Part of creating an educational conference is to help attendees learn.
However, it is well documented, from Herman Ebbinghaus in 1885, that we forget a significant part of what we learn. Between days 2 to 7, we’ve already forgot upwards of 80% of what we learned!
Work that was completed in Australia shows that just small increments of time over the first 2-30 days after learning something new can have result in a significant improvement in content retention.
One of the key pieces to add to your communication with learners, specifically after a program, is sending bite size takeaways within 7 days of the conference and then at 30 days.
Even better is to get key takeaways from other attendees and share them with everyone. This adds connection between attendees and adds some status to those that get to share their takeaways.
For additional info on The Forgetting Curve, you can find it at Wikipedia:
(The original uploader was Icez at English Wikipedia. – Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is/was here., Public Domain)
Photo by Silas Köhler on Unsplash