What if LinkedIn came up with a Conference Product?

“LinkedIn Conference”, a product idea aimed to enhance the conference networking experience of attendees

I’m trying to get some feedback to help iterate my design solutions. For the purpose of this article, I didn’t include all the detailed processes that I went through (i.e research, analyze, ideation).

If you have questions or feedback, please comment below or email me at gblee@gatech.edu. Please feel free to skip to the designs further down below.

TL;DR

#1. Benefits for Conference Attendees

• Network with other attendees online not only during the conference but also, before and after the conference
• No need to install a new conference app for each conferences — LinkedIn Conference is the only app you need
• Just like on LinkedIn, you can directly request connections, send messages and view LinkedIn profiles of other attendees on LinkedIn Conference
• In addition to that, you can manage your conference schedule, request appointments to meet at the conference and take notes of others to remember better about them for the future

#2. Benefits for Conference Organizers

• Free to create a conference page with detailed information
• Make people aware of the conference by getting on the list full of other conferences or through Advertisements
• See how attendees interact with each other based on real-time and aggregated data
• Compare past years data to this years data to improve the conference quality and logistics
• Higher satisfaction by the attendees
• No need to pay third party companies to make conference apps for them

#3. Benefits for LinkedIn

• Attract more users to register for LinkedIn
• Profit from Advertisements (i.e promoted conferences, collaboration with companies like Expedia for travel suggestions near conferences)
• Become THE place where people come to search for upcoming conferences

#4. How is this different from Facebook Events? (Recently Updated)

During my process (and listed somewhere in this article), I found out that Facebook Event is for many other things in addition to conferences, just like local events and parties between friends. However, LinkedIn Conference is focused only at Conferences and to allow attendees to easily interact with each other with their LinkedIn profiles.

On Facebook, many people don’t put their work information such as company, job titles, years of work experience, past companies and more. However, LinkedIn profile is similar to your “resume” where people come to see your past experiences and what you’re currently doing “professionally.”

During research, I discovered that most people wish to connect with others via LinkedIn rather than sharing their Facebook profiles to other people because some want to separate work and professional life completely.

Introduction

There are hundreds and thousands of professional conferences across the globe. While a lot of people come to seek new insights, learn and present, a huge chunk of people also look for networking opportunities with other attendees.

However, initial discoveries were made that actually, there are some gaps in how attendees network with others not only during the conferences but also, before and after the conferences. Therefore, the motivation to work on this project began there.

Ultimately at the end, I came up with a product idea called, “LinkedIn Conference” and it was a decision I made based on the findings throughout my design process.

Problem Statement

“Create a solution for conference attendees who want to efficiently network with other people not only during the conferences but also before and after the conferences”

Throughout my research process, I discovered two situations where networking opportunities generally occur during conferences.

1. Natural Interaction: Interactions through designated networking hours (i.e coffee hours) OR anytime, anywhere throughout the conferences.
2. Planned Interaction: Interactions that generally occur from scheduled meetings or appointments aided by multi-functional conference apps (i.e booking an appointment with other attendees, sending messages) or social media channels — To see an example of a conference app, please visit here

For large conferences, both natural interaction and planned interaction occurred due to the conference apps being available. However, for small conferences without conference apps, the networking opportunities were heavily depended on natural interaction. But regardless, in a bigger picture, pain points existed for both situations.

Pain Points: Before the Conference

Example of a pain point before the conference

#1. Incomplete or unavailable attendee list

• Sometimes, attendees want to have a list of people attending the same conference because they want to begin networking with others even before the conference begins. They search for attendees with similar characteristics (i.e job titles, companies and known connections) and wish also to get a chance to meet them during the conference.

#2. Attendees need to create their own profiles on conference apps

• Most conference apps ask the attendees to generate their own profiles by manually entering their information. This becomes a tedious process which is one of the reason why the attendee lists are generally incomplete before the conference starts. Sometimes, people just want to list their LinkedIn profile because it already contains those information.

#3. Another app to download for this conference?

• For each conferences, there are different apps which means, the attendees need to download them every time they attend a new conference. There, the attendees need to recreate their profiles and get used to the apps at the same time. There’s also a high chance that these apps wouldn’t remain on their phones once the conferences are over.

Pain Points: During the Conference

Example of a pain point during the conference

#1. The only way to network is to actually go and talk to people

• For conferences that don’t provide apps (for scheduling meetings or messaging), the only way to actively network with others is to participate in networking hours or randomly talk to other attendees nearby. However, for some, this could be quite intimidating. They might want to get to know them first (online) before actually confronting them face-to-face.

#2. Attendees that you end up talking to may not fit your interest

• For some, networking with others who share similar characteristics such as job title is more productive and meaningful than meeting people who don’t share any values. However, this isn’t always the case during networking hours.

