By harnessing the power of both technology and human creativity in the digital world of music, most people can take their favorite songs and remix them. Even "oldies," when set to a different beat, become new again.

Meeting management is like a great "oldie." Certainly new issues arise (new technology planning tools, changes in venues and meeting spaces), but the logistics involved in meeting planning remain essentially unchanged. In fact, the steps outlined in a little-known work, How to Plan a Convention, by P.G.B. Morriss - published in 1925 - are still followed today.

But we all grow tired of listening to the same song. It's up to meeting planners to remix their meetings, to create a rich learning experience that not only builds upon the legacy and strength of past practices but also embraces new tools and techniques. This remix is necessary in order for meetings to remain relevant and appeal to 21st-century attendees.

Futurist, producer, and sound designer John Von Seggern sees a remix as "a major conceptual leap; making music on a meta-structural level, drawing together and making sense of a much larger body of information by threading a continuous narrative through it.… In an era of information overload, the art of remixing … points to ways of working with information on higher levels of organization, pulling together the efforts of others into a multilayered whole which is much more than the sum of its parts."

The three "legacy" elements of meeting planning that form the foundation for remixing meetings are: purpose of the meeting; importance of logistics; and adult learning principles.

Purpose of the Meeting
Ever since our ancestors sat in a circle around a fire, gatherings have been the glue holding societies together. In more recent history (eight decades ago), How to Plan a Convention's author, P.G.B. Morriss, recognized that conventions represented "the most effective means of disseminating information on the progress of any particular industry or field of endeavor." Morriss cites the following as being among the reasons for holding a meeting or convention: to impart or exchange business information, and to both foster personal acquaintanceships within an organization as well as the contribution of new ideas for the future betterment of an industry. In order to provide productive interpersonal interactions, meetings must be organized around a purpose, goals, objectives, and outcomes.

Importance of Logistics
Today, the bar has been raised for meeting planners: They are being pushed to focus on strategy rather than logistics. But one cannot be sacrificed at the expense of the other. Logistics underlie the strategic success of the meeting and its educational endeavors. Even though they might not be directly involved in the development of the content, meeting planners are responsible for designing the learning environment - and that can only be accomplished through the organization of logistics. Jeffrey Cufaude of Idea Architects says, "Product designers don't just make things pretty or add a laundry list of features. They create a product that is elegant in its simplicity while offering unbounded value for the consumer. Meeting designers who craft the most compelling learning experiences create conferences that integrate these areas and weave them together into an experience rich with meaning."

Even the most basic logistical issues, such as temperature, have a major impact on the learner. If a participant complains that the room is too hot, the environment has already had a negative impact on learning. Other details of the meeting room - color, lighting, and décor - are not incidentals. Used strategically, each element fundamentally supports the learning environment.

Adult Learning Principles
Malcolm Knowles, Carl Rogers, Marcia Conner, and Jack Mezirow, all pioneered the exploration of how we - particularly adults - learn, and the principles they developed more than 30 years ago remain relevant today. Unfortunately, too few institutions (schools, universities … and yes, meetings) take them into account. Collectively, these psychologists and social scientists' research advocates learning environments for adults that:

• create a safe haven u honor, respect, and acknowledge people's needs, uniqueness, abilities, life achievements, and experiences u foster intellectual freedom and encourage experimentation and creativity - respect the learner as a peer - place responsibility on the participants for their own learning
• offer an intellectual challenge that is well-paced (challenging but not frustrating)
• involve the participant in learning, as opposed to passively listening to lectures
• provide immediate relevance to their job or personal life.

In order to "remix" a learning environment, you must keep these principles in mind while also creating informal learning environments, accommodating fragmented audiences, integrating technology, and putting the power of networks to work. Here's how.

Create Informal Learning Environments
Learning is most often thought of as a formal undertaking, conducted in a classroom or training environment. But it occurs in both formal and informal environments. In today's workplace, organizations are expending resources on informal learning opportunities such as knowledge management, coaching, talent management, mentoring, and reverse mentoring. This is necessary in the information (versus industrial) economy in which people search, plan, analyze, organize, market, and distribute information. An employee's value is based on the individual knowledge s/he contributes to the organization - people have become knowledge workers.

To convey the concept of knowledge workers and how informal learning can benefit everyone, the Web site for CIO, a magazine for chief information officers (www.CIO.com), provides a simplified example: a golf caddie. Good caddies do more than carry clubs and track down wayward balls. A good caddie offers advice, such as, "The wind makes the ninth hole play 15 yards longer." Accurate advice may lead to a bigger tip at the end of the day. And the golfer - having derived a benefit from the caddie's advice - may be more likely to play that course again. If a good caddie willingly shares what he knows with other caddies, then all caddies may eventually earn bigger tips. The caddie is a knowledge worker and when he or she shares his knowledge with other caddies, everyone benefits.

