Picture this: You have spent serious money on a B2B event. The venue looks great. The food is good. The slides are polished. The speakers walk on stage, and within five minutes, half the room is on their phones answering emails. By the time the applause comes, everyone has mentally checked out, and so has your pipeline potential.

Sound familiar? According to Johan Lindhoff, this is not a speaker problem or a content problem. It is a design problem.

Johan is the Partner Relationship Director at Ventla, a platform that helps companies turn quiet, passive event audiences into active participants. Ventla works with organisations across Scandinavia and globally, helping them move away from the idea that a full room equals a successful event.

In a recent episode of On the Field, Johan sat down with Moaaz Nagori, Head of Marketing at ConvergeX Connections, to talk about what it actually looks like to design a B2B event around contribution rather than just attendance.

With ConvergeX Connections hosting more tailored executive roundtables for B2B companies, it made sense to run a deep dive into want drives true retention and engagement in events these days. 

Together, they built a clear, practical framework that any B2B event marketer can use right away.

What Does a Collaboration-Focused B2B Event Look Like?

Most B2B events follow the same format: one speaker, many listeners, rows of chairs all facing the front. That model made sense when information was hard to find. In 2026, your attendees have already read the blog posts, listened to the podcasts, and scrolled through the LinkedIn threads before they walk through the door.

The question has shifted. It is no longer "how do we share knowledge?" It is "how do we create something together?"

According to Johan, a collaboration-focused B2B event has three things in common:

1. People Feel Safe Enough to Speak Up

Before anyone will share an opinion or ask a real question, they need to feel safe doing it. That means keeping groups small enough that people are not performing for a crowd, making sure no contribution feels wrong or out of place, and giving quieter attendees ways to participate that do not involve standing at a microphone.

Ventla does this through anonymous polls, live Q&A tools, and sentiment features that let people share how they really feel without the social pressure of speaking up publicly. The result is that you get a much more honest read on what the room actually thinks.

2. Contribution Is Built Into the Format

Participation does not just happen on its own in a room full of strangers. It has to be planned and structured. Instead of open Q&A at the end of a session (which usually ends up with the same confident voices dominating), Johan recommends building specific contribution moments into every session.

Some simple examples:

• A 90-second peer discussion with a specific prompt after each segment
• Live polls that shape the direction of the next part of the session
• Digital whiteboards where attendees add ideas in real time
• Breakout groups with clear roles: one person facilitates, one keeps time, one reports back

3. Attendees Leave With Something They Helped Create

One of the best signs that an event was built around collaboration: people leave with something they actually made together, not just a PDF of slides. This could be a shared set of peer insights, a resource document the group built, or an invite into a community they now belong to.

At ConvergeX Connections, we have seen consistently that events producing shared output get much higher post-event engagement. When someone contributed to something, they have a reason to share it, come back to it, and talk about it. That keeps your brand relevant long after the event ends.

Designing Events for Participation

One key takeaway from Johan and Moaaz's conversation: participation is not a session format. It is a philosophy that needs to run through every decision you make, from the invite email to the seating layout.

Start With the Goal, Not the Agenda

Before you book a speaker or set an agenda, ask yourself a few simple questions:

• What do we want attendees to have contributed by the end, not just consumed?
• How will the room (or the virtual setup) make it easy or hard to participate?
• What is likely to stop people from speaking up, and how do we remove that barrier?
• Where in each session will we build in a moment for contribution?

The First Ten Minutes Matter Most

Moaaz talks about what he calls the "contribution curve." Engagement follows a pattern. In the first 20 minutes, people are still settling in, looking around, and deciding how much energy to invest. If you spend that window on housekeeping and speaker bios, you have already missed your best chance.

The fix is simple: create a low-stakes contribution moment in the first ten minutes. A quick poll. A question to the table. Something that tells every person in the room that their voice belongs here. Once you set that tone early, people stay more engaged for the rest of the event.

Technology Should Make It Easier, Not Harder

Johan is clear on this: event technology should lower the bar for participation, not raise it. A tool like Ventla is built so that a participant can submit a poll response, a question, or a reaction in a few seconds. The moment your technology asks for more effort than raising a hand, you lose the benefit.

Build Belonging, Not Just Networking

There is a big difference between networking (handing business cards to strangers) and belonging (feeling like you are genuinely part of something with the people around you). The best B2B events Johan has seen shift the goal from "meet as many people as possible" to "build something meaningful with the people in this room." That shift changes the quality of every relationship that comes out of the event.

