Are your conferences part of a larger strategy?

Over the past few months I've posted articles showing analytics dashboards created by students in an Information Visualization MOOC (IVMOOC) at Indiana University.  These looked at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I hosted in Chicago every six months from May 1994 to May 2015.  Skim through these articles to find stories I've posted. 

Under the heading of "Mapping & Analyzing Participation" the 2026 team wrote:

 "Who shows up to build a community? Which organizations sustain engagement over years, and which sectors are consistently absent? This platform answers those questions using 6410 attendance records from 42 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences hosted by Daniel F. Bassill between 1994 and 2015. Raw attendance sheets are transformed through a documented pipeline — normalization, network construction, and visualization — so findings can be reproduced, extended, and applied to future events. The methodology is explicit at every stage."

Dozens of big and small conferences and gatherings are held in the USA and the world every month.  I wonder how many use their events as part of an ongoing effort to solve a specific problem.

Below is a concept map that I created many years ago to show the "Knowledge Based Problem Solving Strategy" that I've piloted since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago in 1993.

I described what this map was sharing in this article.  

I've been collecting and sharing information that anyone could use to fill high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other places with on-going, volunteer-based, tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach K-12 youth and help them through school and into adult lives.  

If you look at the vertical lines on this graphic, it shows formal and informal learning that needs take place in many places on an on-going basis.  Across the top of the map I show year-round actions intended to draw people to the information, and to each other.  I've circled the Tutor/Mentor Conference to indicate that it was part of that strategy.  You can view the conference goals on this page.

The dashboards created by the #IVMOOC teams enable you to explore the data.  They show that while I was successful at drawing Chicago area programs, and a growing number from other states, to the conferences, I was not successful in drawing other parts of the ecosystem (such as business, philanthropy, media, hospitals, etc). 

Below are just two examples of how I zoomed into the maps on the dashboard to learn who attended the conferences and how often they attended.

The dashboard that I point to for the Spring 2026 team shows work that still needs to be completed to make it more accurate and easier-to-use.  I hope I'll be part of a Fall 2026 team and that some of this is also updated this summer. I'll post updates as I receive them.

I wish I had this resource in the late 2000s to show donors the value of what I was doing. I'm not sure that would have changed what happened as a result of the 2008-10 financial crisis in the USA.  

But that's not the point.

These articles are intended to show anyone who organizes a conference how they can use these tools to build on-going participation of a wider network of people, leading to greater success in achieving their overall goals.

The Fall 2025 team and the Spring 2026 teams both provided resources that others can use to collect participation data and turn it into visualizations using Kumu, Gephi and/or Tableau. I share links to these on this page. They are FREE. 

Follow and connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon and you'll see many updates about these tools, as well as how I'm encouraging others to use them.  I'd love to see posts from Chicago area tutor/mentor programs that show how often their organization was part of the conferences.

Thanks for reading, and "hopefully", sharing my posts.  

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