Picture the end of a great women’s conference. The room is electric, the speaker gets a standing ovation, and women drive home feeling like something finally shifted. By Wednesday, that feeling can be gone. A month later, the conference can be a nice memory and a tote bag.
If you’re planning the event, you want more than that. So do I.
What I want her to leave with
I want a woman to walk away with an aha moment that shifts something in her life. A small domino that may trigger the next one and the next one, until a year later she feels more proud of herself than she ever thought possible. Most times all the dominos won’t fall overnight. But once they do, you want to see the whole thing go down.
That’s the change I want to work toward. The applause at the end of a talk can’t tell you whether it will happen.
The question she takes home
Why do I keep doing the thing I swore I was done doing?
The boundary that lasts a week. The goal that gets restarted every Monday. The opportunity she talked herself out of before anyone else could.
A woman can leave a conference feeling capable and still face the same decision on Tuesday. What can she use then? Did the talk help her recognize something she hadn’t noticed? Give her words for it? Leave her with a question she actually wants to answer?
That’s what I want the message to do. Give her something to work with after the feeling wears off.
Give the conversation somewhere to go
The keynote doesn’t have to carry the entire event. As a planner, you can give women time to think about what they’ve heard instead of sending them straight into the next thing.
That might mean discussion questions at the tables after the talk. A breakout where women can work through an idea. A follow-up email a week later that brings them back to the question they left with.
Those aren’t guarantees of change. They’re ways to keep the conversation open. When we discuss your event, I’d like to know what comes before and after the keynote, as well as what you want from the talk itself.
Think about her a year from now
The standing ovation is nice. But when I think about what I want a woman to take away, I think about her a year later, proud of herself and what she did next.
She has a life to go back to. Whatever she decides to change has to happen there. Your conference can matter without being the place where everything gets finished.
Let’s talk about your event
If you’re planning a women’s conference, retreat, leadership event, or faith-community gathering, tell me about the women in your room. What are they dealing with? What do you want them to leave thinking about or doing differently?
Use the “Discuss your event” button on my homepage at sageoutloud.com. We can talk about whether my message fits what you’re planning.