The Importance of a Pre-Event Communication Plan

If there is one thing Johan and Moaaz both agree on, it is this: most B2B event teams spend too little time on pre-event communication, and they pay for it with a disengaged room on the day.

Here is a simple five-phase communication plan you can adapt for your next event:

Phase 1: The "Why This Matters to You" Email (4 to 6 Weeks Out)

This is not a reminder email. It is a framing email. It should answer one question: why should this specific person care about this specific event? Talk to their goals and challenges, not your agenda. Make it feel personal even if it is automated, and include a question that gets them thinking ahead.

Phase 2: The Pre-Event Survey (2 to 3 Weeks Out)

A short survey of three to five questions is one of the most underused tools in B2B event marketing. Done well, it:

• Tells you what attendees actually want to talk about, so you can adjust the session
• Makes attendees feel heard before the event even starts
• Gives you content for follow-up messaging: "You told us X was your biggest challenge. Here is how we will address it."
• Provides data you can use to personalise session recommendations

Phase 3: The Contribution Primer (1 Week Out)

Tell attendees ahead of time that they will be expected to participate. Share what the format looks like and give them something to think about before they arrive. This removes the surprise of being asked to contribute in the room, which is one of the biggest barriers to participation.

Phase 4: The Day-Before Message

One short, warm message. Not a logistics reminder but a genuine re-invitation. Remind them of the community they are joining, not just the event they are attending. Give them one simple question to sit with overnight.

Phase 5: The Post-Event Summary (Within 48 Hours)

Share back what the group created together. The key themes, the shared insights, the outputs from discussions. This is the message that turns a one-time attendee into someone who feels part of a community, because it shows them that what they said was captured and valued.

A note for ConvergeX Connections clients: We build pre-event communication sequences into every event programme we run. If you are running B2B events without a structured pre-event plan, you are leaving real engagement and pipeline on the table.

Two Books Johan Recommends on Human Participation

During the conversation, Johan shared two books that have shaped how he thinks about participation and belonging at events. Both are worth reading if you want to understand the human side of why contribution matters.

1. The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

This book is rooted in the psychology of Alfred Adler, who worked around the same time as Sigmund Freud but had very different ideas about what drives human behaviour. The insight that stuck with Johan is simple but powerful: people are deeply motivated by the desire to contribute. When we feel like we are adding something to a group, we feel fulfilled. We feel like we belong. That drive is not unique to therapy or philosophy. It shows up in every room where people gather, including your next B2B event. When you design an event that gives people a real way to contribute, you are working with a fundamental human need, not against it.

2. The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Johan recommends this book to anyone who plans events, regardless of their experience level. Parker's central argument is that most gatherings fail not because of bad food or a dull venue, but because they lack a clear purpose. The things we spend most of our budget on, the room, the catering, the entertainment, are rarely the things that make a gathering memorable. What actually matters is why people are there, who is in the room, how they were prepared before they arrived, and what the gathering is genuinely trying to do. That thinking maps directly onto everything Johan and Moaaz discuss about designing events for contribution rather than consumption.

Watch: Moaaz and Johan on Contribution-Focused B2B Events

Watch the full conversation between Moaaz and Johan where they walk through these ideas live, including real examples of how participation-first event design plays out in practice.

How ConvergeX Connections Helps Clients Build Participation-First B2B Events

Everything in this article is something we actually do at ConvergeX Connections. Our entire approach to B2B event marketing strategy is built around one belief: your attendees did not show up to sit quietly and watch a presentation. They came to be part of something.

Here is how we help clients make that happen:

1. Pre-Event Strategy and Communication Planning

We design the full communication journey from the first save-the-date to the day-before message. Every email is written as an invitation to participate, not a reminder to show up.

2. Curated Guest Lists

The right room makes everything easier. We help clients build attendee lists that create genuine peer conversation, with decision-makers talking to other decision-makers, not sitting through a pitch. Our roundtable model is built specifically for this kind of peer dynamic. Learn more about how to host a successful roundtable business event.

3. Facilitated Discussion Design

We do not just book speakers. We design conversations. Every event we run includes structured contribution moments, live polling tools, and facilitation formats that make sure every voice in the room gets heard, not just the loudest ones.

4. Post-Event Follow-Up and Community Activation

The event does not end when the room empties. Within 48 hours, we send attendees a summary of what the group created together. We then design follow-up sequences that help clients turn those event relationships into real pipeline, without the awkward "just checking in" cold outreach.

If you want to run B2B events that attendees actually remember and that your sales team can work with, we would love to show you how. Talk to the ConvergeX Connections team.