, to keep it valuable. And so one of [00:27:00] my goals was how do I shift people who are scared, fearful, hesitant, resistant? To feeling confident in applying specific tools to help wow their audiences and keep them coming back for more.
So trying to create that value proposition where it's, if you take this little bit of risk and you're willing to color outside the line, then go outside the box. My guarantee to you is that your audience is gonna be grateful. They're gonna Thank you. You're gonna stand out from the crowd and they're gonna wanna come back next year to see what else you've got in store.
Like it doesn't take that much to stand out from the crowd in a conference environment, unfortunately. But the good news is that means, hey, try something new and it's probably gonna work, and your audiences are probably gonna be like, wow, that was amazing. I loved it. Especially when they feel that it's intentional that you're empathizing with them, that you're putting their experience first instead of, again, oftentimes where.
Trying to figure out how to balance the needs of the stakeholders, the [00:28:00] business, the sponsors, right? There's all these competing priorities when ultimately, ideally, we wanna be centering the experience of the attendees. And I think also shifting that paradigm from sage on the stage, right? Whoever the speakers or presenters are, and that we're just like a passive.
A sponge of an audience just soaking things up to, Hey, there's a lifetime of experience in this room. Like people are coming together because they wanna meet other people who care about this thing and they wanna geek out about it. So how do we create the spaces that allow for that in meaningful ways and.
For me, one of the best outcomes of an event is that people create meaningful relationships that last beyond that day or two days, right? So how do you plant those seeds during the event that they're making those meaningful connections, whether it's a new mentor, collaborator, client, employer, something that carries.
Beyond that event that changes their life in a meaningful way. I'll pause there 'cause I could go forever. But [00:29:00] those are some of the ways in which I was thinking about how do we shift the paradigm and how do we design for basically like an eight second attention span, which is what the worst of the research says.
So you cannot put a 45 minute keynote on stage, or definitely you can't do it virtually. You would literally just lose people and that's no one's fault. But all of these. Forms need to be upgraded to be meet the needs of a modern audience, which unfortunately has short attention spans and is lonely and is longing for connection and meaningful learning that they can apply directly to the problems they're trying to solve.
Anthony Vade: There's so much we can explore there. In terms of innovation cultures, we talk about them a lot at Strategy Table and the idea of disrupting the existing model. Where do you think the roadblocks are coming from in creating new kinds of sessions? I agree with you wholeheartedly. To ize probably speak at 20 to 30 events a year between the two of us, [00:30:00] and so often we meet with the organizers and say, Hey, we want to do a session that's.
Different. We want to be highly engaging, we want high interactivity. We don't want to be a keynote. And they say, ah, are you interested in a panel then? And I scream and I pull what little hair I still have remaining out and, and the roadblock often I think, isn't the attendees scared of the experience or unsure, but it's the other players with within the organization, whether it's at the events team, the middle management, or the exec.
Give from both of your perspectives and perhaps Jenny, we'll start with you. What do you see the biggest hurdle is for most willing disruptors or innovators, let's say, to change this model and to bring more sessions that that hit on the kind of areas that that you are putting on?
Jenny Sauer-Klein: So I think part of the challenge is, again, we have these kind of set models that we know.
And there's one approach which is try to take something that generally is meant for information dissemination and tends to be boring, like a panel or a keynote, and try to make it more interactive and engaging and we can make progress there like I [00:31:00] do think there's ways to do that. I talk about the five minute rule.
So when I teach experience design, the five minute rule is try to insert an element of engagement every five minutes in your content. Could be as simple as raise your hand if you've had this experience, or close your eyes and imagine this outcome, or write in your workbook what you're hoping to achieve in Q4.
Like anything, turn to a partner. And anytime you're shifting your audience from being a passive observer to an active participant, or ideally an active contributor, that's engaging people, right? And that's shifting the whole vibe. So you can do that in a panel, you can do it in a keynote, like you can do it, but it takes.
One, it takes planning, it takes thought, it takes intention, it takes strategy. That doesn't just happen naturally for most people. Like you actually have to work at doing that, and I think frankly, a lot of people don't wanna put that time and energy in. So that's part one. Then I think you can, so you can do that work and innovating the models that we have.
