It's a useful metaphor for thinking about change, and how change happens - the conscious application of clanking gears and spinning wheels, and, when it's over, something is different.

Now is as good a time as any to be contemplating change, here at the end of not just the year but also, one hopes, the recession, when old ideas and old models are on the table and under scrutiny. In that spirit, we've created our own difference engine - a group of thinkers and practitioners inside and outside the industry, tasked with answering one question: How would you like to see meetings and conventions change, and why?

They begin with destroying attrition, and go from there. Vive la différence!

---

Bruce W. Harris, CMP
Retired founder of Conferon (now Experient) / www.experient-inc.com

Every time we hit a recession and our world in the meetings industry changes, it should compel us to rethink our way of doing business, particularly in the way we book and manage meetings. Unfortunately, it's human nature to react to change with fear and skepticism, and that makes us resistant to making meaningful improvements to our business processes and systems.

To no one's surprise, each recession brings some baggage called "attrition." During strong economic times, the baggage is light and of little consequence, but during downturns, it is loaded to the max with financial challenges for both planners and hoteliers alike. The opportunity for the future of meetings is not just to lessen the load, but to eliminate the baggage altogether.

Attrition results when neither hoteliers nor planners are willing to change the way they block meetings. The result is that contracted rooms go unsold (primarily because attendees stayed at nearby hotels) and hoteliers have the unenviable responsibility to their stakeholders to go after their clients to make good on financial promises.

Here is a given: It is solely the group's responsibility to get attendees to attend the event. Lower room rates, upgrades, and more amenities are not the reason people attend meetings - nor have they ever been. This means that the hotel has very little control over attendance. If we assume that planners and hoteliers can work together to agree on the appropriate room block based on the anticipated total attendance, then the issue becomes how to keep attendees inside the group block.

History tells us that during recessions, meeting attendance may be down 10 percent to 20 percent. Room pickup in hotels, on the other hand, is often down by 30 percent to 40 percent - or more. It's rarely the lower attendance that puts groups at risk for attrition; it is the fact that insufficient effort has been made to incentivize those attendees who are coming to the meeting to stay inside the group hotel block.

Since the No. 1 reason attendees stay outside the block is a higher room rate at the group hotel than what they can find at nearby hotels, planners and hoteliers have been locked in a battle over reducing room rates. This solution only serves the planner and hurts the host hotel. It is not a long-term solution.

In the future, hoteliers will have to reward groups who enact strong incentives to keep attendees inside their blocks. Strong policies by sponsoring organizations already have been proven to keep more than 90 percent of all attendees inside the group hotels. Since this is a strategy that works, wouldn't hotels be willing to eliminate attrition for all groups who adopt such a plan?

Only when groups and hoteliers focus on ridding the industry of attrition can they deal with the most important task at hand: producing a quality event.

---

Nick Morgan
President, Public Words Inc. / www.publicwords.com

Much like the overall economy, the meetings and conference business is slowly turning around, or at least slowing its decline. So this is a good time to take a moment to consider the conference business in general. What could it do better when it comes roaring back in 2010?

1. Conferences and meetings should tell unique stories. Think about how conferences and meetings are typically planned. A committee picks a theme. Then someone finds a keynote speaker to open, and maybe one to close. Then the committee divides the rest of the time up into 60-minute slots and fills them with "breakouts," panels, workshop leaders, and so on. From the conference-goer's point of view, it's like a regular workday, only worse.

It's a dreary prospect, because it could be so much better. A conference should tell a story, one that unfolds and builds from the initial moments to the close. Like any good story, there should be moments of high excitement, followed by moments of relative calm. A good meeting should make linear sense from start to finish, in a way that allows attendees to retain what they see and hear rather than just feeling overwhelmed by the information.

2. Conferences should be for, by, and about the attendees. A meeting or conference should feel participative, and the meeting attendee should have some significant part in it beyond being a warm body. Attendees should react, critique, judge, schedule, and vote for what they like and don't like. And that's just for starters. There are many ways to give attendees a larger role in meetings and conferences, from making them part of panel discussions, to creating discussion groups, to having them manage Q&As.

