UGC

User generated content. The photos, clips, stories and posts that attendees make about your event, as opposed to the ones your team makes. It matters because it reaches people your own channels never touch, and because it arrives with a recommendation attached. At conference scale UGC is engineered, with branded photo moments and interactive activations built specifically to be shared. At community scale it reduces to three decisions you can make in an afternoon: one content volunteer working from a written shot list, one photo wall people actually want to stand in front of, and one hashtag somebody says out loud from the stage. The pre-event cousin of UGC is behind-the-scenes content, which does a different job: it turns an audience into participants before doors open.

Source: Standard marketing vocabulary. In event practice, deliberate UGC capture through share-worthy photo moments and interactive activations is documented at convention scale (Skift Meetings, experiential marketing examples). TEDx instructs organisers to build anticipation with behind-the-scenes updates beforehand, share highlights live through Stories during the event, and post photos and video afterwards (TEDx Organizer Guide, social media). The community-scale reduction to a shot list, a photo wall and a hashtag is this course’s translation of that practice for a room in the low hundreds; it is consistent with the Filmmakers Connect operational model, which already treats sharing by attendees as part of the culture rather than an afterthought.

First used in: 2.3 · Community-facing marketing.