Who Speaks To The Speakers?
Meetings are made up of hundreds of moving parts, from concrete aspects such as meals and coffee breaks, to guest speakers and audiovisual, to more esoteric concerns such as how to keep attendees' attention and how to encourage them to interact with both their fellow conference-goers and the program material. What meeting professional could possibly plumb the depths of each and every one of these areas of expertise?
That's why Convene sought out organizations that specialize in each of the above fields - and more - to see how they handle that particular element at their own meeting. Consider this story your expert-level consultation.
LEADING WITH THE BRAIN
2011 NeuroLeadership Summit
Nov. 8-10, Hilton San Francisco Financial District, San Francisco
ATTENDED BY 200 INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED IN THE NEUROSCIENCE OF LEADERSHIP
When David Rock, author and co-founder of the Neuro- Leadership Institute, began to bring neuroscientists and business leaders together six years ago, the content he offered - linking the exploding field of brain research with leadership development - was cutting-edge, Rock said, but the meetings themselves looked a lot like every other conference.
But soon, Rock and his staff began to apply insights from the meeting content into the actual design of the NeuroLeadership Summit. After six years of innovation, "We've actually got some really intriguing breakthroughs around how to run conferences," Rock said. "The goal of the Summit is to have the most brain-friendly, large-group dialogue in the world."
A key shift was rethinking the conference structure and the scope of its content, in ways that gave attendees the opportunity "to actually digest ideas, not just hear them." (Read Rock's Psychology Today blog post on "Rethinking How We Conference" at http://bit.ly/brainier-meetings.) "A traditional conference is so packed with information and sessions, you get a surface layer of too many ideas and never get to really digest them," Rock said. "You can't run a conference about using brain research to improve organizations and have everyone completely mentally overwhelmed."
So what does the NeuroLeadership Summit do differently? Three major things:
1. Chunky presentations. Rock asks presenters, no matter how experienced or eminent, to structure their presentations into three or four segments. "For the first session of the first day of a conference, you might be able to sit and digest for an hour and a half," Rock said, "but after you've been in a couple of sessions, you can't focus on all these new ideas."
Rock likens his approach to good theater, where "there's an act and then there's a pause, and another act and a pause. Maybe there's an intermission." In the three to five pauses, attendees - who are seated in small groups at tables - use the time to discuss the content or to ask questions. "It's so simple and so incredibly effective just to pause, let people digest, and then go on," Rock said. "And it's amazing how many speakers we've had here who have never done this and they all just find it incredibly helpful."
Among those whom Rock has convinced is Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor emeritus at Stanford University, who made a presentation at the 2011 NeuroLeadership Summit. Arguably the world's leading expert on the psychology of evil, Zimbardo has given hundreds of presentations, including at TED. At Rock's request, Zimbardo "re-packaged" his presentation into 15-minute sessions, and wrote questions that were designed to prompt personal reflection by attendees. Tim Tobin, vice president of global learning and leadership development at Marriott International, acted as a moderator, pos- ing and fielding questions at the end of Zimbardo's presentation, when there was an open Q&A period.
The structure engaged the audience, who knew that there would be intermission breaks. As for Zimbardo, "It forced me to rethink the organization of my material and generate provocative thinking," he said. "Of the thousand or so lectures I have given in the last 50 years, this was unique for me."
2. Dialogues, not monologues. The second thing Rock does differently is to have speakers interviewed on stage, so that content is presented in a conversation. At the 2011 Summit, for example, Dan Siegel, a leading neuroscience researcher and a frequent keynote speaker, was interviewed by Christine Williams, the director of NASA's Systems Engineer- ing Leadership Development Program. It takes a lot of work to design the conversation, "but it really pays off for every- one," Rock said. "We'd all much rather listen to a conversation than be talked at. Everyone is more comfortable, and more comfortable means better connections."