3. Conferences should be about more than just eating and sitting. We live more and more of our lives in the splendid isolation of the Internet, with all the faux connectors like Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and the rest. Getting together is an increasingly rare and important privilege. Meetings and conferences should be constructed to take advantage of the gathered group. Every meeting or conference should use the power of the group to give something back to the community in which the meeting is held. Help a local charity, fix a local problem, champion a local hero, start a new movement. There are many ways one could imagine making use of the combined energies of the people assembled. It's a crime to waste that gathered power.

(Editor's Note: This article is excerpted from a post on Harvard Business Publishing's Conversation Starter blog. To read the entire post, visit http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/three_ways_to_make_conferences.html.)

---

MARY BOONE
President, Boone Associates / www.maryboone.com

Two words sum up what I would change about meetings and conventions: interaction and results.

For far too long, most information presented at meetings is in "broadcast" mode. We have to design more interactive communication into our meetings, our education programs, and even our trade-show interactions. For example, I'd like for people to "think outside the booth" to create more authentic, natural conversations between participants and vendors in a trade-show environment. I'd like to see presenters fearlessly incorporate Twitter backchannels and use other creative approaches to encourage their participants to share ideas during their presentations. I'd like to see user-generated content exploited through unconference techniques. In short, we have to move from "show and tell" to "ask and engage."

In terms of results, meetings could be reinvented as venues for actual work being accomplished rather than simply a place to get information to "take back to the office." I would like to see executives take a bolder approach to the integration of work and meetings, and I'd like to see conventions be places where new ideas are not just born, but actually acted upon.

The good news is that the recent crisis in the meetings industry has provided us with an accompanying opportunity for change. People are now more open to new ways of thinking than ever before. If we act now to seize the moment, we'll create an ocean of new opportunities for this industry.

---

Kati S. Quigley, CMP
Director of event marketing, Microsoft Corporation / www.microsoft.com

The event industry is challenged across the board with the ability to show the value of a face-to-face event. If I could change one thing, it would be to improve the return-on-investment metrics, for both planners and suppliers. We need to have solid, consistent measures that show the impact of our industry on the economy and on business objectives and outcomes.

---

DANIEL PINK
Author, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us / www.danpink.com

I'd like to see meeting planners experiment with shorter speech formats. Indeed, if you look at the two most popular recent innovations in presentations, that's where the world seems headed.

Consider, for instance, the incredible popularity of the 18-minute TEDTalks. Why not try using that format for a keynote - followed by a one-hour, deeper session for those who are interested in learning more?

Or take Pecha Kucha - where a speaker has 20 slides, each one on the screen for 20 seconds. These super-short presentations can often be more powerful than a one-hour talk or even a 90-minute breakout. And a lengthier session for a smaller group of devoted fans could follow those six minutes and 40 seconds of brilliant brevity.

Long explorations of complex issues are still important. But sometimes less is more.

---

Peter Sheahan
Speaker; Convene columnist, Meeting Opportunity / www.petersheahan.com

I thought we in the meetings industry were all perfect. All we have to do is fly around the world, eat hors d'oeuvres, sip champagne, and look pretty. At least, that's what my friends think.

Apart from that perception, if I were to change anything, it would be to work relentlessly on the presentations of industry leaders and company executives. We have come a long
way in this area in recent years, but we have a long way to go. People want to follow leaders. They search for it deep in their soul. They search for those rare individuals prepared to stand up, declare a vision for the future, and commit come hell or high water to making that vision a reality.

I have met my share of such leaders and seen far too many fall flat on their face when the time came to inspire their teams around their compelling vision. They fumble their way through a prepared script that kills their unique voice and robs the experience of any of the authenticity their people are so desperately craving in their leaders post-GFC. We need to spend less money on chair covers and more money on developing the platform and oratory skills of our clients themselves.

In the next few years, as we pick ourselves up off the mat, dust ourselves off, and forge a new path for American business, we will want leaders. There is no better place to present these very leaders to their massive organizations than at a live, face-to-face meeting. Let's just make sure we help them share their passions and vision in a way that does justice to their own commitment and to the hearts and souls of their people.