Pain Points: After the Conference

Example of a pain point after the conference

#1. Hard to remember names and faces of other attendees

• When attendees interact with one another and leave the scene, they often forget the names of others — some are hard to spell out and faces can be forgotten much more easily. Not to mention, matching names with faces is even harder. This becomes a problem when they decide to connect with the people they’ve interact via social media (i.e Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). If they can’t find them online, there is no way for them to reconnect with others unless they got a hold of their business cards or the conference organizers provide that information.

#2. Hard to remember the conversations exchanged

• Remembering names and faces are hard but, trying to remember the conversations that were exchanged is even harder. When attendees reach out to reconnect with others later in the future, referencing where they have met and the things they talked about could be helpful to kickoff the conversation.

#3. Need to manually find other attendee’s social media accounts

• Some conference apps provide direct links (social media icons) to the attendees’ social media accounts if they are provided by them. But, for conferences that don’t offer this, the attendees need to do some manual work by remembering their names and searching online.

#4. Personal notes took during the conferences are scattered

• Some people take personal notes at the conferences such as important things they learned from each sessions or information about other attendees that they met to better remember about them. However, unless they store those kinds of information in one place, all of those could easily disappear (if the conference apps are uninstalled or the notes are lost)

Why LinkedIn?

• LinkedIn’s mission is, “connecting the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful” which fits with the project
• LinkedIn is the most popular professional social media platform
• People use LinkedIn most of the time to network with other people and this would allow them easily add connections, send messages and schedule appointments
• People are actively posting and sharing contents that are related to careers, conferences and etc
• LinkedIn already has a family of different apps like Slideshare and Jobs that people log in through their LinkedIn account
• How is this different from Facebook Events? — The events created on Facebook are really diverse. But this idea is just for conferences which I believe LinkedIn is in already well positioned for this

Designs with Features Explanations

*The product is NOT real, I had to manually create the designs on Sketch and for that, I tried very hard to make things consistent with other LinkedIn products.

On mobile, please click on the images to expand them for a larger view.

Features

• View posts made by your connections who are talking about various conferences
• Discover conferences that your connections are planning to attend, are currently at and hear feedback about them
• Create a conference page (only offered via web)

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• Showing the posts allow you to discover new conferences and hear the most recent news about them from your connections
• It could also be an effective advertisement factor for the conferences to be seen to other people in this way
• For web view, additional right column space could also be used to display advertisements that are related to conferences (i.e promoted or nearby conferences)

Features

• Option to view the conferences that you are going to, went to and are interested in attending
• View detailed information about individual conferences by clicking on each of them to get to the conference pages
• Get organized with your conferences and receive recent updates (i.e ticket information, promotions, news) made by the conference organizers

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• Option to create different conference groups to manage conferences even more efficiently (assuming there will be a lot of conferences in the list as time passes by)
• Push alarm notifications are triggered when conference organizers post recent updates to their conferences

Features

• View detailed information about the conference (i.e date, location, schedule, keynote speaker information, website, attendee information, recent updates, photos/videos, sponsors)

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• The information about the conference will be curated by the conference organizers (page owners)
• Recent updates are for the conference organizers to provide updated information about the conference (i.e ticket sales, modified schedule, promotions)
• Top Sponsor information could benefit the companies to have presence
• Photos/videos are uploaded either by the conference organizers (showcase, promote) or collected when people post on the “Discussion”
• More advertisements could be shown with the partnership from companies like Expedia (hotel, flight, rental car) to guide people to make travel reservations for the conferences

Features

• You can post anything about this specific conference which will also be shown on “Home / Feed”
• Interact with other attendees throughout the conference journey

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• By having a dedicated discussion page for each conferences, anyone can easily find real-time posts about the conference (also archived for future)
• View LinkedIn profiles of people who are posting on discussion to build connections

Features

• For each conferences, you can view who’s going to that conference (direct connections & everyone else on LinkedIn)
• Filter options are available to find other attendees that you might be interested in meeting (i.e same job title, location)
• Easily request connections, message other people and view their LinkedIn profiles
• Engage in a chat and request meeting appointments to meet at the conference

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• InMail feature could also be used in addition to messaging
• Editable placeholder message upon requesting connection or sending a message such as, “Hi GB, we are attending Digital Summit Conference together…” which could make the request more personal

Features

• Discover conferences around the world and filter them based on your interest (or type in search)
• Find out how many of your direct connections are planning to attend and have easy access to view their LinkedIn profiles
• Also, see how many people on LinkedIn have RSVP’ed with an easy access to their LinkedIn profiles
• View conference pages for more details by clicking on each of them

