What’s your new year’s meetings resolution?
Let’s not even talk about going to the gym more, getting the right number of hours of sleep each night, and pushing away from the Buche de Noel—despite all our good intentions, we just know those resolutions won’t last past Valentine’s Day.
So instead let’s make some resolutions that will make the meetings industry, and hopefully meetings themselves, slimmer, healthier, and more joyous places to be in 2012. Here are a few off the top of my head (in no particular order):
1. Make meetings smaller. I know, we all like to brag about attracting thousands, tens of thousands, scads and scads of people to our events. But if you want to actually get something done, form real bonds, and really learn from each other, give me a small meeting over a monster mash any day.
2. Adjust the session length to what that session needs, not what slot is available in the schedule. That doesn’t mean cramming in more content, but right-sizing each session so those that need lots of discussion time and followup can have it, while those that would be best served by a Pecha Kucha format can do just that. PCMA plans to do this in January at its Convening Leaders conference, and I can’t wait to see how this works in real life. The concept, IMHO, is awesome.
3. Teach your teachers well. They may know their subject matter cold, but if they’re not also experts in facilitating learning, all that content expertise will likely go to waste.
4. Engage the senses, get interactive, wake up your audience to all those wonderful things you’re trying to let them in on!
5. Allow for some downtime, some blank space, some time to take in, assimilate, and apply what people are learning. Why we just shake our heads and laugh ruefully about how the best conversations take place in the hallways without trying to make them an even easier, more organic part of a conference, I’ve never understood. Give them social objects they will enthusiastically focus their learning around, talk with each other about, make them think about how to apply what they learn to what they do.
6. It’s OK to have fun. Really. I know this is a deadly serious conference about X, and all those Y participants are very, very important people. But the keyword is still “people,” and people who laugh together, learn together.
7. Do well by doing good, be it reducing your meeting’s carbon footprint or finding a way to give back to your meeting’s locale. There are so many great ideas out there at every price point that there’s really no excuse for not doing at least something to make your meeting a greener, better world citizen.
8. Find a way to include your virtual audience (and yes, you likely have a virtual audience whether you planned to have one or not). Unless everyone signs confidentiality agreements on the way in the door, at least some of your participants will be tweeting and Facebooking and whatever else social-networking your conference, even for the most decidedly non-hybrid of meetings. Accept it, embrace it, and help those not in the room get at least a taste of what the on-site goodies are from your organization’s point of view.
9. Have a plan in place going in to a meeting to deal with any possible PR fallout from a meeting. This goes for both hoteliers and meetings managers. Just think how much less ink “Muffingate” would have gotten if both sides could have instantly countered the perception with the reality of what that $16 muffin was all about? How much less a hit this business would have taken from the so-called “AIG Effect” if we had been able to explain a boon from a boondoggle from the get-go?
10. Free WiFi for all, everywhere.
I could go on, but I’m in a post-holiday daze at the moment and need to go replenish my blood sugar levels. So you take the reins—what’s on your list?
December 27th, 2011 at 7:01 am
Sue, great list! Especially like your “teach your teachers well” item! Here’s a few to add to the party
1) Blow up and re-assemble the Call for Proposals for conference education. Conferences who select sessions from submissions 8+ months before, aren’t current or relevant.
2) Go on an RFP diet. Seriously, this is a huge issue! Hotels are on RFP overload. Why any planner would look at more than a 1/2 dozen hotels is beyond me. Collecting quotes is not the best practice for expert site selectors. Skilled professionals narrow the field and make sure that each inquiry has real potential. Hotel sales people are chasing their tail to respond to business they’ll never win. Our industry is best served by making each opportunity one worth pursuing aggressively from both sides.
December 27th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
One way to make meetings “healthier” is to provide more formats for productive/convivial interaction and shared learning like speed consulting sessions and Meet the Pro tables in a ballroom such as NSA has used and the very short& interactive sessions Dave Lutz has designed for the upcoming PCMA conference. Plus, elaborating on your #4, actually storyboarding the sequence of multi-sensory moments that attendees experience. Also create an interactive eBook of video, text, short hallway interviews etc. as a souvenir of the meeting, with content and contributors “tagged” and tied to the conference web site so it is easy for attendees and others to find each other and continue the conversations between meetings so the in-person times are richer and deeper
December 27th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Yes especially on the free Wi-Fi part. Vegas trade show are starting to get much better about offering it - hopefully in 2012 it will be a standard. Because really, how can it not be?!
January 2nd, 2012 at 11:49 am
Sue, I am so very impressed by your list. It is quite thorough, especially for the week after the holidays. I really agree with everything you have here, especially having smaller meetings. They are much more powerful outcomes to learning when it can be five in smaller, more interactive, more participant-driven segments. I also am a big fan of the WiFi for all mindset, as well as Dave’s suggestions. I too agree that sessions accepted more than six months in advance are not nearly as relevant, and changing that is the responsibility of both organizers and presenters. I would add one more to the bunch: working together instead of against each other to promote our entire industry and its importance to outsiders. Too often we cut down our partners, suppliers, friends, and colleagues by criticizing the jobs of event assistants, wedding planners, and others who provide important services. We also have a similar effect on vendors by taking away their equality through huge membership fees to associations.
January 2nd, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Sue - another fabulous brilliant blog! Thank you for sharing! I agree with you and especially educating the teachers, let’s make all experts more involved in the process, responsible for helping promote the event and get to know & engage the audience even more!
Let’s ask all teachers to turn up as thought leaders… not thought repeaters!
I also loved Dave Lutz’s addition of blowing up the Call for Proposals! He has done a brilliant job with Jeff Hurt of creating some cool environments at the Learning Lounge of the upcoming PCMA event that will really increase engagement in bite sized learning for attendees!
I would also add to your amazing list that we need to help people have a productive experience while they are there and that means engaging them before they arrive though social media, connecting with ‘teachers’, sharing with them how to get the most out the event (Thom Singer does a great job of this).
Happy New Year - see you at Convening Leaders!
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