3. Longer breaks. The third structural change Rock has made is to schedule long breaks between sessions. The Summit agenda includes a 30-minute break in the morning, 90 minutes at lunch, and then another hour in the afternoon -"no exceptions," Rock said. The long breaks mean that the number of sessions each day is limited to four. That requires fortitude, Rock said. "Everyone wants to fill that hour-long coffee break in the afternoon." But Rock has found that giving attendees and presenters opportunities, time, and space with other participants during the longer breaks is more valuable to them than scheduling more sessions. "We make space for what we call connecting time," Rock said. "I think those interactions are undervalued."
At the 2011 Summit, Zimbardo and other speakers used the time during lunch to meet with smaller groups, giving attendees the opportunity for one-on-one conversations with them. Between the breaks, the pauses during the sessions, and lunch and dinner, the Summit's 200 attendees were able to spend up to four-and-a-half hours in unstructured social time in a day. That dramatically increased the quality of the time that they spent with one another. "You actually get to have pretty good discussions, not just ‘Hi, my name is Bob,' but discussions for several minutes with about one hundred other people," Rock said. "That's really rare."
Rock speaks frequently at other conferences, and finds it "frustrating to have only 15-minute blocks, between sessions, in which to connect with participants," he said. "Everyone has dozens of people they want to connect with. I think the human connection is at least as important as the ideas at these events."
In a digital world, we can easily gather ideas. "What we can't gather is human relationships," Rock said. "I think the events that succeed will be ones that really value the net- working. And, it's not so much networking, but the opportunity to meet and learn from your peers; to share and test your ideas."
-Barbara Palmer
HOW TO ENGAGE
2011 HOW Interactive Design Conference
Nov. 2-4, Parc 55 Wyndham, San Francisco
ATTENDED BY 650 GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
There's probably no sector of the economy that has been as profoundly affected by e-readers, mobile devices, iPads, and the web as print publications. As readers move to these inter- active mediums to access content - and as digital technologies change and proliferate - print graphic designers must acquire new skills in order to ply their craft beyond paper. It's a designer's "No. 1 concern," said Bridgid McCarren, senior art designer for HOW magazine: "I need to learn interactive design to keep my job and secure my future in the industry, but I have no idea where to begin."
The inaugural 2011 HOW Interactive Design Conference gave them a place to start. The sold-out conference attracted 650 graphic designers who are transitioning into user-experience, web, mobile, and app design - "anyone who [needs to] reinvent content in a medium that allows the user to interact with it in a new way," said McCarren, who served as the conference program chair.
While she was designing the conference's format, McCarren thought back to her own experience as a conference attendee. "My head would be just swimming with all these new ideas," she said, and by the time she got back to her desk, it would be "really hard for me to find a way to implement them into my workflow."
While that's a challenge most other conferences share, it was made more pressing by the nature of this particular event. After all, shouldn't the HOW Interactive Design Conference - intended to get attendees more comfortable with designing ways to engage readers in interactive mediums - be interactive itself? McCarren wanted conference participants to have a roadmap of sorts to take back home once the event was over. That required more than passively listening to presenters. The program would need to include hands-on activities so participants could "begin using some of the skills that they were learning right there at the event," McCarren said."
Progressive Design Challenge
With that in mind, the conference kicked off with a Progressive Design Challenge, which charged participants with creating "an interactive magazine about something that they're passionate about," McCarren said. "That was the initial assignment. Then, if they chose to participate, they could work through [a series of] worksheets with that initial assign- ment in mind, and then at the end, submit [their work]." A prize was awarded to the designer with the most successful solution.
David Sherwin - principal designer at frog design, and a conference advisory council member and speaker who spear- headed the Progressive Design Challenge - worked with fellow speakers to determine their key takeaways, around which he created worksheets. "So, throughout the conference," McCarren said, "the attendee could see a session and then go to that information in the Progressive Design Challenge and actually practice that particular skill," such as experimenting with web-safe fonts, "so that they get the idea of it right then and there."
The challenge was designed so that everyone could participate, regardless of experience level, software, or device - whether it was a laptop, an e-reader, an iPad, or just a smart- phone. Participants were provided with a worksheet (see p. 46) that they could work on as a PDF, print out, or access via a software program of their choice. "We wanted to make it as accessible to everyone as possible," McCarren said.