In pre-industrial and industrial society, formal learning - conveying the information necessary to execute a process or task - sufficed. In formal learning, a curriculum remains static and does not organically change during the course. However, as Jay Cross, author of Informal Learning, notes, "At work, the curriculum changes all the time. Nothing stands still." Successful organizations maximize the potential of their staff by offering them both formal learning (professional development) and informal learning opportunities.

John Seeley Brown writes in Learning in the Digital Age, "Learning is a remarkably social process. In truth, it occurs not as a response to teaching, but rather as a result of a social framework that fosters learning…. We must move far beyond the traditional view of teaching as delivery of information. Although information is a critical part of learning, it's only one among many forces at work. It's profoundly misleading and ineffective to separate information, theories, and principles from the activities and situations within which they are used. Knowledge is inextricably situated in the physical and social context of its acquisition and use."

Laura Bunte, instructional designer, The CARA Group, drives home the connection between informal and formal learning: "Once the seed of formal learning is planted, informal learning can be intentionally cultivated. Meeting planners can deliberately design informal environments through access to formal training programs, e-mail, online references, and communities of practices that are based on the interest and activities of the group."

Integrate Technology
The growing reliance upon technology and its ability to connect people, changes the learning environment. The question is not whether face-to-face meetings will cease to exist but how they will coexist with - and enhance - other high-tech communication vehicles that enable low-cost global interactions.

Technology has reordered the sequence of communication. Historically, personal, face-to-face communication formed the cornerstone of human interactions; now we tend to use technology first in business relationships, followed by face-to-face communication. People "meet" and interact virtually for some time before an actual face-to-face interaction. The onus is on the meeting planner to make the face-to-face interaction the high point in this continuum.

Put the Power of Networks to Work
Our sphere of influence dramatically increases as technology allows us to play, work, and communicate beyond our immediate geography. From the telegraph to telephone to Internet, each technological advance has empowered us to expand our networks. We have access to information and people that once was unimaginable.

In network theory, nodes depict people in a network. Lines show the connections between various people in the network. The more connections, the more integral that person is to the organization represented by the network - whether the organization is a family, committee, company, association, school, or some other type of community.

Networks provide informal communication and information sharing in a way that dwarfs the importance of the traditional hierarchy in organizations. Outsourcing, downsizing, and team approaches also result in flatter organizations. A network model such as the diagram on p. 47 best demonstrates the flow of information and the connection between people.

Technology allows people to expand their reach to different networks, but the best opportunities to strengthen those connections are found at face-to-face meetings. That's why it's called networking.

What Is Old Is New Again
In the late 1980s, when I was working on my dissertation on why people attend large conventions, I stumbled upon a book, How to Plan a Convention, published in 1925. Written by P.G.B. (Percy George Brockhurst) Morriss (1885-1944) along with contributors from 67 associations and businesses, it is replete with descriptions of responsibilities and checklists to ensure no detail of a convention gets overlooked.

I've often thought that those who plan meetings are an interesting lot. That is certainly the case with Morriss. An apprenticed seaman at the age of 15, Morriss took to the skies when immigrating to the United States, becoming an aviator. In 1910, along with J.A.D. McCurdy, he became the first to establish wireless communication via the Marconi System while in flight. In 1914, he operated a flying boat service on the Chicago lakefront, and in the same year became managing editor of Aero & Hydro, an aviation weekly paper. In 1915, he opened the Bud Morriss Flying School in Chicago moving on to serve as a member of the Chicago Aero Commission. Upon discharge from the Navy after World War I, he played a role in the development of commercial airlines and started the Early Bird's Aviator Club. He is recognized in the Smithsonian's Early Birds of Aviation. Later, he settled in Los Angeles, acting in some movies and managing the city's Clark Hotel - where he likely gained the experience in conventions necessary to write the book.

Recently, a copy of the book was retrieved through the interlibrary loan program from a local suburban Chicago library. There are only 16 copies left. It was presented to Gregor Andréewitch, general manager of The Drake Chicago, which was featured on the cover of the original book. "How to Plan a Convention truly depicts The Drake's dedication to serve meeting planners from the beginning of time. It is a real treasure that this book was presented to us in 2007 and preserved since 1925," Andréewitch said.

The economic impact of conventions was not lost on Morriss. He cites that "in the year 1906, the city of Chicago entertained 201 conventions, with an attendance of 175,000. In 1924, the same city entertained 762 conventions, with an attendance of 650,000."

