We’ve all been there. You know, those meetings where half the room was empty, and the other half was occupied by people who were asleep before a droning voice and the ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation. Because you, a wily veteran of many meetings such as this, strategically sat at the back of the room, you could slip out for relief in any form.
Imagine instead a meetings environment where PowerPoints are either nonexistent or very scarce, and a one-way communication style has surrendered to an animated and engaged audience. People are interacting with each other and the facilitator—either with their voices or their e-devices. Nobody leaves the room or the appointed online platform because they don’t want to miss what’s next. Two-way communication is the MO.
Nice, you say, but likely impossible. Give too much heed to participants and we’ll lose control and miss our objectives. The way we’ve always done our meetings has worked pretty well. Attendance may be falling but that’s because of the economy and time poverty, naturally. Besides, the boss would never buy it and neither will the attendees.
Or will they?
Groundbreak at PEC
Paradigm shifts in a culture rarely happen overnight, and the meetings industry is no exception. But if industry history records a groundbreaking event, it might be MPI’s recent 2008 Professional Educational Conference-North America (PEC-NA) in Houston. Planners and suppliers who were there say the event rang a bell for significant change in meetings design that many are applauding and using in their own projects.
Inside conversation cafes during hands-on technology playground experimentations, and within session room setups that contained couches instead of chair and table rows, participants took looks at new tools and ways of doing meetings. College students demonstrated to planners how gaming technology can be integrated into meetings designs. The PEC-NA trade expo had no aisles and no pipe and drape. Instead, many exhibitors such as Hilton Hotels Corporation inhabited “connection stops” instead of 10x10 booths, where representatives could hold one-on-one client conversations in lounge-like environments.
With the “Meet Different” banner flying over the entire program, the focus was on gatherings of the future and the mantra that formats must change if they are to engage and serve multiple generations from diverse cultures. The takeaway went something like this: It’s time to ditch your mother’s very tired meetings style.
“Revolutions don’t begin with thousands of people,” Mary E. Boone, communications expert, author and president of Essex, Conn.-based Boone Associates, told her audience. “Revolutions begin with a core group of people who are committed to change. The meetings industry is on the edge of a tipping point, and those among you who are ready for the shift will ‘get’ what we say and do here.”
In her keynote, Boone shared some of her expertise in the organizational communication, leadership development and interactive meetings information that’s in her book, Managing Inter@actively: Executing Strategy, Improving Communication and Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Culture.
What’s an Unconference?
“Meetings are and will be in the future extremely important,” Boone says, “because it’s increasingly difficult to communicate. The world is much more complex than it used to be. People are working virtually, and there are multiple demographic cultures in the workplace. You can’t just ‘tell and sell’ something to people. It’s now all about ‘ask and engage’—engaging them enough so they want to take ownership.”
Boone says she believes meetings increasingly will be places where people actually work, not just talk about it.
“As we work more virtually, we’ll need to use the connections we make with people in face meetings to start projects, not just talk about concepts,” she says. “It’s at the face meeting where we’ll do the networking and find the right people to do things we need to accomplish.”
She champions the “unconference,” and she assisted MPI with the creation of the PEC-NA format to showcase it. The unconference maximizes conversation and uses the knowledge and experience of participants to generate much of the conference content—before, during and after the event.
MPI used wikis among its tools for gathering and processing content suggestions for PEC-NA. Some of those suggestions found their way into Cafe Conversations sessions at the event. Participants submitted additional table topics that got posted outside the room on whiteboards so attendees could come and go into the room as they wished. In The Green Cafe, people talked about organizational social responsibility and green meetings; in The Bridge Cafe, the conversations were about generational and cultural differences in meetings; Cafe Futura conversations dealt with trends and emergent technologies. Cafe Potpourri had a smorgasbord of industry topics.
Collaborate to Educate
“With our PEC-NA educational sessions, we went much further than we ever have before toward engaging the community in designing content,” says Vicki Hawarden, MPI’s knowledge management and member events vice president. “We took ideas and proposals from MPI staff, chapter leaders and committee members, and then winnowed them to get the content cream of the crop. It was about a nine-month process, and it really never stopped, right into the meeting.”
Besides the Unconference Boulevard for Cafe Conversations, The MPI Learning Village included Technology Way, where participants got hands-on experience and information about now and future technologies that can impact meetings. In the Podcasting Alley session, for instance, attendees used equipment to record the conference and create podcasts.
