My first full day at the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions annual conference, going on now in Orlando, was packed. Some notes on the meeting as a meeting.

I’ll get the whining out of the way first:
-Yes, I already have stuffed-brain syndrome from having way too much thrown at me in too little time with no connection between session topics and no time for reflection built in.
-We hit the “I know you can’t read this slide, but…” wall before the first general session was over.
-We hit the “I know this classroom setup makes it almost impossible to break into small groups, but we’ll have to do our best…” shortly thereafter.
-Healthy food is good, but replacing the chips with bean salad and the cookie with an apple in the bag lunch seems a bit over the top. Must we resort to Starbucks for all our dietary sins?
-Speaking of over the top, is it just me, or are there way too many sessions to choose from? I know, tough problem to have, but I’m finding myself torn between six or seven I want to go to in every single time slot. It’s making me crazy to be missing so much good content (and hearing people tweet about some of those sessions to the #acehp12 hashtag just makes it worse).

Awesome aspects, meeting-wise:
-Free WiFi! Thanks to Bernie Halbur, PhD, FACME, ACEHP’s Professional Development & Meeting Management Director, for making it happen, along with everything else we’re enjoying logistically. I gave her a standing ovation when she was recognized yesterday at the general session, and I wasn’t the only one.
-Love having the brief outdoor breezeway walk to the exhibition area, and the tables set up for eating/hanging out/computing along the way. At least we’re assured of the opportunity to catch five minutes or so of the gorgeous Florida weather as we go back and forth, instead of never even knowing if the sun is shining or not, as so often happens at marathon meetings.
-Beautiful hotel (the JW Marriott), beautiful rooms, nice jogging path, great fitness center. I don’t know much about golf, but the course looks good to me.
-Being able to hold the new CCMEP celebration out on the patio last night was a wonderful touch. Again, being able to get outside in January means a lot, especially to those of us who hail from the frozen North!

(Cross-posted on Capsules, where I’ll be posting a bunch more that’s content-specific to continuing medical education, so if you’re into that, come on over and browse!)

Let’s face it: Most general sessions are pretty boring. People go expecting to have to suffer a half hour, an hour, some seemingly endless amount of time as the association runs through its business issues and updates, thanks sponsors, etc., before getting to the keynote speaker. Or attendees just skip over that part and show up an hour into the session, hoping to spare themselves the experience.

In his 15-minute whirlwind at the Learning Pavilion, online and IRL conference moderator extraordinaire Glenn Thayer said we don’t have to follow the old formatting rules—who made those rules up, anyway? Why not make up your own rules based on the unique needs of your organization and your attendees? Let’s not be afraid to evolve, he said.

As Dr. Medina said, we learn in 10-minute chunks, so that’s a place to start, he said. What else do we experience daily that chunks up content? How about TV shows? Not that your general session is murderously dull, but it could take some clues from shows like CSI, which lead off with a pretty compelling setup (i.e., someone dies in some bizarre/grotesque/mysterious way), then breaks for commercial. We’re accustomed to that, so why not adopt a TV show format for your general session?

As Glenn pointed out, PCMA actually did in its opening general session, which was broken up into nine segments, just as a TV show is. The keynotes were short. Sponsors were thanked only after we got a payoff in interesting material, and we even had a video ad (Hawaii did a very cute, even humorous, video that I won’t describe because it will sound hokey, but it worked in context). Other ideas instead of just having a sponsor introduce the keynoter would be to have them do a behind-the-scenes vignette, or have live demos, or produce funny YouTube videos.

Don’t just look to TV for inspiration, he said. Check out what makes you excited to be at everyday places. What gets your attention at the mall? How does Disney World make long lines palatable. And don’t forget to ask your event producers what you can do to make the format fresher and more engaging.

Side note, sort of: I’ve now met Glenn a few times, and each time he impresses me more. We got to talking for a while after his session about meeting planning career paths and how to really get strategic, and he just blew me away. If you ever get the chance to talk with this guy, take it!

