(Note: This post is about conferences at large and not about any specific event).

As an early stage venture capital investor, I have to attend a lot of conferences. Unfortunately, the marginal value of each such is diminishing. The typical startup or business conference all look the same now. The speakers are similar, the panels are similar, the format is similar and dare I say, even the food looks the same!

As both an attendee and a speaker at a conference, I am interested in the following:

Fresh, Differentiated and Curated points of view

Most information or gyaan is readily available on the internet. There are a few, additional things that one is seeking:

• Inspiration

• Personalisation to the context of the attendees

• New Data

If the speakers or panelists are not focussed on delivering on one of these attributes, then its a wash. The only way to ensure this freshness of content is to have a lot of preparation and visibility into the content before it is being presented on stage. There's NO other way to do it. And less than 5% of sessions bother to do that. In fact, I would go a step further and say that the content of the session (and including any preparation questions and/or Q&A) should be made available to the program committee and possibly even the conference attendees so they can give feedback, even before the event has started (or certainly before the session)!

Another challenge in conferences is the utter disdain for keeping to the time. Often its not the organisers but the panelists or speakers or such. There has to be a "Time Czar" that enforces this rigorously.

Effective and Efficient People Networking

The real value I still find in all conferences is meeting of the attendees, including the speakers. Typically, I spend most of my time wandering the hallways, booth areas and/or the speaker's lounge (if I'm a speaker). One is looking for a handful of meaningful conversations and a few new connections (my rule of thumb is a modest 3 solid, connections for every day spent at an event).

Sadly, conferences are not optimised for that effective networking.

There are plenty of tracks and sessions but very little in ways of "connecting" with people that you may be mutually interested in meeting. I'm all for serendipity but the format should enable lots of "pairwise", semi-curated, perhaps even group interactions.

Here are some simple ways of doing that:

• Create "meeting areas" based on topics of interest that one has to pre-sign up for. For example, Hiring, Raising Money, Blockchain, Getting the first 1000 customers, Marketing on Facebook, etc. Do have a few moderators or experts around in each area to "facilitate" the conversation but they are not intended to be "one-way" speakers. Let people "unconference" there and just hang out with other folks in those areas. Each of these areas should also be capped to 30-50 people depending on the overall size of the conference.
• Create 10 minute "speed-dating" sessions based on some pre-arranged, mutual match making. It should be a very simple, fast interface to accept a 10 min meeting and/or request one.

The idea is to get those 2-3 insights and/or make 2-3 connections that you can leverage post the conference.

Better Business/Deals/Sales Prospecting

Lot of companies and/or people are out to sell their existing product. One interesting option here is to organise them by "what problem am I solving for what kind of customer". Also, each of the people pitching at the booths have to be pre-curated and prepared to give a 2-3 minute demo and a 2-min pitch. Perhaps the 2-3 min video pitch can even be made available to attendees before the event or along with the program guide. Given the smartphone era, this should be eminently doable.

Better Logistics - Checkin and Food

Entry into a conference is often an epic nightmare. Very few, if any, have solved for a seamless registration and attending experience. Everyone will go there and queue up for a precious 15-20 mins for a modest size conference. If you are expecting 500 people to attend, you know that they can't all board the bus, all at the same time.

First, there should be a digital ID and conference pass to get into the event. Heck, all travel across the world is now getting to be 100% digital (barring a few documents like your Passport, and even that will get digitised). We certainly can do that with your entry pass. Secondly, there should be a self-checkin kiosk or a mobile phone QR code reader that can quickly get you in.

Last but not the least, while it costs a lot to have food served, it probably costs the exact same to have healthy food served. Also, it can easily be served in a more effective manner. Yes, one could have a typical buffet with long lines and winding queues, or you could have bento or other food boxes for those that want express checkout. Alternatively, you could also give people "Zones/Time slots" when they can get a bite. E.g. Yellow Zone gets to eat from 130-2p at Foyer A. If they were to miss it, they can eat at any time post (say) 2p.

Overall, I think that the conference format needs to be re-invented. I believe one needs to use a lot more technology, a lot more curation and preparation and then leave it to people to hustle to get the most of out.

What are your pet peeves about current day business/startup conferences? What are you seeking to get out of these events? How would you propose fixing them to be able to maximise your ROI? Please do share your comments and thoughts below.

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin