Barriers to attending Events

I have conducted very few public events and lots of internal (company) events related to knowledge sharing in tech space. In this post I want to talk about barriers for participants to attending public events.

Let’s start with in-person events. I’ll take an example of a knowledge sharing event which is open for everyone and free too. Usually such events need some space for people come together, relax and sit, to listen to the speaker share their learnings. At times, the event also has food/snacks/drinks and a space for networking with other people.

In such in-person events, it becomes pretty important for the organizers to have a good knowledge about the count of people attending so that they can plan for the event. This is true for any event that people plan, where enough space and food is needed. How does the organizer / event planner know the count of people? The age old concept of RSVP comes in.

People RSVP is some way or the other depending on how the organizer is organizing the event. Let’s take an online solution for example - Meetup. People signup, login and RSVP for the event. This way the organizer knows the count. At times it’s not all that easy - sometimes people RSVP and then don’t show up. Food gets wasted, things get wasted. Sometimes people don’t RSVP and show up! That’s a bit weird huh? ;) This is very easily possible. Some people just don’t have the time to do all the tons of signup and login and then RSVP, but they do have the time to show up for the event. Also, if you think about it, some RSVP methods / processes - it can be really tedious, so that’s another possible reason because of which people just don’t go through with it at times. I have noticed some online solutions which have been very bad - I had to literally give tons and tons of information about myself to register for the event. At some point, I wasn’t sure if that much struggle was required.

So “If your RSVP process is tedious, Your event better be worth it!”

The worst I can think of is - an event which is open for everyone, free, and is about helping the community, for example sharing knowledge, experiences, but the organizers ask the participants to do RSVP and ONLY allow people who have RSVPed. That’s mostly crazy! I do understand that sometimes there can be space or other constraints but I don’t think it’s so much of a problem always, not every event is crowded with tons and tons of people where the organizer is faced with a difficult situation. So if it isn’t a problem, I think there must be almost 0 barriers to attending an event, and everyone should be welcome as much as possible, and NOT RSVPing should NOT be a reason for NOT letting someone to an event - as that’s just sad.

There might be some sad exceptions to this though - based on the constraints of the event. For example, when the event is too famous and almost everyone loves it and everyone tries to attend it - given it’s an in-person event, the physical space is limited - then the organizers have to sadly say no to people who didn’t register, if they can’t accomodate them as it’s already crowded enough in the current space. These are just some hard situations, where one cannot help stop it. Sometimes there are few constraints, such as physical space in this case. I have known some events where event organizers personally call people who have registered and check if they are coming, as the seats are limited. I guess the participants are usually truthful over the phone. Also, a few such events also provide swag to people who RSVP and come. So the “RSVP"ing becomes a totally big thing to do.

Now, if you are an organizer, ask yourselves, how easy or hard it is for someone to be part of your community and to attend your events. Make the lives of your participants easier, not harder - that must be the goal of event organizers if the goal is to help the community. Remember your goals in every step of your organizing work.

We only spoke about in-person events and how the RSVP process helps organizers in some ways, but can be a possible barrier for participants. Now, let’s move to virtual events, which has become the “norm” or a “new normal” as people say it during this COVID-19 situation in the world.

Virtual events have their own pros and cons. Taking the example of knowledge sharing virtual events in the tech space, I have noticed that it’s a booming domain - almost everyone is doing webinars and what not. It’s actually pretty great! But, the one thing that I do note is - there are still some barriers. I have noticed such barriers in almost any corporate thing. There’s always a catch when they give you something for free - they also get something from you.

For example, let’s say you go to a website, and they provide a free ebook, usually it’s not exactly free - you pay them by giving your email ID and then they email you their free ebook and also start spamming you with all their product details and what not. The idea is that, the knowledge comes at a cost - you need to help them with the Advertisement campaign, sales campaign etc. In today’s world, I know a lot of people who are very conscious about sharing their email IDs, which they consider very private, and many should consider it private. As you can clearly see, giving the email ID may be a barrier for many of those people who consider their email ID precious and private and that’s their choice.

I firmly believe in free and open knowledge, and that it has the power to change the world. But some of these corporates are just not so much into free and open knowledge, they have other intentions for their products and they try to get something in return. Not sure if that’s really free and open knowledge to me. But many seem to be okay with it. 🤷‍♂️

This mindset has also moved to many open and free virtual events, where I can see organizers ask the participants to register - and only then the participants get a link to join the virtual meeting of the event. If it’s an open and free event to help the community, why can’t people just provide the all the details upfront and out in the open ? Are these things done to just make people join your community by logging in, providing their email address and what not?

If you are an event organizer I would recommend you to think about your participants and what you are asking of them when hosting an event, and make them do only the things that are really necessary / needed - ideally I would expect it to be 0.

I do know of some possible exceptions - where it’s important for organizers to ask participants to RSVP and can’t accept people who haven’t RSVPed. One such exception that I have noticed is in virtual workshops where there are many mentors to conduct the workshop hands on with the participants - since there will be a fixed number of mentors, they can support only so much participants - and given the event being virtual, it’s very easy for someone to RSVP, when it’s open and free - so it’s very possible that there might be a flood of registrations. In such cases, the organizers are left with no choice but to limit the number of seats available for the virtual event and stop registrations when that number reaches - as they can’t mentor more people than that number. They do consider attrition too, for this number. So yeah, you sadly have to say no to people who haven’t RSVPed and also give unique link to the virtual meeting so that only peoeple who have RSVPed can attend, and usually such links cannot be shared with others - as that will cause more people to join and mentors can’t handle the huge number of people during the workshop.

In my ideal world, if someone’s advocating for free and open knowledge, there should be 0 barriers to access it, with very few rare exceptions. And barriers can be anything

“Ping me to know more” “DM me for the link” “DM me for answers” “Login and register for the event with All your details” and more!

Try to convert these into more easier and open and easy to access things. DONT ever be a gatekeeper, if your are an event organizer. Your event is truly open only if the gates to the event are truly open.

This post has been inspired by the fact that I’m going to host an event soon in a few weeks and I want to give away the link to our event’s Zoom meeting, instead of forcing people to join more and more platforms and register for events to just get the Zoom link to the event. I think I can do it only after I have reached a consensus with my team, so waiting to discuss with the organizing team :)