While it may not rock your world, this list of 10 quick meeting-planning tips from the AMI blog is a good reminder of what really counts: that it’s all about the attendees, not your organization. It may be simple, but it’s probably not easy!

Most of the conversations I’ve had recently around the trade show concept have focused on their being perceived as an old-school way to bring buyers and sellers together, one that is becoming increasingly ineffective and unappealing to attendees. Hence the move toward hosted-buyer programs, and adding education in hopes it will attract more people to the show floor.

Then I ran across this editorial in Forbes written by Consumer Electronics Association (which owns the CES show) president and CEO Gary Shapiro that is practically an ode to the trade show model. Called Want Innovation? Go to a Trade Show
, here’s the heart of his argument:

Perhaps most important, they come because relationships matter in business and, despite the worldwide reach of the Internet, a relationship cannot only be electronic. It must be personal.

This personal component to International CES – or any tradeshow, for that matter – is what makes it a living, breathing entity. It’s an experience that requires five senses. Some may scoff and wonder why in the age of technology and the Internet live face-to-face events even exist. Yet they not only persist, they also prosper because people, relationships and first-hand impressions matter. Five-sense interaction beats the Internet for creating a big picture view, allowing serendipitous discovery, developing trust, and evaluating people and products.

It’s an argument we’ve all heard before, and I of course want to get behind it. And yet I do hear, anecdotally anyway, an increasing reluctance on attendees’ parts to deal with the trade show model. Is the expo floor as we know it still a vibrant, living, growing model, or a dinosaur lumbering its way to an experiential tar pit? I’m sure the answer will in part depend on who the intended audience is, but generally speaking, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Talk about communication failure! This is scathingly on target.

Thanks to @BrianSMcGowan for the pointer!

I spend a lot of time with continuing medical education providers, but not so much with the meeting planners who make those meetings at which the CME is conducted happen, so it was fascinating to have the chance to sit in on a frank discussion of what their biggest challenges are, and what they are doing to resolve them, as my last session of PCMA 2012.

One thing that seemed to be of huge concern was the idea that exhibitors were going to start asking them to provide physician attendees’ National Provider Identification numbers. Since this is public information, I’m having a hard time understanding why that is the meeting planner’s problem—why can’t the exhibitors just look them up? If someone can explain why this is potentially a big issue for exhibitors, please let me know. I tried to find out from a few folks after the session ended, but everyone was in a rush to leave so I didn’t really get much other than if an exhibitor demands it, it’s their problem. Which I get, but I don’t get why exhibitors would demand this from them. Light-shedding on this would be welcome!

Other big issues were the costs of complying with government regulations and Accreditation Council for CME rules, pressures to find new sources of revenue, building traffic to the exhibition floor, international initiatives (including visa-related challenges), CME credit interchange with other countries, and all the various codes and rules and regulations they are supposed to follow nowadays.

One participant was particularly concerned about the Council of Medical Specialty Societies’ newish ethical code that is designed to limit drug and device company influence over patient care. While similar in many ways to the ACCME’s Standards for Commercial Support, it also prohibits society presidents, CEOs, and editors-in-chief of society journals from having direct financial relationships with relevant for-profit companies in the healthcare sector. One participant said her organization actually had to ask one of its journal editors to resign after her society agreed to abide by the CMSS code.

Sponsorships and exhibit dollars on the decline had most of the crowd at least someone frazzled. As one person said, “With the PhRMA Code, they don’t want to sponsor anything anymore.” Several said their organizations were going the same route as PCMA, offering year-round sponsorships that extend far beyond the meeting rather than providing one-offs on tote bags and banners. (Note: This article offers some good tips on how to get more sponsorship dollars. And here’s another one.) One thing sponsors particularly seem to like, said some participants, is being able to meet with board members and other influential people in the industry at board and other high-level meetings. Some said they give preferential treatment on the show floor to exhibitors that are also in more extensive sponsorship relationships, others said they kept it completely separate.

From what people were saying, I’m not sure they’d buy into this snip of research finding that physicians aren’t eschewing the trade show floor now that the tchotches are out due to PhRMA Code restrictions. It sounds like, for medical meetings as for other types of association conferences, it’s becoming more and more of a push to get people on the show floor and interacting with exhibitors. While product theaters can help, they don’t appear to be a major solution to the exhibition drain problem. As one person said, “The surveys say they value exhibitions, but they don’t go. We give them food, product theaters, we’re even putting the reception on the show floor. Nothing seems to help.”