Working through the worksheets, she noted, involved more steps than "a lot of people might think. Making an actual website, for example, [involves] content management - how to take a large, scaled project with a lot of different types of content and break down what the content strategy would be for a particular website or app. The worksheets helped them to do that."
The challenge was created with the idea that attendees would "work through it along with the speakers," McCarren said. "The speakers that we have are amazingly giving of their information, expertise, and their experience. They're very generous with their time and want to interact with the other speakers and with the attendees. And then, the attendees really felt like there was a lot of takeaway for them to be able to have as much access to the speakers as they did."
Throughout the conference, attendees were encouraged to attend breakfast roundtables to interact with speakers and fellow attendees, email a conference contact with any questions about the challenge, and tweet.
The Challenge With the Challenge
While a jam-packed schedule didn't allow as many people to take part in the challenge as McCarren had hoped, she was pleased with the overall level of participation. "There wasn't a whole lot of break time built into the schedule, with the exception of lunch," she said. "We found that people were going all day and maybe didn't have time to interact with it as much as we would like. So, that was one of the things that we learned in our first year of doing an interactive challenge like this. Some of the attendees felt too crunched on time to be able to move through the entire challenge, and they had to do it in the evening when they got back to their room. You really had to be dedicated to be able to move through all of it."
HOW will address that issue next year, McCarren said, by building more time into the schedule or working more with attendees after the conference concludes - any way "we can allow them to really move through all of this and also feel like they have enough time to absorb all of the information."
Initial feedback from the launch conference has been extremely positive. Along with his submission for the chal- lenge, one participant had nothing but praise for the event. He emailed McCarren: "Kudos to everyone involved with the conference. All of the speakers were genuinely willing to engage and share their expertise, which was awesome! Best design conference I've been to in 17-plus years as a professional designer. It was a very invigorating experience."
Additional feedback has shown that, at a minimum, attendees' "expectations for what the information was going to be and what we delivered really matched up," McCarren said. "Which is a great thing to have when you're planning an event."
-Michelle Russell
A+AV
InfoComm 2011
June 15-17, Orange County Convention Center, Orlando
ATTENDED BY MORE THAN 33,000 PROFESSIONALS IN THE AUDIOVISUAL, INFORMATION-COMMUNICATIONS, AND SYSTEMS-INTEGRATION INDUSTRIES
Misaligned projectors, poor screen resolution, badly calibrated audio, and other AV screw-ups are just a few of the things attendees did not experience at InfoComm 2011. Billing itself as "the most energizing audiovisual gathering in the world," InfoComm is staged by AV industry association Info- Comm International - and a lot of what the association does, according to Senior Vice President of Exhibitions Jason McGraw, "really tends to follow our own standards and best practices that we have developed for the industry."
The No. 1 thing that InfoComm does to make sure its own AV is top-notch is to devote sufficient time to room set-up and speaker prep. Working with its AV supplier, Freeman, and the meeting venue, InfoComm produces CAD diagrams for each session room, so it can ensure it has the appropriate screen size and viewing distance from the seating area.
Meeting planners shouldn't underestimate the importance of rehearsal time, especially if speakers are non-professionals or volunteers. "Using a teleprompter is not as easy as it seems; it requires a bit of practice," McGraw said. "Going through the presentations with the presenters and also coordinating the technical flow is very important to having a successful presentation."
Depending on the size of the room and the AV needs of the presenter, you may not need to have a high-def projector if speakers are going to be showing fairly low-res PowerPoint presentations. "In fact, for some small
meetings in smaller rooms, the large flat-panel, direct-view display, like a plasma or LCD [screen] that is 60 inches or 70 inches, might be adequate," McGraw said. And these displays are typically less expensive than full projection set-ups.
One way to simultaneously reduce AV expenditures and guarantee that speakers are provided with the most ideal configuration for their presentation is to figure out which presenters will have heavy AV needs, and then schedule those sessions sequentially in a small number of rooms, rather than spreading them out across many different rooms. McGraw said: "Not every presenter is going to have to use Internet and/or have video playback."
