ExtendedSession began with this question. We thought about it every time we attended a great conference—in hotel check-out lines, in taxi lines, in airport boarding areas. And the more we considered it, the more we realized that helping to keep like-minded people connected might be even more powerful than occasioning their brief introduction.
We knew that professionals traveled to take part in workshops and presentations with colleagues who shared their interests and motivations. But we knew, too, that many returned home having enlisted only a handful of new friends and allies.
We recognized that hosts of even the best events seldom had a good way to continue the shared experience of the clients, partners, and supporters they had worked so hard to assemble. We saw too that, just as often, they hadn’t considered ways to profit from their networks beyond a single, limited in-person engagement.
And so, we developed ExtendedSession with the aim of extending the personal and professional connections that arise when like-minded people get together.
We developed a simple to use digital conference platform, and we fine-tuned it.
We worked with organizations to create analogs to their in-person events, and to bring new online sessions together in ways that scaled and extended their existing investments.
We worked with businesses not yet ready to host their own in-person gatherings, helping them to introduce digital sessions that showcase their values and that share the insights, ideas, and innovations of the individuals who form their extended network.
We worked through revenue models that would make it simple and advantageous for other companies and organizations to give this approach a try.