That’s WOW as in “what others want,” as well as the usual sense of the word. Lunch ran a little long, so presenters Max Suzenaar and Amanda Marijanovic of Minding Your Business, Inc., had to truncate their session a bit, which was a shame because it was really, really interesting. This is another one I want to talk about in more detail when I have more time (have to run in a few to go to the closing reception), but they showed us how to create a detailed audience profile that includes demographics, psychographics, relationships to industry and organization, and influences and experiences. You can use this profile when defining goals and objectives to make sure what you want to accomplish meshes with your audience’s needs and wants.

Max talked a bit about learning = message plus impressions. We tend to focus on the content (message), but tend to short-change the emotional connection to the material that also has to happen for real learning to occur. You need to bring all this together to get that WOW.

They did a really quick skip through an event marketing timeline and developing an event marketing plan, but suffice to say that it’s vital to match each tactic you use to a specific objective. Like, say, using save-the-date/calls for papers if your objective at that point in your marketing plan to raise awareness of event dates and to generate excitement. They also talked about how important that first impression is, so take care to make your first communications with potential attendees remarkable.

Another key point was to keep your theme consistent throughout all your marketing materials, and to set goals and track your progress through visual records.

About themes: Make sure they’re not just clever catch phrases or things you can hang decor on, but something that really ties back into your goals and objectives.

One thing I loved about this session was that, even though they had to cut a third of their presentation out due to time constraints, they kept in the audience participation part. The best was at the end, where each table had an envelope with the type of attendees you had and the theme of the conference. We had to make up what we’d do to market and then carry the theme through in the conference itself for our attendees and theme. We were kind of doomed, being a three-person table with barnyard animals as attendees and the theme of “partnering for tomorrow” (we decided to do something with greener pastures and bags of oats, but never got to flesh it out).

The winning table, which got $500 donated in their names to the PCMA Foundation (how cool is it that the presenters did that??) had little kids as their attendees. I can’t remember what their theme was, but they did invitations that were interactive video games where kids could register from home on the invitations themselves through handhelds, and an awards banquet with a Mario theme where Mario would bump into the blocks and release the names of the winners instead of mushrooms or whatever.

Figures that this winning table was made up of students, doesn’t it? They were awesome.

Jason Alexander as Donny Clay, motivational speaker, at lunch today: OMG! I could not even begin to describe his act, but suffice to say there were several minutes-long stretches where I was laughing so hard tears came to my eyes. My stomach is still sore. He was beyond hilarious, and he customized his schtick to a T for PCMA, from the lyrics of his opening number to picking on Seattle and PCMA officials in ways that were unbearably funny. Really. If he doesn’t pick up at least 100 gigs out of this, I’d be amazed, though it’s not for every group, that’s for sure (a tad raunchy in parts. Don’t get me started about the body suit bit…)

Robert Kennedy Jr. was the closing speaker, and he was, IMHO, brilliant in his dissection of where we’re going wrong environmentally speaking. I can imagine some would absolutely hate him because of his political leanings, though he was careful to say at the beginning that it wasn’t an indictment of Republicans, just of the current Administration’s environmental record, that he would be equally critical of a Democrat with the same record, and that he was bipartisan in his support for those who are on the environment’s side. I’ve seen him speak at least once before, with basically the same message, but I still got a tear in my eye when he talked about the spiritual/natural connection we have to our planet.

Anyway, he did have two new coinages I hadn’t heard before: Dittoheads (as in, “Rush Limbaugh and his talk radio dittoheads”) and biostitutes (those who say global warming has no basis in reality). He got a standing ovation, so I guess at least the crowd that remained was receptive to his message. It was, I thought, a bit of a risky move to have such a political flashpoint as a closing speaker, but it seemed to work for this group, time, and place.

So, here’s a quick skip on the session I just went to about making meetings relevant to Generation Y, aka Gen Why, as speaker Eric Chester called them.

But first, his best quote: “It used to be you’d say, ‘if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.’ Now it’s, ‘if you do what you’ve always done, you’re out of business.’” Loved that one.

Anyway, the Whys are impatient, because they’ve grown up in a world where people are rewarded with speed: fast lanes, fast delivery, express check-in for hotels’ preferred guest members, etc.

Another good quote: “We’ve given birth to a generation of type A++ stress puppies.” The older generations tend to be analog, chronological, like a reel-to-reel tape player, where the Whys are more like iPods who are used to random. “If you make a bad choice, it’s not a matter of consequences anymore,” said Chester. “It’s control, alt, delete.” And he’s right.

And meetings are pretty analog, we have to admit. One thing follows another, we have a template we use so we know what to expect. But for Whys, who are impatient, he said, this is boring. He said one study found that Whys would rather have pain inflicted on them than be bored.

