1. Eat right

Conference breakfasts should feature things like granola, smoothies and yoghurt, which are healthy and energy rich. For lunch try fish or meat with steamed or lightly grilled vegetables. You want people at your event to be awake and engaged, so pick ‘brain foods’ and create balanced meals to keep energy levels constant.

2. Lighten up

Have a large and well lit space to host your event. If you have an Intelligent lighting system this can be used to create an ideal meeting environment that mimics a warm, bright day. Different wavelengths of light can refresh tired or jetlagged participants, increase engagement and boost memory retention.

3. Exercise your attendees

Arrange for the venue set-up to be changed between conference breaks. This may sound like a minor point, but it encourages participants to move around and brings an atmosphere of freshness into meeting rooms. Another way of doing this is to make sure that food, drink and break-out sessions are located in a different parts of the event space.

4. Tailor your content

If they’ve just come back from a break, asking conference goers to participate in strenuous or intellectually demanding activities might not be the best start. Instead, try to tailor your programme so that it eases attendees back in to work life. Try to choose motivational or amusing speakers who can communicate your message in a way that makes people relax.

5. Build your team up

Team building doesn’t have to involve making your conference attendees run egg and spoon races, although similar activities can work quite well in some environments. Team building is all about encouraging engagement and sharing in a friendly atmosphere and can be as simple as arranging for communal snack breaks to take place between meeting sessions.

For last minute September conference bookings, ask one of our venue team for our current promotions.