This post by Jeff Hurt makes me think that I’m one of the few left who go to conferences mainly for the content; it sounds like a lot of people are shifting their decision-making mainly to who they hope to connect with while they’re at the event. Don’t get me wrong, I love to meet up with those I only know from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., and to reconnect with old friends, but I’m mainly there for the sessions. Might have something to do with knowing I have to write about them later, eh? (All personal conversations are off the record, just in case you were avoiding me in fear that something you let slip will show up in a magazine or something.)

But it does make me wonder if conference planners need to put even more emphasis on the networking, and less on the content, than they did in the past? I’ve heard that mentioned a few times in conjunction with some meetings industry events, and have to agree that the social aspects could use some bolstering. Especially for the really cliquey events that are so terrifying for newbies. But I wouldn’t take anything away from the content in order to do it–it’s not an either/or proposition, as I see it. The ideal, for me anyway, would be to thread the content through the networking, and the networking through the content, so conversations and connections happen more naturally and focus more on professional development than the latest gossip or the cute thing the cat did the other day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if I spend a lot of money and take the time away from the office, I really do want to learn something.

Update: Extraordinary idea-rouser that he is, Jeffrey Cufaude made a comment on this post over on Facebook that really made me think. Hope he doesn’t mind that I share it here. He said: “But I do want us to drop the idea/frame of networking and focus more on the business of connecting: people to people, people to content, questions to answers, and interests to opportunities.” Kind of reshapes the whole discussion when you think of it that way, doesn’t it?

Still catching up on the news after my week-long sojourn in Italy, but I couldn’t believe that some U.S. government agencies actually have put in place policies that prohibit them from meeting in certain cities. At least some in our government realize how dumb this is and are doing something about it, but this knee-jerk numbskullity (I know, it’s probably not a word, but I like it) has got to stop.

Everyone, take a deep breath, then look at what your meeting is trying to accomplish, what type of venue will help you accomplish it, and a location that works for your meeting goals and your attendees. Find a property that fits with what you need at a price you can live with, period. There are some great deals to be had at resorts right now, and in fact I’ve heard a few stories about how planners ended up paying more at a low-end property than they would have at a great five-star because the powers-that-be wouldn’t allow them to use anything higher than a three-star, regardless of the actual cost/value ratio. That’s just stupid. Ditto for blacklisting entire cities for some perceptual issue that may or may not exist.

If you can show that your choice was the appropriate one to help you achieve what you need to achieve at a reasonable price, that’s all that should matter. I’m getting mighty sick and tired of hearing about how fears about how a meeting will be perceived is causing people to make decisions that in fact end up being wasteful, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

Check out the latest meetings-related editorial from Ben Stein, this time from the American Spectator: No Meetings on the Table.

He’s turning out to be one of our biggest big-name supporters these days. Wish I had been able to see his keynote at MPI (Mike McCurry posted some about it; haven’t had time to scope out more, but I do hear it was good.) I especially like this quote from his editorial:

“Business meetings had zero to do with causing this recession. Even more to the point, banning or condemning business meetings will not help us get out of the recession. Instead, this anti-meeting policy gets hotel and airline workers fired, kicks hotel maids and busboys in the teeth, wrecks communities used to working hard to be good hosts.”

Keep on saying it, Ben. Hopefully someone other than interested parties like me will take notice.

P.S. Sorry to be so quiet lately here on face2face. First I had back-to-back production on two magazines, then a vacation with my three sisters in Rome, Italy (poor, poor, pitiful me, right?). Just got back last night, but I promise to try to catch up here (as well as elsewhere) as quickly as I can. Anything exciting going on that I missed?

Try one of the models Julius Solaris outlines in this brilliant post on the EventManagerBlog: 10 Alternative Business Models for Events. They may not all work for your purposes, but I’d bet they all get you thinking about what else you can do, given your market, attendees, and other environmental factors.

Jeff Hurt poked a hornet’s nest when he posted his dissatisfaction with Meeting Professional International’s Virtual Access Pass for its World Education Congress, coming to Salt Lake City in less than a week. The VAP lets people purchase online access to much of WEC’s educational content (or you can purchase just access to the opening general session). Go ahead, read his post and all the comments around it. I’ll wait.

Looks like he really touched a chord there, doesn’t it? I don’t really have a dog in this hunt, not being an MPI member and having never been to its conferences, but, as someone employed by an increasingly e-media company, I do have great interest in the whole conversation around “free” content and the Internet. Obviously, I’d love it if every word I wrote was so golden that people would pay hundreds of dollars to read them, but that isn’t the case–and wasn’t the case even pre-Internet. Most trade magazines, whether published by for-profit companies or by associations, have always followed a free circulation, paid-for-by-advertising model. Most association magazines provide conference wrapups and session writeups in their post-con issues. There’s nothing new with the concept of free content supported by advertising and/or sponsorship. The only thing that’s new is the media (Internet) and quantity (tons, and growing exponentially daily) of content that’s free for the taking.

I think MPI’s president Bruce MacMillan did his best to lay out the association’s reasoning behind charging for online access. But it’s not good enough, IMHO. I understand that the decision likely was driven by finances–or lack thereof–and good intentions. They wanted to bring the show to those who wouldn’t be able to make it in person, and to cover the production costs. Nothing wrong with that.

