Hello friends,
Many thanks for reading The Quest #124, your weekly round-up of tips and insights to help you design and lead exceptional online sessions that your group members will love.
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Do you remember your first live concert?
I do. It was the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour. 
It was the summer of 1989. I went with my best friend Alex. We were two of 60,000 fans who were packed into Toronto’s biggest outdoor stadium to see the show.
I felt a rush of adrenaline.
The crowd sensed that the concert was about to start. The stadium went silent. Lights flooded the stage. The band members burst into “Start Me Up”.
The show was immaculately produced.
The show producers used everything in their toolkits. Costumes. Choreography. Strobe lights. Dry ice. Even fireworks.
It was multisensory.
The show producers created a series of unforgettable moments that made the audience feel something – awe, exhilaration, and even melancholy.
It was unforgettable.
The concert producers gave the audience an experience that they would remember that concert for the rest of their lives.
Live sessions are events.
When you lead a live online session you may not have strobe lights and fireworks. But you have music, visuals, digital tools, and moments of group connection. These are your tools for creating an immersive and transformative experience for your group members.
How can you think like an event producer? That’s our Quest for this week.
How to Create the Perfect 3-day Event with Jay Clouse and Bari Baumgardner
The Power of Moments Chip Heath and Dan Heath
6 proven tips that will help you banish bad design from your live sessions
How to Create the Perfect 3-day Event with Jay Clouse and Bari Baumgardner
A Creator Science podcast with host Jay Clouse. In this episode, he interviews Event Producer Bari Baumgardner. She built Tony Robbins a “Zoom stadium” for Unleash the Power Within! when the pandemic hit. She estimates that 75,000 people tuned in. 
This podcast is a rare opportunity to get the inside scoop on event production, and tips for designing powerful live sessions.
Baumgardner outlines three steps that she follows when creating a live online event:
1/ What is your”big why”?
2/ Who are you meant to serve?
3/ What are the non-negotiables?
And then she reverse engineers everything from there.
What would change in your live sessions if you were to think like an event producer?
Creator Science Podcast with Jay Clouse
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
So much of what makes live events special is that they create memorable moments for the audience.
This book from Made to Stick authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath is all about what makes for “defining moments” and how to create more of them.
The authors boil positive memorable moments down to four elements
1/ Elevation – experiences that rise above the everyday.
2/ Insight – moments that re-wire our understanding of ourselves and/or the world.
3/ Pride – times that capture us at our best.
4/ Connection – moments that are strengthened because we share them with others.
Here are my 5 biggest takeaways from the book for designing powerful sessions:
We must learn to think in moments. Recognize where “the prose of life needs punctuation.”
Remarkable moments shouldn’t be left to chance. You need to plan for them and invest in them.
You can engineer defining moments. You can build “peak experiences” by adding active and immersive elements that spark emotions.
Break the script. Disrupt routines and welcome humanity and spontaneity into the system.
Create shared meaning. Design a mission that binds people together.
What are the key moments in your session or event that you could engineer?
6 proven tips from experience designers that will help you banish bad design from your live sessions
A lot of crappy online experiences can be chalked up to bad design.
Here is a Twitter thread I published today with 6 proven tips from experience designers that will banish bad design from your sessions.
TL;DR
1/Know your audience
2/Have a clear aim
3/Define the transformation
4/Plan a powerful opening
5/Prioritize connection
6/Design the closing
What tip helps you banish bad design? Join the conversation over on Twitter.
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Creatively yours,
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