Of course, many speakers these days do have high-bandwidth AV requirements. If content is meant to be streamed from the Internet, you have to make sure that the facility has an Internet connection that is robust enough to handle such demands. Otherwise, you may need to encourage speakers to download their video content onto their own computer or another playback device.
"We work very closely with our in-house IT provider and AV supplier to make sure we have big connectivity in the meeting rooms where we need to," McGraw said, "for showing video and content from the web."
-Hunter Slaton
LIKE MIKE
National Speakers Association (NSA) 2011 Convention
July 30-Aug. 2, Anaheim Marriott Hotel, Anaheim
ATTENDED BY MORE THAN 1,200 PROFESSIONAL SPEAKERS ALONG WITH THEIR STAFF MEMBERS, SPEAKER-BUREAU REPRESENTATIVES, AND MEETING PROFESSIONALS
When you take the podium at the NSA Convention, you're looking out at a roomful of people who have all been where you are, who know that you're probably trying to figure out if you should warm them up with a joke, and who certainly have their own ideas about what makes for a good presentation, speech, discourse, dialogue, or whatever it is that's brought you before the mike.
It's got to be a bit daunting - not just for the people who are speaking to the speakers, but for the meeting professionals behind the scenes who are tasked with booking, preparing, and supporting them. Doesn't it?
"It is not challenging or intimidating to ask our members to speak for their peers. In fact, most of them look at it as an honor and/or a chance to give back," said Cara Tracy, NSA's director of professional development. "It is more difficult to convince non-members to present - mainly because we do not pay speakers to present at our meetings."
As for how speakers feel once they're in front of the crowd - that varies, as you'd expect it to. "It is intimidating for some speakers to present, just as it would be intimidating for a meeting planner to organize a meeting for other planners," Tracy said. "Like most audiences, our audience expects the presenter to deliver the material they said they would deliver, not sell from the platform, etc. Their expectations may be a little higher
because they know what is acceptable and what is not, and know what they would and would not do if they were presenting."
For its annual meeting, NSA emphasizes speakers with a strong how-to component. Attendees expect "Less of WHAT, more of HOW," according to the NSA Presenter Manual. "They know they have a problem and they want/need your help to solve it with practical tips and techniques." The Presenter Manual suggests that NSA speakers "Help your audience to link your ideas and concepts to their style and material." At the NSA 2011 Convention, that translated into a binder's worth of practical, hands-on general sessions, including Glenna Salsbury, CSP, CPAE, on "The Essence of Presence ... How to Harness the Authentic You"; Larry Winget, CPAE, on "Building a Breakout Brand"; Les Brown, CPAE, on "Spellbinding Storytelling"; and a four-member panel on "Crafting a ‘Killer' Keynote."
The nice thing about the NSA Convention is that the qualities that make its attendees a tough, discriminating audience also make them open-minded and sympathetic. "They are a very respectful audience," Tracy said, "because they know what it is like to be the person on the stage."
-Christopher Durso
GAMES GAMERS PLAY
Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2011
Feb. 28-March 4, Moscone Center, San Francisco
ATTENDED BY MORE THAN 19,000 GAME-DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS, INCLUDING PROGRAMMERS, ARTISTS, PRODUCERS, AUDIO ENGINEERS, AND VENTURE CAPITALISTS
GDC is the longest-running and largest event of its kind in the world, bringing together more than 19,000 game-development professionals for hundreds of education sessions (sample title: "How I Got My Mom to Play Through Plants vs. Zombies"), networking, new product launches, and demonstrations of the latest technology.
Developing a game for that audience "is like being asked to cook for Mario Batali," said Colleen Macklin, an associate professor of design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, and a member of Local No. 12, a non- profit collective of four game designers who have created two games played at GDC and other conferences. One of them was called Backchatter, and was based on conference Twitter feeds. Backchatter has been played successfully at several conferences, Macklin said, but it has certain limitations. Players have to be online and using Twitter in order to participate, and interruptions to Wi-Fi access pose problems for gameplay.