One big upside of the #PCMA12 experiment with having different time frames for the different sessions is that I could go to one of the regular breakouts for an hour and then feel OK about skipping off to the Learning Lounge for some Really Live Chatting or getting some 15 minute chunks of great info at the Big Ideas Pavilion. I don’t know why that feels like cutting class, since the learning I get there is at least as good as what I’ve been getting in the regular breakouts, but that’s definitely the feeling it gives me. Well, I guess if it worked for me in high school, why not now?

Anyway, I went to one quick session led by tech guru Gina Schreck (@GinaSchreck), who also turns out to know a thing or 10 about how you can get your speakers from putting people to sleep. One big plus? She modeled what she was talking about, and it must work because no one was even close to nodding off. A few of her tips:

* Prep your speakers for connecting with their audience. Have them use Twitter to ask people what they want to learn, offer some tidbits.

* Give them the audience demographics so they can customize their talk.

* Have them create short (30-second to 1-minute) videos you can post to your Web site and use in promotions.

*Forbid them from using small, bad fonts (yes!). Another PowerPoint tip: “PowerPoint doesn’t kill people. Bullets do.”

* Have them break up their presentations into chunks (thank you, Dr. Medina) with video interviews, live or recorded Skype interviews, fun vids they pick up from YouTube, etc.

Check out her Web site for a wealth of tech tips, too. Definitely worth spending an hour or two there.

PCMA did something pretty bold yesterday—they shook up the general session format, omitting the association business items that usually slow things to a crawl and splitting the keynotes into three separate, but related, speakers. And they were awesome.

My favorite by a hair was John Medina, PhD, author of Brain Rules and the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University, who has to be the funniest neuroscience guy I’ve heard yet. He revealed some stunningly obvious yet often ignored “brain rules,” like “people don’t pay attention to boring things.” Duh, right? Except we always seem to expect them to listen to that lecturer drone on as he reads his Powerpoint. And that we can only absorb new information for about 10 minutes before we need to shut off the data hose and digest. (Digression: He demonstrated how the human brain needs to chunk information into groups it can understand by asking us to memorize a stream of letters in seconds. It was impossible, until you realized that the stream of letters consisted of four acronyms. Then, of course, it was easy.)

So we need to find ways to divvy up the info into short bits, then give the brain a way to make meaning of it between chunks by showing how it relates to elemental human needs (is it food? Will it consider me to be food? Etc.).

Joining us next via Skype (and yes, PCMA staff gave an audible sigh of relief when the link picked up clear) was gaming expert and author Jane McGonigal, who explained the whole concept of gamification (I really dislike that term, BTW) and how cool it would be if we could harness all the brainpower that goes into hurling angry birds at pigs to solve real-world problems.

I loved this quote: “The opposite of play is not work–it’s depression.” She walked us through an example of a game she did for the centennial of the New York City library that incorporated the four things you can do to create game-like engagement: build a sense of urgent optimism (invited people to be a part of an overnight event where they would come up with ways to change the world for the better through finding clues); weave a tight social fabric (as they worked together through the night to find the clues, make the case for their ideas, etc.); create blissful productivity (see above); and make them be a part of something that has epic meaning (created an actual book that became a part of the library’s collection). It literally gave me goosebumps.

Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate, then took us through the seven triggers we can use to create fascination in others, using online dating profiles as examples of what instantly grabs and what doesn’t. One thing that she said that should strike fear (or inspire serious thought) in the heart of online marketers is that, though we can withstand up to 10 minutes of info load in real life, online we have an attention span of 9 seconds, the same as a goldfish, she said.

I didn’t get as much from her as I did the two previous speakers, but I will have to go see what my F-score is: Something to do while waiting for my redeye home!

Kudos to PCMA for taking a chance on a new format for its opening general session, and for its choice in speakers.

Speaking of speakers, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the day’s closing general session speaker, New York Times columnist David Brooks. I’m a big fan, so he didn’t say much I hadn’t heard before, but I just love his delivery, sense of humor, willingness to take questions at the end, insights on today’s bizarre political scene (he said it’s so polarized now that Democrats and Republicans won’t even sit in the same green room together before the Sunday morning show, which I found just appalling). A big takeaway for me was his reminder, with scientific backup, that so much of what influences how we think about things is driven by our un- and subconscious mind.