One said she was going to take the “continue the conversation” idea from PCMA, where a follow-on informal session is held after a keynote so those who want to can dive deeper into the material, only hold it on the show floor. Which is fine, as long as it isn’t for credit, warned another person. Another pointed to a different angle on the problem: Maybe it’s the booths that aren’t so attractive. So that organization offers a consultant who can evaluate exhibitor booths and suggest ways to improve them.

Some said they had added a virtual trade show component as a complement to repurposing educational content from the conference for online distribution, but it didn’t appear that the value was all that high (one said that only 42 percent of virtual attendees visited the virtual exhibit, which I thought actually sounded pretty good. Another said it was more like 25 percent for his group). Streaming the educational session, with or without CME credit attached, live and archived, seemed to be pretty popular among attendees of most of the planners who said they had done it. However, interest dropped off a cliff when members were asked if they would pay for it, one person said (shocking, I know!). Another said she had a good response to charging one fee to get access to all the content, and an additional fee on top of it if they wanted to get CME credit for it.

They didn’t talk a lot about CME educational grants, but one person did point out that, now that pharma budgets for CME grants are shrinking, their ad budgets actually are growing. Accordingly, medical organizations are beginning to put more of their focus on attracting those ad dollars to support their meetings.

There was more—a lot more—but I’ll leave this one with two of the wildest promotional ploys I’ve heard of:

One was a company that brought colored chalk and proceeded to draw its logo on the sidewalk in front of the medical conference’s headquarters hotel. Another person told of a company that put its logo on the mainsail of a big sailboat and had it sail up and down the harbor in view of the meeting (I’m not sure if this was in San Diego, but I could see it happening there.)

I had been looking forward to this one because, while I’m not sure Richard Saul Wurman’s done the world a favor by unleashing a million TED knockoffs (then again, I shouldn’t blame him for others piggybacking on an idea that may not be a great fit for their meeting) and I’m not convinced his www.www conference format is all that (then again, as he said, he doesn’t care, since he didn’t invite me anyway).

From the abrupt introduction—here he is—to the abrupt end—I might as well stop now since I got a laugh—he was not everyone’s cup of tea, but I was delighted through and through. What a cranky, unique, fearless individual he is. He created TED because “I wanted to design a meeting I’d want to be at. I did TED because I wanted to do it.”

He described the designing process for TED as one of subtraction: He took out panels, dress codes (he cut off the tie of anyone who dared to wear one), took out the podium (which he described as just something to protect your groin and to give you a place to put papers to read off of—and “who wants to be read to?”). Meetings, he said, are made up of small things that make people feel comfortable so they can learn.

He talked a bit about his new www.www conference, which he’s again designing through subtraction (no tickets, no presentations, no set schedule). One thing that sounds interesting is how he plans to disseminate the conference later, which is going to be in black-and-white film available online that will offer customizable ways to find out more about each of the discussion participants. Basically, again looking to create a conference he’d like to be a part of, he’s looking for a modality that allows people to create their own experience based on what they’re interested in.

He went on for a while about a fable he created in his books What If, Could Be and 33. I won’t go into it, but it involved turning everything into its opposite (example: copyright becomes right to copy. Note to self: Buy these books. They sound really interesting.).

More favorite quotes:
“I don’t show visuals because I don’t want to be a caption.”
“The more famous you are, the shorter the introduction.”
“Learning is remembering what you’re interested in.”
“I’ve tended to fail sideways throughout my life.”
“Humor is not trivial: It’s the opposite of expectation.” (He said this just before reeling off some of my favorite Stephen Wright one-liners, like, “Everything is within walking distance if you have enough time.”)
“We live in the age of also.” (As in, you can do it this way, and also that way.)

And in case this wasn’t eclectic enough, he ended up with a quick biomimicry example of learning a better way to peel a banana by watching an ape do it. I actually learned this one a few years ago and have been peeling my bananas from the bottom up ever since. I later on in the afternoon got into a really interesting conversation about what else we can learn about meetings from mimicking what nature perfected a long time ago. Stay tuned for more on that one…

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!

Another great info-chunker is learning evangelist Kathleen Edwards, who is rapidly becoming one of my new favorite meeting design experts. At her 15-minute session at the Learning Pavilion, she had kind of a new year’s theme, as in “Out with old, in with the new.”