---

Holly Clapman
Vice president of marketing, Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau / www.VisitHoustonTexas.com

It seems as if the biggest trend in professional-development sessions is social media. Programming headlines offer strong positioning statements like "During this interactive session, you will learn how to create viral connections and maximize your message." I would think all attendees would feel that they are going to walk away with increased knowledge of how to integrate social media into their messaging mix. Yet most of these sessions are in lecture form. One-way communication covering a viral medium is an oxymoron of sorts.

The beauty of viral communication is that it can't be contained in a "how-to" model. This is an ever-changing medium and needs to be used on a continual basis. Certainly there are best practices to Facebook and Twitter, but these change as well. As I watch attendees take notes on paper about viral communication, it puzzles me. I have even attended sessions where there were no questions or communication between session attendees sitting at the table.

Sessions should be truly interactive, with attendees communicating live with each other before, during, and after. Also, with a widening demographic gap within the meetings industry, it's time for social-media sessions to be divided by competency levels, so that all who want to learn more can start from level ground.

---

Debbie Grossi
Director of meetings and incentives, Egencia / www.egencia.com

Meetings and conventions have faced a number of challenges this year. One positive outcome from these difficult times is that companies have taken greater interest in their meetings programs with the goal of understanding how they inspire and motivate employees. As I think about how I would like to see the industry change moving forward, I think it should become a more centralized and coordinated focus, ultimately aligning with overall business goals. Face-to-face meetings deliver a strong ROI for companies. You simply can't replace the benefit of bringing important stakeholders together in a single location. This deeper business integration would also benefit meeting planners, who would have a stronger platform for success, with access to more corporate resources. With an eye on cost savings and greater control, both meeting planners and their "clients" (whether that be an internal or external client) will achieve powerful results when they work together.

---

IRA KERNS
Managing director, GuideStar Research/MeetingMetrics / www.guidestarco.com / www.meetingmetrics.com

I would change the definition of a meeting's value, not just because the meetings industry is in a recession, but because it is long overdue for meeting professionals to raise their game, set higher aspirations for themselves, and earn the respect of leadership by their ability to deliver meetings with meaningful, measurable results. That's real value.

PCMA and MPI get it completely. They are raising their game by offering advanced education certifications with a special emphasis on designing, defending, and protecting high-performing meetings. By high-performing meetings, I mean effective meetings that produce the kind of measurable results that drive organizational performance.

Instead, what I see is many meeting professionals still not raising their game and driven mainly by logistics, defining meeting value in terms of cost-savings. Certainly cost-savings are important, but what is really important to their organization's leadership, their true "bottom line," is a meeting's measurable results.

Unfortunately, many meeting professionals still define a "business case" as a meeting that costs less. Cheaper meetings are better meetings? I don't think so. By that standard, a healthy diet would consist mainly of Happy Meals.

---

John Truran
Senior vice president, Keppler Speakers / www.kepplerspeakers.com

I've attended hundreds of corporate and association general sessions in my 25 years in the meetings industry. At just about every one of them, the highlighted attraction for the session - typically a professional keynote speaker - is the last person to take the stage. We've all been there ... listening to VIPs drone on and on, or witnessing yet another awards ceremony. Why not put the speaker on first? This could have immediate impact by charging up the audience for the rest of the program.

---

Randall Tanaka
Assistant general manager, Hawaii Convention Center / www.hawaiiconvention.com

Maybe it's my age or just the shifting of the economic tide or the issues of sustainability,
but I believe that less will be more in the coming years.

I'd like to see a return of hospitality, customer service and customer caring, and long-term relationships with customers. The more stuff changes (e.g., smart phones become smarter), the more a warm, friendly greeting and welcoming smile will make a difference. A telephone call to say "hi" is going to be like receiving a handwritten card in the mail - shocking.
Some of the needs of today will simply become standards for tomorrow. For example, free or sponsored wireless at centers and hotels will be as expected as shampoo in guest rooms.