This reminded me of a conversation I had lately with the fabulous thinker and communications expert Kare Anderson. She left a comment on a blog post about cross-sensory perception and meetings, and I had to find out more. She pointed out to me strange things like we tend to feel more warmly toward someone who hands us a warm beverage instead of an iced one, and that rooms with lots of hard edges and angles make us, well, edgy. We talked about all this a lot more in the Really Live Chat on meeting design I later facilitated (Kare was one of the thought leaders whose recorded thoughts were available to spark conversations), so it was very cool when Brooks circled back around to it. There have been a lot of echoes and resonances like that at this meeting for me, which just keeps deepening the learning. I love that.

Back to Brooks…my favorite quote of his: “Emotion is not the opposite of reason; it is the basis of reason because it allows us to assign bias to things.”

I had a blast this morning facilitating (with a serious power assist from Velvet Chainsaw’s Jeff Hurt) one the Really Live Chats in the PCMA Convening Leaders Learning Lounge. The topic was “designing meetings for learning,” or something like that—in true chat form, we meandered around a bit.

The format was pretty cool. The Velvet Chainsaw peeps had recorded (some recordings more polished than others) a bunch of really interesting people saying some really interesting things about meetings, brains, learning, and how grown-ups perceive the world and each other. We would watch a video, or more likely, a short snip of a video, then talk about it, brainstorm, spark ideas off of each other, gain insights or just commiserate when we couldn’t think of ways to get at a specific issue.

As one person said, it was great to have the option to do something informal but not totally unstructured, as a break from the more formal breakouts going on elsewhere.

I haven’t had time to put my thoughts together too coherently, since I haven’t had a whole lot of time to stop and reflect on what came out of that Really Live Chat (one of the things we did talk about a lot was the need to build in reflection times so our brains have time to digest what we’re learning, but to do it in a more organic way than just say, “stop and talk amongst yourselves”). But I will say without much reflection at all that I love the format, and having the videos to get discussions started, and then tying what they talk about into real-life examples of what we do and what we now would like to do, is one example of a well-designed meeting component if you want people to learn rather than just hear content.

What I would love to do is, once the videos are posted (which I hear they will be), is to sort of reverse-reverse engineer the format and try to maybe put together a Google+ hangout or some other easy, informal way to continue the conversations as we learn more from the Big Brains, and/or bring new folks into the discussions. We only viewed maybe two full videos and a piece of a third; there is so much more there to talk about and we only have so many hours here in San Diego (did I mention the absolute hugeness of the content on tap here? Not just in the Learning Lounge and general sessions and breakouts, but there’s also the co-located Virtual Edge Summit’s plethora of interesting-sounding deep dives into hybrid, virtual, 3D, and who knows what else meetings?).

Was that a flying pig I just saw? Must have been, because swine on the wing is pretty much on a par in my mind with the words “Dr. DeWayne Woodring is retiring from the Religious Conference Management Association.” But in fact, he actually is stepping down from the RCMA executive director position he’s held since RCMA was founded 40 years ago. He’s handing over the reins to Rev. Harry Schmidt, who previously was the vice president of RCMA’s board.

I worked very closely with Dr. Woodring when I first joined MeetingsNet as the editor of RCMA’s magazine, Religious Conference Manager. I’ll never forget meeting him at my first RCMA annual conference, where I already was a little frazzled at the thought of producing the show daily newspapers, something I hadn’t done before. Then I came down with something horrid and spiked a fever of 102 degrees the day before the conference was to begin. I was a wreck. But not Dr. Woodring, who calmly sent me to my hotel room to recuperate (which fortunately I did pretty quickly and was able to carry on the next day—phew!). I have so many memories of him, but that’s one of my favorites. He may have been an executive director, but at heart he’s a meeting planner, too, and whatever came up at the annual conferences (and of course, there’s always something), he and his staff handled it with aplomb.