The other option is to look at what [00:32:00] are alternate models. Proven models, right? They're, some of them are more exploratory than others, but there are proven models like unconferences or hackathons that these are things that we had one of the pieces of conference for conferences, I had a series of breakouts, so four different breakouts on new models, alternative formats that you could.
Try that are inherently interactive and engaging and collaborative by nature, right? So it's like you can fight upstream where you can say, what are the models that exist that are tried and true, that have parameters, that have principles that we can apply so we're not just winging it, right? So I think that's the scary thing of winging it.
Not sure what the outcomes will be. So we did four breakouts on hackathons, on conferences. Fishbowls and using the arts and creativity in conference formats. And so I know like the woman who was leading the fishbowl, she felt like it bombed. She was feeling really bad afterwards about how it went and when I, she actually wrote a beautiful [00:33:00] LinkedIn post about it and I was like, Hey, like this is amazing because.
You tried and you put something out there and whether or not it went well, people were very engaged with it, and the learning is so valuable that because the whole point of the conference was to. Reflect and dissect how we're doing, what we're doing, what's working, what we would change, how we can impart this to other people.
So I think if you also drop the barrier to being transparent with your audiences, Hey, we're making an experiment. Hey, we're in this together. Hey, we wanna try something. Are you willing? Should we do this? And we'd love your feedback and let's iterate on this. I don't think we have to. Pretend that we have it all figured out.
And I do think, again, audiences appreciate being, getting a peek behind the curtain. I think that they appreciate knowing that presenters are on their edge as well, and it gives us all permission to be more human, to take risks, to try new things. We have to be modeling that in real time. So I think going into those inherently [00:34:00] collaborative formats or like peer hot seat, peer coaching, like what are the things that you can bring in that have a tried and true format that are inherently interactive and engaging is.
Part of the bridge, I think, to creating events that are far more rewarding for participants.
Anthony Vade: I like this idea of giving permission for experimentation, even with these tried and tested models. Alternative models, let's say, that we know work. Even just to have people buy into, Hey, this is an experiment.
Even though for us ahead of the curve, we know it's not, we know it's right and test. But to say we're going to this knowing it's a controlled experiment, that we are comfortable, that we can execute confidently and can have outcomes, but it is an experiment and you need to be okay with that Tira.
Tahira Endean: No, I agree.
And I think we can extrapolate that even farther and take not just event design, but take that into. What we're doing with corporate groups and with associations and association leadership and board members and all of those types of different groups that we're working with. And to say, you know what?
These [00:35:00] events, when we create them and we give you different opportunities for dialogue, this is a safe space. You know? So this isn't you talking to your customer necessarily, but this is you encouraging prototyping, testing, and creating different dialogues with your internal audience. Your internal participants, the ones that are gonna take you forward, and to create those safe spaces, I think is equally or potentially even more important than what we're doing at traditional events where people might expect a bit of experimentation, but the only way that anything moves forward in the world.
One small step at a time through dialogue, through discussion, and through people feeling a little bit vulnerable, a little bit brave, and we need to be, I think, more open to that and less shuttered on. We're already great. Yes, we're, yes, we're already great. And we [00:36:00] can together collaboratively be much greater, more incredible, more resilient.
And I think that we live in a complicated time. It's not gonna get less complicated. So the more that we can help people have spaces to build those tools and feel safe, I think it's just, it's a critical skill right now.
Jenny Sauer-Klein: Yeah, and I think piggybacking off of that from Brene Brown's work, she talks about creating a brave space.
So we can do our best to create safe spaces. We, we create co-create that together. But even more than that, can we create brave spaces? Can we invite people to take risks, to feel supported in experimenting and try new things? And in the beginning of the conference for conferences, one of the first things that I had to look a slide.
Up with a woman at the edge of a cliff, and I was like, Hey, I'm asking you to take risks and try new things. I also want you to know I'm at my edge, like after 25 years of designing and leading events. I am trying things here today that I have never done before. Things that feel scary to me, but I can't ask you to do it if I'm not doing [00:37:00] it myself.
