I love that term, “seminared,” for that heady rush you get when you come back from a conference all stuffed with great ideas that will change everything for the better. Kathi Edwards has a couple of posts (here and here) on the ASAE Great Ideas Conference Blog about the seminared syndrome—and why all those great ideas so seldom translate into change in the workplace. Some advice she offers, culled from a discussion held at the Great Ideas Café on Sunday:

People approach “great ideas” from their own frame of reference, and without a common context in which to evaluate the ideas, those ideas can die on the vine. Wow. Seems simple, doesn’t it? Yet if we who attend the conference go back and tell co-workers, “Here’s a great idea we should try!” without being sensitive to the need to build that context, we run the risk that the idea will be shot down or, worse, ignored. Far better to take a little time to think through the idea, consider the challenge or issue in the organization it addresses, and then initiate conversation that gets people to talk about the possibilities the idea represents for them and for the organization. A key part of success: let go of the idea as “yours,” and put it out there for consideration.

Excellent advice. Another big problem for me is that, once I get snowed under all the stuff that awaits my return, the enthusiasm cools and I basically forget to even try to implement the changes. Then a few months later, I forget that I had even learned something I wanted to try. One thing Kathi says has worked for her in the past was having a bunch of people from the office attend the same sessions, so everyone comes back fired up. That’d be great, but it’s not too practical for offices with limited travel/conference budgets (which is pretty much everyone I know). If anyone has other ideas on how to stay fired up enough to make change happen once the conference glow wears off, I’d love to hear them. My e-mail, as always, is here, or you can drop a comment below.

That’s according to this post on Signal Vs. Noise:

Researchers in organisational psychology have confirmed that meetings are, well, evil. A study conducted by the University of Minnesota found that the amount and length of meetings correlate with “negative effects” (burnout, anxiety, and depression) on its participants.

Then they propose some solutions, including 1. Begin with a specific problem. 2. Meet at the site of the problem, not a conference room. 3. End with a solution and who will be responsible for implementing it (also, I would add, a timeline for its resolution). 4. Celebrate, shut up, and do something.

Good advice for staff meetings, which often are the soul-sucking, motivation-sapping monstrosities everyone likes to moan about.

We recently received a fairly blistering e-mail blasting us for the relatively low response rate to this year’s Annual Physician’s Survey in Medical Meetings’ January issue. Actually, we thought 16.6 percent was pretty good—of course, more would be better. Part of our struggle is that we send the survey to physicians, not the continuing medical education providers and medical/pharma meeting planners who read our magazine, so these guys don’t know us from a hole in the wall.

I know we’re not alone in our struggle to get higher response rates to surveys; I heard all kinds of grumbling about it at the Alliance meeting in January, but not a lot of solutions. One that I heard during a session on practical strategies for outcomes measurement was to include something lumpy in the envelope. The session leaders said that they had success with putting a piece of candy in the envelope along with the survey; they’ll open it just to see what the lump is. Once they open it, they’re somewhat engaged with it, and you have a better shot at them filling it out.

Any other ideas? We include a buck, but I doubt that’s much of an incentive to fill the thing out (yes, we keep it short and sweet). Seriously, I think this is something we all struggle with, and if you have any solutions to share, that’d be terrific. Just drop a note in the comments section or shoot me an e-mail.

That mantra has been flipped on its head lately—it used to mean if you set up the right programming and trade show, attendees will flock to it. Now event organizers are concentrating on getting the right people to come, and relying on the audience to draw the sponsors and exhibitors. That’s what this item on the recent American Business Media’s Trade Show Summit says, anyway. From the item:

“We focus exclusively on attendees from a marketing standpoint,” said Sonya Ruff-Jarvis, marketing director for Reed Exhibitions’ National Hardware Show. She has identified top retail customers attending the hardware show and designed custom marketing programs for them during the show. “We customize programs to meet buyer needs,” she said.

David Shaw over at the B or Not 2B blog says that he has worked with a company that had this attitude all along:

The Richmond Events model was and is unique. The company focuses on attendees first. They invite senior buyers to an event, under the promise that the event will be tailored to the needs of those who attend. Only then do they design and develop the conference program, based on the actual needs of attendees (and they succeed in this superbly, based on the post-conference surveys I’ve seen.) And only then do they sell sponsorships to selling companies, based on an actual list of confirmed attendees.

Hopefully, it won’t be unique for long. We’ve been attempting to do something similar with our Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, and he’s right, it’s hard. But it’s absolutely the right way to go. I’m glad to hear more show organizers are starting to recognize the fundamental truth that, except in instances like maybe some tech shows, sellers are more likely to go where the buyers are than vice versa.

According to the Times-Picayune, New Orleans officials and hoteliers are hosting some meeting planner fams over Mardi Gras both to thanks those who have committed to bringing groups to the city, and to show those still on the fence that it’s ready for business.