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• Right now, there isn’t a place where all the conferences that are happening around the world are listed. Therefore, by having a Discover tab with people being able to find conferences based on their interests is definitely unique. Since it’s going to be free for conference organizers to create a conference page, there could be a lot of conferences that become listed that people can find. For organizers, it’s an easy way to promote their conferences through LinkedIn (could also be boosted via paid Advertisement?)
• Viewing a full list of attendees allows the people to connect, message and schedule appointments with others even before the conference begins (or during and after the conference). Also, they are able to see their friends or coworkers that are also attending a specific conference and reach out to them to reconnect there

Features

• Take personal notes at conferences (i.e lecture notes, learnings, to-do list)
• Take notes about attendees who you’ve met at the conference (upload photos, videos, links) — this helps to remember better about them in the future (store information)
• Select between different conferences and view notes taken
• Pin important notes to the top
• Search for keywords inside all your notes to easily find what you’re looking for

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• One app stores-it-all — the personal notes you took during the conference and the notes of other attendees are now stored in one app (like mentioned before, they are usually scattered around different conference apps or physically stored)
• Indicate those who also attended the same conference with the conference name and easy access to its conference page (i.e “Also attended UX Conference in March 2017”)
• When creating a new note, you need to specify the conference name and also, search for the person who you’re taking a note of. If that person doesn’t appear on the list (if they didn’t RSVP), you can invite them to RSVP or install the app

Features

• Send messages to other attendees before, during and after the conference
• Ability to request appointments to meet during the conference (and to modify / cancel)
• Search for previous messages based on keywords
• Apply filters (i.e connections, locations, companies, people who attended certain conferences) to find specific people

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• LinkedIn already has messages but this (conference message) is specifically for interacting with other attendees which helps to get organized and revisit later if needed
• When requesting appointments, the availabilities of the other person will be shown and this is depended on their side of the schedule

Features

• Manage schedule for each upcoming conferences
• View personal schedules for past conferences — could be useful when trying to find people met at a specific conference
• View detailed information about each upcoming appointments or schedule with options to modify
• See pending appointment requests made with option to cancel
• Request a new appointment to others attendees
• Add new schedule (i.e opening keynote, workshops, sessions, block out time)

Thoughts / Ideas / Explanations

• People who accepts your appointment requests will automatically be shown in your calendar with time that has been preset
• Push notification alarm for reminders to upcoming schedules
• It could also cool if you can see who have RSVP’ed to the sessions that you are planning to attend

Features

• Each profile clicks from LinkedIn Conference are directed to LinkedIn app / website’s profile views (there is no LinkedIn Conference profile view)
• For each profile views of people who have ties to you (i.e attended same conference, you’ve met), a short snippet or card will be shown. This could also drive people to use LinkedIn Conference (drive traffic)

Thoughts / Ideas

• Huge potential to make more meaningful connections via LinkedIn because they share similarities (conference)

Benefits for Conference Organizers & LinkedIn?

What would be the benefit for organizers to spend time creating a conference page?

• It’s free to create a conference page and once created, it will be listed on “Discover” so that more people can find it
• Chance to be shown in the Ads as nearby conferences for many people who are using LinkedIn Conference
• They can see the numbers of people who are both interested to attend and are planning to attend with access to their LinkedIn profile view. This could alert the organizers to send messages, offer discounts and more
• Organizers can also see their past conferences to see who attended before to remind them that there are new conferences coming up soon
• By curating the conference page well, it allows people to get rich information, interact with each other on the page (via “Discussion”) and to network with each other before, during and after the conference through messages and setting up appointments
• Idea: Organizers could pay to promote their conferences (Ads) on both LinkedIn Conference and LinkedIn (cross advertising) to get more attention. There could also be Ad data shown of how many LinkedIn users were reached and came via this Ad
• Idea: Provide aggregated and real-time data just like what other conference apps offer about the attendees’ interactions during the conference. (Offer data plan, ability to compare data for each year etc — potentially overtake the conference app market)
• Idea: Include more features such as surveys, polls, votes and more to allow attendees to interact with each other even more

What would be the benefit for LinkedIn to make this product?

• Get more users to register for LinkedIn
• Drive Ad revenue (i.e promoted conferences, potential collaboration with Expedia or other traveling companies for hotel, rental car, flight booking near specific conferences)
• Earn money from providing different data plans for the organizers to view real-time or aggregated data about their conferences
• Ultimately becomes the best place to search for upcoming conferences
• Help more people make meaningful connections via LinkedIn
• Collect rich data on people’s usage of LinkedIn Conference

Thank you so much for reading and if you have any questions or feedback, please comment below or reach out to me at gblee@gatech.edu or message me on LinkedIn