Of course you want attendees to be excited about the destination they’re meeting in, whether it’s a cosmopolitan urban setting, a retreat in the mountains or a beachside affair. And getting there also has to be hassle-free. And the food? You know that’s got to be good or you’re going to hear about it.
But what about the most important item of all: the content?
While on the surface it may not seem like the Baked Alaska of meeting components, without it your event’s reason for existence is moot. And just offering great content is not the be-all, end-all, because you’ve probably got attendees from multiple generations who want their information--before, during and after the event--delivered electronically, or not electronically, with lots of peer input.
But where does the meeting planner fit into the puzzle? Planners are, after all, Jacks and Jills of all trades, so presenting, say, a high-level physician’s forum on the latest cardiology techniques may be a bit outside of one’s comfort zone.
The answer is that the meeting planner is the facilitator of information exchange, perhaps a herder of the cats who control the content, or the person who makes sure all of the supporting elements are just so.
“Many meeting planners are not involved in the content,” says Joan Eisenstodt, chief strategist of Eisenstodt & Associates, and moderator of Meetings Focus Forum (www.MeetingsFocusForum.com). “They don’t develop the content. They support the delivery of content.
“You can have really great content and have a room set, or lighting or audiovisual, that just doesn’t work,” she continues. “That to me is where a meeting planner can help make the content better.”
Apart from setting the stage on-site, the channel content is delivered through has become a multifaceted affair.
“Printed, static digital media such as CDs, flash drives and DVDs, or online in its various forms, up to and including mobile websites, eBook delivery--it’s becoming quite a mixed palette, shall we say—” says Paul Wehking, vice president of strategic accounts for Omnipress, a Madison, Wis.-based company that assists organizations with the delivery of conference educational content. “The unique thing about it, whether you’re an association or corporate meeting planner, is that the audience has different preferences for content delivery. A person can mix and match based on what their preferences are.”
Wehking’s company handles content that ranges from being fairly straightforward to coordinating the presentation of blind abstracts for physicians or engineers.
Wehking also presented at HSMAI’s MEET National and MEET West conferences this year, with an emphasis on content delivery and facilitating attendee involvement in content creation.
“I think the trends continue to point to the electronic delivery of conference materials,” he says. “The general trend is the move toward digital delivery, which can mean a number of things.”
And while the small size of the ubiquitous smart phone is a hindrance for more complex content delivery—outside of, say, scheduling and communication—mobile websites are now in the forefront due to the ability to rapidly update content.
“You won’t see 300 12-page technical papers delivered through a smart phone,” Wehking jokes, “but mobile websites will do a very good job of delivering that bulky content.
“The content itself needs to become much more mobile,” he continues, “and that’s when tablets work very well, consuming content in all of its forms because of their size. You can adequately view a pdf on a tablet and you can adequately view a website on a tablet.”
The Content of Content
Of course, if the content itself isn’t good, it really makes no difference how it’s delivered.
Wehking and other meetings industry content specialists stress that having a strategy for meeting content can pay big dividends—often literally—in the end.
“It’s good for people to start thinking about an overall content strategy—it doesn’t have to be a big session with a lot of committees,” he says. “The base questions to think about are what content do you have, when do you have it, what value does it have, and to whom—attendees, membership at large, the world?—will it go to, and what do you want to do with it. Will it generate revenue? Add a member or attendee benefit?”
Next, think about how people will curate the content, and if it will be usable down the line as, say, a free or fee online archive, the best sessions from the previous year’s meeting culled into a new member marketing initiative, a drip marketing campaign for those who didn’t attend the last meeting—so they can “save the date”—a preview of the next year’s program or blurbs from a keynote, which usually work better than a staid message from a program chair or organization executive.
“A ton of time, effort and energy was spent creating that knowledge, so why not leverage that t the best of your ability via knowledge centers, learning libraries, etc.,” Wehking says. “What they’re saying is there’s valuable content here, but put it into something that’s useful for people to access rather than, metaphorically, putting it in a dusty file cabinet in the back in the corner where they’ll never see it.”
The Basics of Learning
Eisenstodt offers up the following advice for content-minded meeting planners:
Pay attention. Go to sessions so you can recommend hot topics or speakers to people in the organization. Don’t go into a room just to do a headcount and leave.
If you’re an in-house meeting planner, set Google Alerts for the products and services the organization provides, so like-minded content will present itself, and you’ll also keep an eye on the competition.
Contemplate what content will be provided at the meeting so you can determine the ideal room setup. Will it involve a lot of audience interaction? Case studies? What style of learning lends itself to the content being provided?
Work up front with the audiovisual provider so they are fully aware of what is being delivered in a particular room.
Impress upon your organization the importance of giving at least basic training to employees who may present information at the conference.
Leave some “white space” between sessions for attendees to reflect on what they learn and talk to others—that’s most likely the reason they came to the meeting in the first place.
Make sure the content is relevant. Many organizations get stuck on what they’ve done in the past, without knowing what the outside world is doing.
Measure the results by surveying the audience, and follow up three or six months later.
“I don’t think we’re doing a good job at all of measuring most meetings,” Eisenstodt says. “Know what your audience wants, the delivering and measuring of it afterwards to know what people tangibly got—not that the hotel was good and the food was great.
“You want people to walk away knowing something, and not just having a good time,” she continues. “There needs to be a tangible result. I think measuring results is an ongoing thing. I think people often do it once and don’t do it again because they think they know. Well, they don’t.”
One measurement expert, Todd Hanson, president and founder of Catalyst Performance Group, believes that tracking the successes and failures of your content is key to keeping your attendees, and organizational leaders, invigorated and coming back for more.
“The greatest benefit of measuring is you’ll identify barriers to success and the gaps, and then fill those gaps, so when the meeting is over you can figure out where you fell short and do something about it,” he says. “Measurement provides an interesting retrospective, but most importantly it can provide insight to continue the improvement that’s evidence-based.”
For the past two years, Hanson has taught measurement curriculum for MPI’s Certified Meeting Manager, or CMM, program, and believes that even if taking an honest assessment of one’s programs may be difficult—taking steps that lead to organizational change always is—it’s a necessity.
“The key to good measurement is using the insight you gain to develop an action plan that will create organizational change,” he maintains, “and in my opinion that’s one of the reasons measurement isn’t being done. If you use the insight from the measurement wisely it will help craft your content in a more effective way, so it becomes cyclical.”
Hanson says that a good reference tool for researching measurement can be found at www.roiofengagement.com.