Fast forward a century: In 2006, Chicago hosted more than 1,600 meetings and conventions at McCormick Place, Navy Pier, and downtown hotels - representing more than 3.7 million attendees.

He also may have been among the first to recognize the importance of convention management, which he said should "no longer [be] merely a part of the duties of an association secretary. It has become recognized as a very definite profession, one requiring both natural skill and ability acquired by experience."

Morriss was also ahead of his time when it came to welcoming attendees: "There is nothing which will make a delegate feel more quickly at ease than to be met at the train by a rousing welcome. Although the idea is as old as the hills, there is nothing wrong with meeting a train load of delegates with a band, or at least with a reception committee, and then escorting them to their headquarters by means of special arranged transportation facilities. Such procedure immediately takes the strangeness out of the situation for the visitor, and puts him in a frame of mind where he is inspired with the spirit of the thing even before he reached the registration desk."

It has been said that the profession of meeting planning is still in its infancy. During the course of the How Adults Learn, Now series, we will be referring to Morriss' work, in the hope that it gives you a rare opportunity to reflect on those who have paved the way and contributed to the body of knowledge we take for granted.

I am indebted to Eryn Hampton, reference librarian at the Anoka County Library, Anoka, Minn., for her research on Morriss. - Glen Ramsborg

Accommodating Fragmented Audiences
A meeting audience is composed of individual learners who are increasingly diverse, making it difficult to classify or make generalizations about them. Simple demographic information (gender and titles) does not convey details about learners' focus, needs, and requirements. Here are three important considerations to take into account:

• Cultural - The changing face of U.S. demographics mandates that meeting planners be sensitive to and plan for cultural diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, country of origin, and geographic origin. According to the 2000 Consensus, the United States includes 31 ethnic groups, each comprised of at least one million members. The people who consider themselves "white" constituted 69.1 percent in 2000 and will continue to decrease each year. In the near future, minorities will represent almost half of the U.S. population. "Seeing and understanding differences allows us to more effectively identify and optimize our similarities in terms of workplace management, goals and objectives." Dr. Efrain Garza Fuentes The Walt Disney Company
• Generational - Today, four generations work side by side. Decision-makers are no longer those of the Traditionalist generation, born between 1925 and 1942, or the Baby Boomers, born between 1943 and 1960. The last of the Traditionalists are retiring and the first Baby Boomers applied for Social Security in October 2007. People from Generation X, born between 1961 and 1981, are increasingly filling management positions. According to Michelle Lapierre, senior director, customer relationship marketing, Marriott Rewards, "The unique challenge facing today's managers - regardless of their generational influence - is that successful leadership now requires the manager to develop and hone a variety of management styles. The leader must now adapt to the needs of their subordinates, whereas the situation was reversed as little as 20 years ago."

Each generation brings its own values and characteristics, priorities, and definition of success to the table. "It's not that there is less in common between the generations. As an example, Baby Boomers and Gen Yers share many common traits, such as an optimistic, idealistic attitude, and a preference for working in teams. Gen Y, conversely, tends toward a bit more cynicism (rightly so given their experiences) and prefers a more autonomous environment. Due to the sheer variety that each of the generations embody, differences become more pronounced," says Lapierre.

Younger generations view work in vastly different ways from Baby Boomers and especially Traditionalists. This lack of continuity materializes itself in changed expectations about work and the workplace (older versus younger):

• structure versus flexibility
• the worker as instrument versus the worker as human resource
• work as labor intensive versus works as knowledge intensive
• hierarchical structures versus participatory structures
• education completed through education and training versus lifelong learning.

A singular definition of success, or work ethic, or loyalty no longer exists. But meetings hold the power to unite members, participants, and employees and help us to see the ways in which we are all alike.

• Learning Styles - All people, regardless of cultural background or age, have their own way of learning. Most possess a blend of learning styles, with one - visual, auditory, or kinesthetic - being dominant.
  • If visual, the predominant sense is sight/vision.
  • If auditory, the predominant sense is hearing.
  • If kinesthetic, the predominant sense is touch or hands-on.

Meeting planners must ensure that the learning environment offers a "hook" for all three learner profiles. Tyra Hilliard, meetings industry consultant and educator, notes, "Not only do different sessions need an emphasis on visual, auditory, or kinesthetic delivery, but ideally every session will use a combination of teaching and facilitation methods that reach each of these senses. Facilitators (historically 'speakers') must learn to how to convert and convey messages and key points into visual and auditory media and integrate a kinesthetic component."

The How Adults Learn, Now series is sponsored by the Hiltons of Chicago.