I’m sure many things will be said about his leadership of the organization, his strength of will, his fierce desire to provide the best education out there for his members, his sensitivity to the unique needs of an organization whose membership is ecumenical and religious simultaneously, his sense of humor, his laser-like focus on the details…it’s really hard to imagine RCMA without him at the helm. But while it’s sad to see him go (what I wouldn’t give to go to his farewell banquet!), I’m sure he and the board have given as much attention to the succession as they did to everything else, and that Rev. Schmidt will both carry on the traditions and bring his own new ideas to the organization.

But what I really want to know is what Dr. Woodring will do with all that energy now that he won’t have RCMA to pour it into. I hope his lovely wife Donna and his kids and grandkids can keep him occupied! My best wishes for a long and happy retirement, Dr. Woodring. You are truly one of a kind.

The Center for Exhibition Industry Research has been putting together a performance index of the various industry sectors for 12 years now. This year they put together an infographic that shows how key indicators (attendees, exhibitors, square footage, revenue) stack up for each market niche, and includes some predictions on how things may be going in those niches over the next few years (click on the graphic to enlarge it to an almost readable size).

So if you’re in the consumer goods/retail trade, food, or government sector, pull out your shades because things are getting brighter all the time for trade shows in those areas. Healthcare, which happens to be my niche, is looking a lot iffier. We’ll have to see how this all plays out to see if they’re right or not, but it’s interesting.

(Thanks to Defying Convention for the pointer!)

Joan Eisenstodt, chief strategist of Eisenstodt Associates, LLC, is no stranger to awards—she’s been inducted into the Convention Industry Council’s Hall of Fame,, recognized as an Educator by the PCMA Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, and earned the International Association of Conference Center’s Pyramid Award for sustained contributions to IACC education.

Now she’s done it again: She just became the first non-IACC member to win the Mel Hosansky Award for Distinguished Service since Mr. Hosansky himself. Congratulations to Joan for this honor, but more to the point, thanks for all the work, advice, teaching, learning, prodding, moderating, facilitating, mentoring, and championing Joan has done and continues to do for this industry and, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say likely thousands of individuals within it. And I know just how passionate she is about the role of conference centers in the meetings industry, so this is just right on so many levels.

According to a press release, she said as she received the award, “This is the ultimate! Particularly since it’s named for somebody who had more integrity than anyone I’ve known in hospitality. I see the award as reflective of Mel’s value and contributions to this industry segment, and that’s particularly meaningful to me.” She also expressed hope that “IACC conference centers would continue to be true to their mission, that they would be places where true learning would happen.”

Congratulations to Joan on winning this award, which is a special one to us here at MeetingsNet. While I never had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Hosansky, I did get to work with his daughter Tamar Hosansky, when she served as editor of Medical Meetings.

Oh, and did I mention that ahem, our publisher, Melissa Fromento, also won IACC’s Pyramid award this year? I don’t want to blow our own horn too much, but Melissa has put her heart and soul into the IACC Thought Leader Summit since she facilitated the first Summit in 2008 (she chaired the 2010 and 2011 Summits as well), and served for four years on the Annual Meeting Conference Planning Committee. How good was this year’s summit? I wasn’t able to attend in person, but the thought-leader summit my colleague and I attended virtually was dynamite (here’s our writeup of that session if you want to check it out for yourselves).

Another interesting thing that the Alliance for CME did this year had to do with its service project. Instead of rehabbing a playground or sprucing up a park, the Alliance worked with the Blood Centers of the Pacific to hold a blood drive at the meeting’s host hotel, the San Francisco Marriott Marquis (those who didn’t want to donate could volunteer to help out in other ways during the drive).

I like that it was closer to the organization’s purpose than last year’s fix-up project in New Orleans, but I’m not sure it had the same camaraderie-building effect as you get when people don the logo’d t-shirt and pitch in together on something that requires physical exertion. But it still was a great way to give back to the beautiful host city of San Francisco.

PCMAmazing!, an inside look at the Learning Lounge by Freeman’s Brad Kent (I unintentionally yet totally stiffed Freeman and PCMA’s Kelly Peacy in my post on it. Thanks to them and everyone else involved for making it happen.)

Greg Ruby’s random thoughts about PCMA11

Attracting Millennials to Your Event (and failing at it), by Josip Petrusa

Any good ones I’m missing? Leave a URL in the comments, and thanks!