So we're all in this together. Some of it's gonna go well, some of it may not. Whatever. The point here is to learn, right? If we're here to innovate, we have to be willing to take the risk. And then I said to people, if you experience things here that you love, take them. Use them, modify them. Emulate them like in your own events.
And if you experience things that you don't love, I hope it inspires you for the clarity of what you do wanna create. It's okay if people don't resonate with something as long as it, they can leverage that to the clarity of what they do want. I went to a very well established. Conference in the year that I was building the culture conference, and I think Hir and I spoke about this before and I hated it so much, like every aspect of it.
And I wrote pages and pages of notes. For what I wanted to do differently and that so deeply informed how I built the culture conference. I'm so grateful for that experience. Now I have no desire to go back to that conference. I feel like I got what I needed [00:38:00] out of it, but I got something very valuable from it.
So it's like, how can you also. Empower people to take the experience, like you were saying to here, it's like we're creating this group experience, but for each individual it means something different. So how can we also empower people, give them agency over how they experience the event and how they can metabolize that into something that's useful for them no matter what happens.
And I think that's also powerful in how we frame the experience for a participant.
Anthony Vade: We have a tradition on accessible disruption to end each podcast episode with a very definitive, powerful call to action, and you just gave it to us without even being prompted. So thank you for saving us our work as a host.
So instead, I'd like to spend the last minute or two as we wrap this thing up, get an idea of what's on the future horizon for Jenny and for conference on conferences. What is your next. Innovation look like and how can people connect with you to get involved and to participate in this kind?
Jenny Sauer-Klein: [00:39:00] Cool. I've got a few in store.
One thing I'm working on is launching a book into the world that's been on my desktop for many years. Called the primary shift, which is how to turn informational events into dynamic, engaging experiences. So all about this. My background is in theater before AcroYoga, so I've taken the dramatic arc from theater and storytelling and applied it to an events context.
So the model that to hear it was referring to where I reverse engineered the design of the event was using that dramatic arc template. So getting that out into the world. The second project I'm working on. Is creating a multimedia interactive performance meets talk meets workshop about building the global movement of AcroYoga.
So it would include live music images. Me doing AcroYoga while telling the story and then helping people in a workshop style format apply those movement building principles to their own life and work. So that's like a very, feels like it's bringing together a lot of the pieces that I've [00:40:00] done in my life in this culmination.
I'm really excited about creating and launching that. And then conference for conferences is coming back. I'm still deciding if it's gonna be end of 2026. Or early 2027, but I'm going to, this year it was just a one day conference. I only had three months to build it, so it was just an insane sprint. I would not recommend it, but it worked out.
So I'm giving myself at least a year for the next round, and we're gonna blow it out into full D two day event. So I already have lots of new, crazy ideas that I wanna try for the next round so people can find me. I'm jenny@theprimaryshift.com if you wanna learn more and. Right now you can also then the new website will be converted, so you'll be able to find us online@conferenceforconferences.com as well.
Tahira Endean: Jenny, it has been. I was just honestly like everything so far has just been such a pleasure and a delight and I look forward to whatever. I just know that there's gonna be something that we all are doing that is collaborative because, just because.
Jenny Sauer-Klein: [00:41:00] Yes. So
Tahira Endean: thank you so much for being with us today.
Jenny Sauer-Klein: Thank you.
I so appreciate it. It's always great to talk with people who get it and are on the same mission of joy, togetherness, collaboration, interactive, engaging events and experiences and change, accessible change.
Anthony Vade: Yeah. I've got a feeling we're gonna be talking a lot more, Jenny, just so it just feels very natural.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening out there in the world. You can pick up additional resources, re-listen to this podcast as well on your favorite platforms, and of course, at strategy table.co, where you can get a seat at the table and have these kinds of conversations with additional resources that can help you make disruptive moments and change accessible within your.
World. We will be back with another episode with more thought provoking content really soon. But for now, thank you for listening.
Podcast Host: Accessible Disruption is written and spoken by Tahira and [00:42:00] Dean, Ryan Hill, Anthony Vade, and their guests. All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Pathways Inc. Podcast production by experience, design change, find more information at strategy.