Instead, they ended up alienating and angering a lot of very vocal people. In my book, that makes it a bad move. If MPI offered a more limited access for free (or at least a lot cheaper), it could have reaped tons of goodwill, won over some members who maybe were thinking about dropping their membership, and possibly enticed some new people to join.

Plus, when it comes to conferences, all providing the free stuff does is get people wanting to go in person next year. TED is the example that keeps coming up, but I’d say it’s true for every conference that I’ve seen do it. It is the best promo you could possibly give, makes members feel valued, makes nonmembers want to join and come to the conference. The cost, while not negligible, would be less than a regular marketing campaign, I would think.

Instead, they get lots of negative PR, ticked off members, and probably won’t make enough to come close to covering costs anyway.

This debate won’t go away any time soon, methinks. Jeff has listed some great thoughts from great thinkers in his post, The Rise of the Gift Economy and Freeconomics that are well worth reading and thinking about.

If you think this won’t affect you, think again. Whether you’re a content consumer, a content producer, or both, the rise of “free” is reworking some fundamental aspects of society. This is not just an MPI issue. It’s an everyone issue, and let’s not be too hard on MPI for stumbling along the way. None of us know exactly how the Internet economy will shake out, and in the meantime, we’re all bound to do some things that, in retrospect, we may wish we hadn’t.

Two posts you must read if you care at all about measuring the value of your event:

How Do You Feel About Me? by Judith Lindenau. One quick snip (and thanks to Kevin for the pointer):

The important questions have to do with this question: how applicable was the information you heard to what you do in your job? Or (asked at a later date) “what percentage of the information you gained do you remember? What information from the presentation are you using today?” Certainly retention of information and practical application of methods are important goals for our training efforts. And if we are gauging effectiveness based on those values, conveying those value measurements in advance to course writers and presenters will take your program a long way to success.

The other is the Future of Learning: Get Serious,, in which Lisa Junker at the Acronym blog interviews Jeffrey Cufaude. Along with other topics, he talks about evaluations and how we’re basically still stuck at the smiley-face stage. His last line is really staying with me:

My bottom-line takeaway from that is we’re not serious about learning. We’re serious about delivering information, and that’s not sustainable 10 to 20 years from now.

When the Treasury Department released its new executive compensation rules, I’m sure corporate meeting professionals everywhere joined Krys Slovacek in breathing a small sigh of relief when they found out that, while it requires companies receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to develop a company-wide policy for meetings, events, and other corporate travel expenses, it leaves it up to a company’s board of directors to decide what’s frivolous and what’s not (i.e., one would hope, meetings).

But is it too little, too late, as Krys worries? As she says, “The public has been led to believe (by the media and politicians alike) that meetings are frivolous, evil things. And those who attend meetings are frivolous, evil people, wasting TARP funds.” Which as we all know is not the case.

I know the folks at Meetings Mean Business have been fighting the good fight on this one, but I’m with Krys in my concern that the damage has already been done. Or maybe the pendulum, having hit the wall on the one side, will now start slowly swinging back towards meetings as being the vital business tool we all know them to be?

Thanks to Acronym for these great meetings-related posts:

The Future of Learning: Experience It, by Lisa Junker

The Future of Learning: Unlearning, by Lisa Junker (both of these are based on her interviews with Rhea Blanken of Results Technology, who Lisa calls “a passionate advocate for learning in general and new learning formats in particular”–my kind of person!)

And if you need proof, just check out this post: Sometimes sorry is the best PR, by Alli Gerkman. The point we all should take to heart and repeat endlessly when one thing goes bad, then another, then a whole cascade of bad things drench us in muck:

Believe it or not, some of my best evaluations have come from conferences that couldn’t catch a break. After all, it’s easy to represent your company or your brand when everything is going right, but it’s how you react when things go wrong that can set you apart.

And it’s true, at least in my experience.

A tip of the hat to Virtualis, the convention and learning center in the virtual world of Second Life, on being designated as one of 31 international firms earning the “Gold Solutions Provider” designation in Second Life by Linden Labs (which created and runs the virtual world).

What that means, according to a press release, is that Virtualis has the stamp of approval as a go-to partner for organizations that are new to Second Life. Even though we haven’t been hearing a lot about Second Life lately, the place has been hopping, according to Dan Parks, President and Creative Director of Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc., and one of the creative forces behind Virtualis. Especially for meetings. When we spoke a while back, he told me the facility has doubled in size due to demand from both corporate and association clients, and can now accommodate 360 virtual attendees in its arena. While people’s avatars may look strange, the convention center itself has all the usual amenities (registration area, lobby, prefunction and ballroom space, breakout rooms). It also includes the Eisenstodt Learning Center, which has all kinds of interesting meeting space that has to be experienced to be believed.

I haven’t been there in a while, but it’s good to know things are cooking in that virtual world. It’s funny how the media attention comes and goes–a couple of years ago, SL was the media darling (and yes, we wrote about it too). Now it seems to be Twitter’s turn. But the Virtualis press release reminds me that work, and meetings, keep happening in alternative spaces, even when the spotlight has moved on.