They’re also used to active learning, lots of breaks, lots of interaction, and they want to be entertained as well as enlightened. When they don’t get it, they get bored and disengaged.

Ways to connect your meetings with the youngsters (and doesn’t that sound like an oldster word?):

Invite them to be a part of everything in the meeting, including acting as speakers.
Give them mentors to show them where the cool stuff is.
Let them be a part of the entertainment (karaoke in the lobby? Not so sure about that suggestion!).
They’re skeptical, so don’t overpromise and underdeliver.
Be honest and truthful with them.
Make it relevant to them, and explain why the meeting matters (I’d say if they can’t figure it out on their own, you’re not making it relevant enough).
Create community (can use Facebook, MySpace, etc., to connect them with your meeting).
Level status barriers: This one is interesting. He said ribbons serve to isolate the new from the experienced. He had a cool suggestion: Instead of ribbons, have people write down something like what their best rock and roll experience was, or something related to your meeting’s theme. Then people can talk about that; your experience and committee membership etc., will come out in conversation. You don’t need to wear it on your chest.
Shorter sessions, shorter meetings.

All of which left me thinking I’m a Why in a Boomer body. So I went up afterward and asked him what the difference is, really. We all lived through what they grew up with and want the same things. His answer was, I thought, profound and profoundly simple:

“The difference is you’ll both get bored, but you’ll put up with it. They’ll leave.”

Update: Chester had mentioned during the session that the PowerPoint he was showing us that we thought was way cool (oh yeah? Not me) is something he’d never show during his sessions for young people; he had something much more dynamic for them. While I was waiting to speak with him after the session, I overheard him say to someone that actually he has found it useful to show this version to kids, because they have told him that it helps them understand how their parents and other older people look at/feel about their generation. Talk about a reversal.

If you think you know everything there is about searching on Google, go hear Jim Spellos of Meeting U talk about it. Holy cow, I had no idea of all the functionality there is out there, and I consider myself fairly Google-savvy. More later, since I have a long line of people waiting to use the computer and a short time between sessions, but I am blown away. And I’m not just saying this because he had this blog on his iGoogle home page and on his Google Reader.

Stay tuned for an update. Off now to learn about the aliens among us, aka the youngsters. They must absolutely hate the title of the next session I’m going to (which starts “The Aliens Have Landed”).

I may not be able to say it, but I am now a big fan of this new presentation format that four intrepid presenters tried out as an experiment in which the audience got to take part. (Here are some YouTube examples of the format in action). The facilitator, Joan Eisenstodt of Eisenstodt and Associates, was as much at sea as the rest of us, which made exploring the new format (do not ask me how to pronounce it!) really interesting, IMHO.

The presenters had never used this 20-slides-with-just-20-seconds-per-slide format before, and we in the audience empathized with them as they rushed to get to the end of the slide before the next one came up. In the debriefing after the presentations, the presenters talked about how uncomfortable, yet challenging, the format was to work with. One really didn’t like it, while the other three thought it was an interesting way to make them cull down their topic to just its key points. I think it worked best when it was focused very, very narrowly. The guy who was most frustrated by the format bit off a huge chunk of information to try to get across, rather than one or two ideas.

While we pretty much all agreed that it wouldn’t work for all situations (and it made one guy in the audience absolutely nuts because one of the presentations in particular was such a tease, and he was frustrated he couldn’t get more information), we also agreed that it could be fantastic for some applications.

A few we came up with:
-Have each panelist in a panel discussion use it to get their main points across. Then it could break up into a Q&A to flesh out what they said, or into roundtable discussions (I like the idea of giving each person at the roundtable 20 seconds to recap one point that resonated with them or that they wanted to elaborate on as a way to get the conversation started).

-Use it for a point-counterpoint discussion

-Use it to highlight different aspects of one topic. I like the idea of having one presenter try to evoke the emotion behind the topic, another the facts, another a humorous poke at it, etc. Try to hit people’s emotional buttons as well as drop kick some facts at them. I’d love to see this tried, anyway.

-Use it for promos on the Web site. We all agreed that it whet our appetites to hear more about the topics. Why not have presenters do a 6-minute and change quickie on their topic as videocasts online?

-Similarly, one person in the audience had the great idea of having six-minute pecha kuchas of each of the day’s sessions during the opening general session so people would get an idea of both the topics and the presenter’s personality/style. I love this, and put it down on my evaluation as a suggestion for PCMA to try next year.

-Also could be great for staff retreats, might encourage those who don’t usually speak up to get their ideas in.

-And for staff meetings, to keep things on track.