For GDC 2011, Local No. 12 designed The Metagame: The Debate Game, a card game "which has nothing to do with technology," Macklin said. Players received mini-decks with cards bearing the names of various games, along with cards asking questions such as "Which game is more influential?" and "Which game should never have been made?" chose game cards from their decks in response, then defended their choices, with bystanders choosing the winner. The Metagame was extremely successful. Local No. 12 distributed more than 2,000 decks of cards at GDC 2011 - as many as were available - meaning that more than 10 percent of attendees played. One of the reasons that the game was so popular, Macklin said, is that its objectives connected directly with some- thing that people already were doing at GDC: debating the mer- its of games. Macklin said: "A conference game has got to connect to the core of the event."
Another reason that the game worked well, Macklin said, is that it was very easy to learn. Novice game designers some- times make the mistake of creating games that are too complicated and take too much effort to learn. "Simplicity really is important," she said. "We knew we would fail if the game was too hard to understand. There has to be an easy way in, so players can get started."
The Metagame also was designed so that players themselves would help it go viral - players who recruited other players got bonus cards. And finally, Macklin said, the game attracted players by creating "a kind of exciting spectacle" through the debates. Players making their arguments drew in bystanders, who then became part of the game by acting as judges. "It really was so much fun," Macklin said. "The conference takes over San Francisco. You would go into bars near the conference center at night, and people were playing The Metagame."
Beyond the fun, the designers intended to encourage more sophisticated, critical analysis and discussion of games. At a conference for game developers, "it's important for all of us practitioners to be aware of the formal quality of games and be able to talk about them with some depth," said Macklin, who also directs the PETLab, a public-interest game design and research lab. "I am interested in how games can help us be smarter people. Games are great at helping us understand the world. They have been around since before written culture for a reason."
-Barbara Palmer
ALWAYS PREPARED
2011 NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) Conference & Expo
June 12-15, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Boston
ATTENDED BY FIRE-PROTECTION, LIFE-SAFETY, AND ELECTRICAL-INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS
It's probably safe to say that most attendee groups don't pay a whole lot of attention when it comes to emergency-evacuation announcements, fire-safety plans, and other disaster- preparedness efforts at their conventions and trade shows.
One group about which that statement isn't true is the NFPA. Working with a consultant, NFPA developed its own emergency-response plan many years ago. "We do apply those same ideas and methodologies for the association to our large conference that we do every year," said Linda Bailey, CMP, NFPA's division manager of conferences and meetings.
The organization also publishes NFPA 1600, which is the standard on disaster- and emergency-management and business-continuity programs. (You can download a PDF of this document at http://bit.ly/NFPA1600; it's also available as a mobile application through the iTunes App Store.)
When NFPA first begins working with a convention center or a hotel for its Conference & Expo, it makes sure that the property is fully covered by fire sprinklers, and also requires facility management to complete a fire-safety checklist, which must be signed off on by the venue's safety officer. If the build- ing doesn't have fire sprinklers or can't complete the checklist, NFPA walks away. "I think [the checklist items] are pretty standard for what you would see," Bailey said. "It's just probably a lot of meeting planners don't take that step to make sure that everything is checked off."
During the registration process, NFPA collects emergency contact information for all its attendees - and then stores this information not only on site, but also back at NFPA HQ. That way, Bailey said, "If there were a flood or some other type of disaster where we couldn't use our computers or our normal communication mechanisms, then we could have our headquarters office initiate that communication for us, to get in touch with everyone."
Prior to the meeting, NFPA also works with safety officers at the venue to gather all the emergency-evacuation information, from exit routes to what tones or announcements attendees would hear over the PA system in the event of an emergency. This information is disseminated to attendees not only in their printed meeting programs but also as part of NFPA's mobile event app. After all, it's not uncommon for someone to leave their conference guide in their hotel room, but whoever is without their phone?
ROSE BOWL
SAF (Society of American Florists) Palm Springs 2011
Sept. 14-17, Westin Mission Hills, Rancho Mirage, Calif.