What’s out:
A small group of people on a program committee who may or may not know what the audience wants and/or needs making all the content choices for the conference.

What’s in:
Using technology to connect with the audience to learn what they really need.

What’s out:
Speakers who try to cram everything they’ve ever learned into a session.

What’s in:
Outcomes-focused, learner-centered sessions that focus on key points that can be digested over the course of the session.

What’s out:
Sage on the stage providing a one-way firehose of information.

What’s in:
Guide on the side who engages the learners and facilitates learning by making it all about you, the learner.

What’s out:
Learner apathy, as in people who just sit and passively absorb (or not) the information.

What’s in:
Learners who take charge of their learning. If they aren’t getting what they want, they’ll go somewhere else to get 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.

I’ve experienced this type of “from the horse’s mouth” customer advice session from Sam Lippman’s ECEF in the past, and they’ve been really useful. So I had high hopes for a similar session I went to today, where Bob Priest-Heck of Freeman interviewed panelists Nancy Niepp, Cisco, and Jeff Singsaas, Microsoft, to find out what makes them want to buy into being a sponsor or exhibitor at a third-party event (both panelists also put on plenty of their own events). I wasn’t disappointed.

Among their key points:

* The audience demographics have to be what they’re looking for, preferably demonstrably so (i.e, if the event is audited, which they both said is exceedingly rare).

* Are their partners going to be there? The competition?

* Are the conference’s themes consistent with the corporate mission and goals?

* How did the show perform for the company in the past?

* Will the show organizer provide company names/titles/city/state/zip codes the potential sponsor/exhibitor can use to get their regional salespeople interested in being there?

* Will the show organizer engage with us early in the process (something both said is exceedingly rare)?

* Does the show organizer have a basic knowledge of the company’s business (again, much too rare)?

* Can the salesperson have a dialog about how the show will benefit the company, ask about their needs first and then try to find ways to meet those needs instead of just selling space (again, dodo bird rare)?

* Can you offer ways to engage with attendees off the show floor?

* Does the show have a virtual/digital component? (”It would be a show stopper for us if there wasn’t a digital component,” said Jeff.) Can you provide the equipment to live-stream from the show so the exhibitor doesn’t have to schlepp all the stuff to the show location?

One thing Jeff said that kind of rocked me, and should rock you, is that shows like SouthXSouthwest and Maker Faire that come together in an organic way, with attendees doing much of the organizing, are going to be the future of conferences. Think on that a bit, my friends.

So much more to say about today, but I must head out to the “urban convergence” reception in the Gaslamp Quarter. They were already starting to set up already at 6:30 this morning when I was out wandering around, and I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with since then!

Being the editor of Medical Meetings and having written what seems like endless articles on the thorny issue of pharma funding, I had to check out this 2.25-hour session that used a system called Wizerize—yay, we got to play with iPads! Boo, we didn’t get to keep them after the session!

I’m not sure how others in the room might have felt, but I’m not sure the tool fit the needs of the session. Basically, the Idea Rally was a process that went something like this: Each table brainstormed a challenge, then came up with two or three proposals to meet the challenge. We then had to agree on one proposal, and spend the remaining 12 minutes of the 25 we were given to flesh it out on the iPad.

Then the entire room was given access to each table’s challenge and proposed solution, and every individual could then rank each idea on its relevance and value, and add comments to improve or critique the ideas. Then the proposals, now attached to rankings and comments, went back to the tables for further refinement. A final ranking of all the proposals was tallied in the system, and the top three ideas were recognized.

I liked the system and could see it working for some topics, but I think for this particular big hairy problem, it didn’t allow us to really dig in and get to more than superficial solutions, or first passes at ideas for solutions that may or may not be possible to carry out. Given the quality of the conversation at my table (and there were only three of us), I think we may have gotten more value out of just talking it out among the group, or some other format that would have let us maybe chunk down the topic to something that could reasonably be attacked during that timeframe, then setting us all to the task of solving it through discussion.

I know there were a few more ReThink sessions using Wizerize, notably one on the role of third party planners and new ways they can bring more value to the table rather than be stuck getting in a fee war in an increasingly commoditized meetings world, that may have been more conducive to the system. If anyone reading this participating in one of the other ReThinks, I’d love to know your thoughts (comment below or here’s my e-mail).