-I think that, if done well with just words and using the slides for visuals that serve as the punchline to the words, this could be a great teambuilding/we’re all in this together type of tool (one of the presenters did a funny presentation about the travails of meeting planning, with visuals and words on her slides. With a little more practice, this would be an awesome presentation to kick off a general session. Are you listening, PCMA?)

-Use it to get through the boring stuff you have to do, like the year in review, president’s address (though the crowd kind of laughed at the idea of telling the president s/he would have to keep it to six minutes and 20 seconds per slide).

-Exhibitors could use it somehow, either at their booths or, in an idea I thought was brilliant, at a pavillion at or near the entrance that ran continuously so people could drop by and get a quick hit on which booths they really wanted to go to. Also could be perfect for an online tradeshow promotion, or even for virtual tradeshows.

While not everyone was an enamored of the format as I was, the session itself was the most energizing, interesting thing I’ve gone to so far (barring evening activities, of course). I loved that the audience was really a part of the session, that we were exploring this new format together and deciding where, how, and if we would want to use it ourselves.

PCMA, please, please, I beg of you, do more of these kinds of sessions! Planners need safe places to explore new formats, and this was incredible.

OK, now I think I’m caught up until today, which is good because it’s time to get off the laptop and get over to the convention center for more sessions this morning. I’m looking forward to learning how to make my life more Google-licious from James Spellos of Meeting U to start.

I would talk about the macro trends Peter Yesawich talked about at the PCMA Annual Meeting luncheon yesterday, except we already covered them pretty well when he gave about the same talk last year (article is here).

Yup, looks like the economy,changing demographics, time crunch, and technology changes still may impact meetings. Yawn. The panel afterward was ok, but didn’t add much to the party. Except at the very end, when Yesawich asked the panelists who they thought would be elected U.S. president, and what that person’s election would mean to the hospitality/travel/meetings industry. It was really interesting because two of the four panelists were Canadian, but I digress.

All four panelists (Chris Cahill from Fairmont, Rick Meadows from Holland America, Christine Duffy from Maritz, and Gregg Saretsky from Alaska Airlines) seemed to think the Democrats would win the presidency, though which specific Democrat was up for grabs. And they seemed pretty united also in the belief that economic and international challenges will be the key factors, whoever is at the helm.

I went to a fabulous session on how to increase communication and collaboration to both bring innovation to the meeting planning/content building/marketing process, and to make the process work much more smoothly than it all-too-often does, especially for associations that tend to keep their planning, education, and marketing departments in separate silos. Session leaders Lisa Block with the Society for Human Resource Management, Charlie Jones, Heart Rhythm Society, and Janine Pesci, Gensler Architects, were all excellent in showing how it can work from the planning, marketing, and education perspectives (respectively).

No time to go into huge details, but here are a few key takeaways. From Lisa:
-everyone has a responsibility to collaborate
-build on small successes
-key into specific values in your organization’s culture
-build interdepartmental teams, with members who have true buy-in from their respective bosses to put the time and energy needed into the process
-planners need to relinquish some of their inner control freak to let others have ownership in the process
-develop key relationships that will let you feel ok, if not great, about relinquishing said control

From Charlie:
-Establish credibility with other team members to build trust and respect
-no one gets anywhere alone. Our successes and our failures are a result of collaboration. Help others succeed and your own success will follow.
-Make creativity fun, even if it means doing hokey teambuilding activities. You may hate them, but they do work.

From Janine:
-everyone has ideas, and they should share them through visioning sessions that bring all types of voices to the table (she also stressed the vital importance of having interdisciplinary teams and the buy-in from leadership and the organizational culture to make these teams function well)
-honor all talents and contributions
-provide easy access to idea sharing through IT, such as an intranet

Great if hokey quote from moderator Gerald Haman,kk SolutionPeople, about teamwork: “We all want to be the stars, but would you rather look at a star or a whole constellation?”

One thing I really liked about this session, format-wise, is that it wasn’t your basic moderated panel. The panelists did do some speaking, but a lot of the session was having the audience talk amongst ourselves to come up with our own challenges, solutions, issues, etc. At the end, Gerald had us fill in as many ideas about collaboration as we could in, say, 30 seconds (there was a specific question he asked us to address). Then we passed our sheet to another person to elaborate/expand on the ideas the first person had put down.

He’s going to compile them and put them up on the PCMA Web site, but we came up with close to 300 ideas in six minutes. How cool is that?

Microsoft marketing guru Mich Mathews kicked off the PCMA conference yesterday morning with a much more engaging presentation than Monday’s Gilmore and Pine session, I thought. Though she didn’t really say much I hadn’t heard before (word of mouth rules these days, human connections still trump digital meetings, etc.), she did say them in a charming accent. And of course, if we all had Microsoft’s budgets, we’d all love to be able to do promotions like they do.