Here's what else I'd like to see change:

• Partnerships - I believe we will see the next generation of planners and organizations see suppliers as partners, to the point of profit-sharing: Clients and partners share the risk and share the profits. For example, the cost of technology is too expensive for clients to carry, but with multiple users the cost could be shared as long as profits are shared.
• Sharing/joint planning - The financial needs of the meeting shared with suppliers.
• Broader destination support - If it can be supplied at the destination, buy it there (e.g., printing: Why ship materials if they can be printed at the destination?).
• Shifting roles - Meeting planners will need to become better marketers, and senior executives will become better planners. Social media - Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube - is setting the standard and making it all transparent.

---

‘How Can We Make These Experiences More Human?'

Paulette Bluhm-Sauriol
Director of brand communication, Smart Design / www.smartdesignworldwide.com

Dictionary definition:Conference
noun: a meeting of two or more persons for discussing matters of common concern.

The definition of these events hasn't changed, but the expectation of the people who attend them has. A lot.

At Smart Design, we always strive to learn and gain perspective from people, so my first step in considering this question was to ask a group of conference-goers (male and female, of course) for their take on the current experience - and then factor in my own experiences.
Here are some of the themes from my research:

The current experience needs to be more human.

Let's consider the current experience: Arrive at fancy hotel or convention center. Be funneled into a windowless, cold room, most likely in the basement. Grab bad coffee from a cheap folding table covered with an over-washed, polyester tablecloth offering only half-and-half and white sugar. High-fat pastries to follow. Wear a name tag. Sit in rows of uncomfortable chairs all facing the same way. Get broadcast to by enlightening speaker(s). Raise hand repeatedly at Q&A session. Run out of time to answer all questions. Ponder starch-filled, underwhelming lunch selection. Speed date/search for smart people for discussion of said conference. Repeat.

It's often a cold, artificial experience. But at the core, these events are about sharing knowledge, meeting people, eating, and being together in one environment. How can we make these experiences more human? More natural in the way we learn, discuss, and socialize? An idea from someone I spoke to: "Turn it around so that sitting together and eating good food is the primary activity, and people can use that as a more human bond rather than the artificial one of being forced to sit next to each other. (‘Oh, you like japchae? Me, too! Is this chair taken? What does your company do?')"

The way people communicate has evolved. Thanks to social networking, people communicate in much more casual ways than they used to. Consider blogs, Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, Skype, etc. This is how people communicate, share knowledge, discuss, and learn today - all day, everyday - and it's only the beginning. Conference and meeting organizers should embrace this interactive mental model - the emerging technologies and social behavior - and expand on what it means to have face-to-face gatherings.

How might we drive audience participation throughout the event instead of closing it out with Q&A? Perhaps smaller, more active groups like "town halls" are more effective forms of engaging people. Be creative in the way people can participate during an event in a relevant way.

The fact is, most conventions are speaker-after-speaker, dull, monotonous, and too detailed for a large group. If you change up the pace, scale, and engagement, it could become an extremely fruitful and entertaining gathering.

Environment matters. Large spaces are overwhelming and formal. Windowless, cold environments are not inspiring. These are the opposite feelings that any organization wants to be known for. Especially today.

We hold "gatherings" (as we prefer to call them) in our space in New York City. We invite people into our studio's kitchen, and sit around our long 40-foot, communal table overlooking a view of the Hudson River and Manhattan. We offer good wine, beer, and antipasto while we share in discussion of timely topics in the world of design. It's casual, informal, and comfortable. And, we often find that people don't want to leave.

Be relevant. People notice half-hearted attempts at organizing these events. People want more from the experiences they spend their precious time and money on - "experiences" being the key word. Getting engaging people to speak is only one part of the equation. Consider the whole experience and how people truly feel.

Inspire people by planning an event that interests them. Include them in the planning. Use social networking as a medium to learn about what people want and desire - listen to them - and design events that are meaningful to them personally. And they'll tell their friends.