Other sessions didn’t look a whole lot different from traditional design, but Hawarden said there was more collaboration behind them than ever before.
Some PEC room setups were designed to promote a collaborative environment.
Cris Canning, CMP, president of Hospitality Ink, a marketing consulting firm in San Diego, conducted a career session on self-marketing in a room filled with couches, coffee tables and easy chairs. Bars and high stools lined the rear of the room. The casual set was meant to promote conversation, Canning says, and was a success.
“We had probably 100 people, and they did a lot of interacting which I think probably came a lot out of the more casual environment,” she says. “I had some apprehension beforehand about how people would take notes if they wanted to, because there were no tables in front of them. But that wasn’t a problem. Those who took notes found a way to do it.”
For the MPI World Education Congress (WEC) in August, Hawarden says collaboration on the education components continues on another level.
“We are doing a similar process to what we did for PEC-NA in having people offer and comment on topics. But we’ve engaged member volunteers to do some “peer review” or vetting of the content. We’re using online resources as never before in designing our meetings, as well as conference calls and some face meetings as well.”
A Different Expo
What about a trade show with no aisles or pipe and drape?
Hawarden says MPI wanted to take some risks apart from the same old, same old with an open floor design that would also promote collaboration at PEC-NA.
“We wanted to shake it up so it looked and felt different. So we created pods—“Connection Spots”—four back-to-back sections, with center towers that looked more like places where you would sit down and have conversations,” she says.
To get exhibitors to buy into the concept, Hawarden and her team conducted webinars and “lots of phone calls” to help people understand the whys and hows of a new show design.
“We knew it would be a challenge, so we got our biggest customers onboard before we settled on the concept,” Hawarden says. “We promoted the idea of designing something more inviting for conversation in our discussions with them. Some loved it, some weren’t so enthusiastic, but we got good feedback after the event. Freeman is our decorator, and they received quite a few inquiries from attendees about how to carry the design off for their own shows.”
Terrence Donnelly, vice president for corporate markets for Experient, was among the PEC-NA exhibitors who didn’t occupy traditional show booth real estate. He says the new design didn’t grab him at first, because he thought it wouldn’t be private enough for interacting with clients and prospects. But in motion, he found it very workable.
“The design suggested a sort of living room setting, more inviting for people to come in and chat with us,” Donnelly says. “In the standard show booth, you have a talking head, a plasma screen with running images, and a one-way flow of conversation to someone. American show people are forgetting how to sit down and converse with prospects.”
The PEC-NA show concept compared with the design elements European shows have been using for some time, Donnelly says.
“There are really big industry shows in Europe where you have appointments and you serve people coffee in sort of a restaurant atmosphere,” he says. “The exhibitor booth then becomes a meeting place. I think this idea is very important as we try to promote face meetings and trade shows in the U.S.”
Not all exhibitors occupied the new design pods. The open floor design featured a mix of large islands, 10x10’s and the connection spot quadrants. Chad Chappell, director of national accounts for the Baltimore CVB, says his 10x10 booth was located at the back on the show floor facing out into the showroom.
“In a traditional aisle setup, I would have been lost in the back of the room,” Chappell says. “So I appreciated the new design because it was open and offered sight lines across the show floor. We could see at least half the room from our position. I do think there was probably too much variety in the styles exhibitors occupied, but PEC-NA was a great place to test the design and theories. I think most exhibitors were very satisfied with their outcomes.”
Julie Rice, sales and marketing manager for Atlantic City, N.J.’s The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, said MPI’s pre-show webinars were key in getting her company onboard with the new expo design idea. She occupied a connection spot on the floor and liked it.
“The show design was more open and inviting, and it encouraged more with attendees,” she says. “The lack of aisle numbers did present some people challenges in locating specific exhibitors, but I think feedback on that was taken seriously by MPI.”
PEC-NA Takeaway
Change in meeting design has been called for by industry people for years, says MaryAnne Bobrow, CMM, CAE, president of Sacramento, Calif.-based Bobrow and Associates, and PEC-NA 2008 was a huge first step toward making it happen.
“After that event, I don’t think people who were there will be content to do things in the same old way,” she opines. “With all the communication and generational changes out there, we just must do meetings differently. We’ve been doing them the same for far too long, and somebody needed to take the risks. God bless ’em.”