Mathews talked about how some companies build anticipation for experiencing their brand through the Web, citing Westin’s experiential Google Maps mashup site as an example (I’m feeling too lazy to find the links to all these right now, but they should Google right up). She said Ritz-Carlton was good at deepening the interaction by sending out a letter to upcoming guests about their preferences, so the hotel can customize the experience when they arrive. Like Ritz-Carlton, she said Microsoft uses extensive database analytics to provide distinctive customer experiences.

She showed as an example of a way to extend your show online the site The Blue Monster did for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

She also talked about how making a video that goes viral is the best form of marketing there is. Like this video about Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft:

Of course, unless you have Bill Gates as the head of your organization, and Bono, and an excellent script writer, yours might not make quite the same impact. But it’s worth a try!

It got a little commercial at the end, with glimpses of Microsoft products like Roundtable and Surface, which both could be amazing tools for planners (I’m a little in love with Surface, I have to admit).

They should have left well enough alone, though. After Mathews presentation, there was a followup Q&A with Peter Yesawich that just dragged on and on and didn’t, IMHO, add anything to the party.

I found the session yesterday afternoon on Web 2.0, led by Corbin Ball, a little disappointing. Yeah, it’s interesting that we’ve gone from 133 Web sites in total back in 1993 to 9 million sites being added each hour now (if I heard that right? Sounds like too much, even for today’s world). He skimmed through wiki applications like Google Docs, where you can share and update docs via the Web; and talked a little about blogs, podcasts, mashups, and social networking sites like Facebook et al.

He spent a lot of time trying to show us a demo of Second Life, but had all kinds of tech problems, so we only ended up spending a few minutes touring the MeCo mansion and Virtualis.

When asked how to get non-techies in an association on board with virtual reality worlds like Second Life, Corbin had his best quote du jour: “Remind them that Digital Darwinism is alive and well.”

He also breezed through a bit on mobile technology, aka using cell phones to take surveys, do group brainstorming, poll audiences, etc., but again ran out of time to do more than a quick skim.

I think he kind of blew it when one guy asked how to deal with leadership that aren’t thrilled with the idea of letting the inmates run the prison, aka letting association members say what they want without the organization getting to control the conversation. His answer was pretty much along the lines of, “well, they just have to get used to the idea.” I would have said, “they’re already talking about you via their own blogs, social networking sites, etc. Don’t you want to know what they’re saying and be able to take part in the conversation?” It’s just silly to even talk about controlling the conversation. That ship has sailed.

All in all, it was a decent overview of what’s out there, but I think he tried to cover way too much in too short of a time. Gee, that never happens at conferences, does it? ;>

I went to a really interesting session this afternoon at the PCMA Annual Meeting called “The Law of Doing Good Things.” Led by one of my favorite meeting industry attorneys/professors Tyra Hilliard, it was all about how being a good Samaritan can be a good thing, and how it can sometimes get you in legal hot water.

Tyra gave us three scenarios: do you help a slip-and-fall victim?; how do you donate leftover food safely, legally speaking; and what your liability might be if a volunteer at an activity accidentally bops another volunteer with a piece of wood.

For the first scenario, she explained that each state has its own version of a Good Samaritan law, and it behooves the cautious planner to learn what their meeting locale’s might include. In Washington, for example, it’s OK to help someone who’s hurt as long as you’re not compensated for helping them; and you’re giving emergency care or taking them to get emergency care.

But, as she explained, the answer to everything in the law is, “It depends.” A good lawyer good try to nail you anyway, based on exemptions to the law or just a skewed interpretation of what happened. “There’s reality and there’s the law, and they often don’t have much to do with each other,” she said, which I thought was a great, if all-too-true, statement.

In the second scenario about whether someone could donate food not used at the meeting, Tyra said, “Facilities often just say no because they don’t know what they can do.” She added that they have no legal obligation to donate, so you may have to educate them on things like America’s Second Harvest, a national network that can find local places that will accept donated food. As to the law, there’s the federal Food Donation Act, which says you won’t be held criminally liable for the donation of “an apparently fit grocery product donated in good faith to needy individuals.” Of course, what constitutes “apparently fit” needs to be hammered out.

Some things planners can do to educate facilities about food donation is to include language about it in your contracts, attach copies of the law, and be prepared to answer questions. Copies of the law are available here.

For the bopping incident, there is some protection from the Volunteer Protection Act, but it is very limited in scope (just to non-profits) and has a bunch of other exceptions.

So, be careful out there, but don’t let it stop you from doing the right thing.

Oh, and get some insurance. Can’t hurt.