---

James S. Goodman, CMP
Managing vice president, conference and meeting services, American Dental Association / www.ada.org

I have a love for education. I believe that that's the ultimate product at a session from the general-attendee perspective. But [as a meeting planner,] I know only so much about it. It's a daunting task to be in charge of education when you're a meeting executive, and especially when you arrive at an association where you don't know anything about what that association covers. You know how to deliver a meeting, but you don't know about dentistry, or optometry, or veterinary medicine.

We're very fortunate at American Dental Association to have on staff a doctor of education [Ed.D.]. It's the reason why we're able to offer such innovative education programs for our members.

There's a point to be made here for organizations - whatever industry they serve. If organizations are trying to reinvent their meetings and they're not focused on the education they're providing, I think they're off-base.

If they want to take their education to the next level, they need to have the right people on staff with the right expertise. They need to take the step to invest the money in the right resources (in this case, human resources) - in someone whose expertise is educating adults. Whether the person in that role resides in the meetings department or elsewhere within the organization, it doesn't matter.

But that role is missing from most organizations. We can't provide cutting-edge education unless we have experts in creating the content and the environment in which adults learn best, and experts in the logistics of delivering that education - meeting planners.

---

Dave Lutz, CMP
Managing director, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting; Convene columnist, People & Processes / www.velvetchainsaw.com

I'd love to find a way to make it easier for planners and organizations to document the ROI for their meeting participants. While there are numerous ROI models out there, the fact is that they're all pretty subjective. It's important for everyone to understand that the value of participating in a meeting is part of a process ... a moving target.

From a networking perspective, at a conference you could meet someone for the first time that you end up doing business with two years later. You can sit next to a person on a bus that ends up being your mentor or refers a client to you. Or maybe, you could end up reconnecting with someone that you haven't seen in a year or two and realize you should be doing business together. Calculating ROI back to a single meeting is complex.

It would be great to have a conference where all attendees came prepared with appointments set. They would introduce themselves to the other nine people at their lunch table and try to find common interests. They wouldn't travel in packs with their co-workers, but rather seek out new relationships or ones that need to be grown. Meeting organizers need to find ways to accelerate and enhance face-to-face networking.

The best way to document the value of attendance is to conduct one-on-one interviews three-plus months after the meeting. If you can help a participant with their personal ROI calculation and develop success stories that are shared, the true value of face-to-face can be better communicated to others.

---

Mike Staver
CEO, The Staver Group / www.thestavergroup.com

There are two ways of looking at the meetings and conventions industry. One way is to look at it as an event-based experience. An alternative way is to look at it as a process-based experience. Event-based experiences are limited to the dates of the meeting. They are marketed and sold that way, and often people experience the meeting by carrying home tons of information and actually applying very little when they return. The challenge with event-based experiences is that it's difficult for attendees to fully integrate the information into their daily lives. When real value isn't realized and "the event" doesn't occur for another year, it is easy to let attendance get cut from the budget.

The change that would bring the greatest impact would be to fully integrate the concept of a process-based experience. Attendees are given the opportunity to participate in pre- and post-event learning and integration. When attendees are given the opportunity and actually expect to make the meeting a part of a larger process, then it becomes more relevant and integrated.

---

Jeffrey Cufuade
Idea Architects; Convene columnist, Leading Learning / www.ideaarchitects.org

I want more meetings that crackle with energy and excitement - where participants are on the edge of their seats in general sessions, and the din of hallway conversations between breakouts is ear-splitting because people have so much to share with their colleagues. I want stories that inspire, examples worth emulating, insights worth adopting. I want the highest-quality sessions that immerse newcomers in their profession's fundamentals, and mind-blowing conversations among experienced professionals that push their collective brainpower to unseen levels of mastery. I want to leave with my skills polished, my awareness heightened, my passion ignited, my network of influential colleagues expanded, my relationships with mentors deepened, and my spirit renewed and reinvigorated. In short, I want it all, and I'll pay dearly for guaranteed results. I just can't find many meetings ready to take my cash and my contribution to the community. Meetings like this should not be rare antiquities available only in elite circles. They should be the norm.

---

Christopher Durso is executive editor of Convene.