If New Orleans can seize the opportunity to show visiting meeting planners and Carnival revelers alike that the city can handle an event as logistically complex as Mardi Gras, the thinking goes, it will win back their confidence and their business. With hundreds of television cameras trained on New Orleans, the city hopes to showcase its deep cultural traditions, food and music to shatter negative perceptions created after the storm. Without the free news media opportunities, groups such as the short-staffed Tourism Marketing Corp. and New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau probably wouldn’t be able to battle the perception problems because their tourism tax-dependent budgets have been slashed.

But even some hoteliers have lingering doubts that they can pull it off, what with damage and debris still littering the streets and a dearth of workers to take care of guests. I’m wishing you all well down in NOLA, and here’s hoping it all works out.

As of today, it’s official: The Center for Exhibition Industry Research and the International Association for Exhibition Management have agreed to tie the knot as of March 1. Under the agreement, CEIR will give IAEM its research library and “new research capabilities that will directly support important elements of its Strategic Plan.” IAEM “will provide CEIR administrative support and a defined membership constituency as all IAEM members will receive CEIR research reports,” according to a press release.

What amazed me most about this post from Bruce Schneier about conference badge security wasn’t so much what he had to say, though it’s interesting for sure. It’s how many other people chimed in on the comments section. Wow, this one hit a lot of hot buttons.

Anyway, the main topic of his post is about what the RSA Conference organizers decided to do when people come up to the reg desk and say their badge was lost or stolen. Basically, they’re going to charge close to full admission price to replace it.

Is this really a big issue for people? I know it’s a pain to have to re-issue a badge, but how often does it happen, really? As for those who’d steal a badge to get in, well, I guess I’ve never been to a show quite that hot, but I guess it could happen.

If it was a really big deal for a show I was involved with, though, I don’t think I’d shift the burden back on the attendees, especially since I’m one of those attendees who tends to lose badges! If expected losses from badge theft—I see no real money-loser from lost badges, but understand that a stolen one means someone gets in without paying—I’d consider using some kind of smart card that you could deactivate if it was stolen, and have people swipe to get in. It might result in some lines, but after the airport, we’re getting used to that.

It’s an interesting discussion, at any rate. (Thanks to Maya for the pointer!)

So many meetings get this so wrong: The music surrounding an event. E-venting has a great post about what to remember when creating an event mix. Here’s my favorite point from his post:

Aim to surprise and delight your attendees - surprise them with some theme-appropriate songs they’ll remember and recognize, and delight them with a fresh musical perspective.

That’s what the good folks over at We Have Always Done It That Way are proposing: That meeting organizers shouldn’t line up all their sessions six months before the conference, but just let the topics to be covered bubble up from the attendees on-site, and let the attendees be your speakers (a relatively new concept called the unconference). While I think this would work for some, mostly small, conferences, I can’t see it happening for a major scientific convention, or other types of meetings where people do want to hear the latest breakthroughs from those who do the breaking-through.

But I agree that it’s nearly impossible to determine what’ll be hot in six months, in most cases. In the interest of compromise, here’s the thought I posted over in their comments: Another possibility would be to put out a beta version of the program with topics you think will be of interest six months out, and let potential attendees, speakers, etc., comment and update the topics up until the day of the conference. That way, you can have a plan in place and still ensure that the content will be fresh and interesting, and speakers can target the information much more effectively. While I love the unconference thing, I don’t think many associations would be comfortable in taking that big a leap.

While, as David Gammel points out, this could backfire if your speakers aren’t willing to listen and adapt accordingly, frankly, any speaker who wouldn’t want to be as relevant and interesting to my specific group as possible wouldn’t have a place on my program.

P.S. Anyone interested in making associations more relevant should check out We Have Always Done It That Way, and the book the authors are co-writing (and making available pre-publication in draft form to get just this type of feedback). Thanks to Ben for the pointer.

A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology bolsters the importance of reflection to learning and retaining what you learn—at least, it does if you’re a rat, according to this article in the Boston Globe. The researchers found that rats that are allowed some time to do an “instant replay,” from the end of the task through the middle to the beginning, were better at learning what they just went through.

‘What this suggests is that, while there certainly is some record of your experience as it’s occurring, that the actual learning — when you try to figure out what was important, what should I keep and throw away — that could happen after the fact, during periods of quiet, wakeful introspection,” said Matthew A. Wilson, the paper’s senior author. It is not clear whether the replay is conscious or unconscious, he said.

The article goes on to say that the rats also replayed their experience, in forward motion, this time, while sleeping. But if you let them do what they naturally would do after running a track (hang out, chew on a hairball, whatever), they’re learning skills improve.

So is there an immediate lesson for humans?

”We have this tendency to kind of force ourselves, push ourselves,” Wilson said. ”To constantly go, and that gets reflected in the way we do our science. We want animals to perform, we want to perform. Just sitting back and allowing them to do nothing, it’s hard to do that because you tend to think you’re wasting time and energy.” But what made this experiment work, he said, was ”letting the animals do what they naturally do.”

Medical Meetings’ editor Tamar Hosansky wrote a great editorial on just this idea, Make Reflection Your Resolution, which suggests not only to build in reflection time for attendees, but for yourself, too. It’s great advice.