ATTENDED BY FLORAL RETAILERS, WHOLESALERS, GROWERS, AND SUPPLIERS
At SAF's annual convention, fresh flowers bloom every- where - not just as part of banquet-table centerpieces, as at most meetings, but also at registration, in welcome bouquets that are delivered to each attendee's hotel room, in arrangements in the presidents' suites, in the lobby areas, as speaker bouquets, on-stage and on tables at every event, at each different meal function, and even on the tables and at podiums in educational sessions.
"[We're] just trying to create a fun, festive atmosphere for everyone," said Laura Weaver, CMP, SAF's director of meetings and conventions. "It's an extension of who we are, so we feel that flowers bring creativity and just an overall good vibe, so that's why we try to have them everywhere."
Of course, SAF has a lot more resources to tap for its cut flowers, which are sourced from growers in the vicinity of the annual meeting, gathered by local wholesalers, and assembled by SAF's in-house design team, working out of, in the case of SAF 2011, a 3,000-square-foot (or similarly sized) hotel ballroom.
Most meetings won't want to concern themselves with anything approaching that level of arrangement. But it's worth thinking about adding flowers in a few places beyond just banquet tables. Three great spots to consider for a bit of extra floral embellishment are the registration desk - an attendee's first impression of the conference, and not typically its most thrilling part - any common areas, and even in the restrooms of the meeting facility. "Men's and ladies'," Weaver said.
Adding extra flowers in these areas doesn't have to cost much beyond what you've already allocated in your budget for centerpieces and the like, said Weaver, who recommends using SAF's directory, at http://nationalfloristdirectory.com, to find a professional florist in the area of your meeting, and then giving that florist a budget to work with and desired coverage at the outset. "They'll work to incorporate whatever you want," Weaver said, "whether it's how to place the flowers for effect, or what type of flowers might be a better value, so you get more out of it."
-Hunter Slaton
HUNGER GAMES
2011 American Culinary Federation (ACF) National Convention
July 22-26, Gaylord Texan Hotel & Convention Center, Grapevine, Texas
ATTENDED BY 1,250 CULINARY PROFESSIONALS - INCLUDING CHEFS FROM RESTAURANTS, HOTELS, CONVENTION CENTERS, AND COUNTRY CLUBS, PLUS RESTAURATEURS, SUPPLIERS, AND STUDENTS
For Kevin Brune, ACF's director of events management, a potentially huge headache - members and attendees with more interest and expertise in food-and-beverage than he'll ever have - is actually something of a secret weapon. Because, you know, they have more interest and expertise in F&B than he'll ever have. "It's not so much a challenge as it is a great opportunity," Brune said, "because I have so many experts at my disposal ... that can help me make sure that what ends up in front of our attendees is the best that it can be."
Not that there isn't pressure to get things right - beginning with each venue's cooking infrastructure. "We tell the representatives from our destinations when we do site selections it's more important than just where the property's located relative to the airport," Brune said. "The culinary team is every bit if not more important than the nuts and bolts of the facility. We actually meet with the culinary team just like we would meet with the sales team or the event- management team."
This is where ACF's subject-matter experts come in. The organization relies on "a strong local chapter" in whatever destination it chooses for its four regional conferences and its National Convention. Chapter officers - themselves culinary professionals - are instrumental in working local supplier contacts, recommending venues, and participating in site selection and menu tastings. For the National Convention, ACF's board president is "very involved." When it comes time to think about putting food on plates and drink in glasses, Brune said, "We have a culinary consultant who is a longtime member who goes with us on every event and assists in menu planning."
ACF's goal is to use F&B to dazzle, inspire, and educate attendees - to show them what's new and what's possible. "We tell the property from the beginning that we're not expecting your typical banquet food," Brune said. "There are a couple of nuances that the executive chef and his or her culinary team are going to have to incorporate along the way" - including using sponsored products and showcasing the region's cuisine. At the 2011 National Convention, that meant southern Texas barbecue, northern Texas grilling, chili, and, of course, steak.
"Our attendees have very high expectations, because they're in the business in some capacity," Brune said. "They're looking for creativity, they're looking for quality, they're looking for presentation. And the service. We tend to select some pretty good destinations for that very reason - we want to make sure the service is at a very high standard as well."
-Christopher Durso
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