Images need first of all to be consistent with the intent of the conference. Groups involved in supporting self-development efforts in developing countries wisely use individual portraits of people in their projects, often working. The stress is on empathy with individuals, rather than on the extent of their problems. Community service agencies show pictures of worthy facilities in which they have invested the taxpayers' money or of workers interacting with people served. This need for consistency is equally true for phrases, language use, illustrations and kinds of humour. It is important to decide what visual and verbal impressions participants need to create the appropriate milieu for the dialogue which is intended.Visual images take time and people to think through. Diverse media communicate differently--works of art, symbolic diagrams and logos, photographs, displays of actual products and equipment, films or videos, slides, etc. Consider what media creates the relationship required to the subject matter. Then consider the subject matter. Having the conference facility in mind, mockups of different combinations of media and content can be tried until a decision is made.
Verbal images often emerge as the planning and registration process proceeds. Some of these come out of the dialogue over the direction of the conference. Correspondence with potential participants can be combed for helpful articulation that the whole conference can use later. The process of soliciting and circulating position papers, seeking and reviewing bibliography, interviewing people in related fields and showing films and documentaries develops such a storehouse of imagery.
Conference imagery creates an underlying base of commonality across a conference which intentionally seeks to enhance the decision-making process. As decision-making proceeds in certain directions, imagery can be adapted accordingly. Often the working charts, phrases, rhetoric or diagrams used to arrive at decisions come to symbolize for the group the process they went through and their own relationship to the decision or decisions they have made. This sort of opportunity should be watched for and maximized wherever possible.
