Conferences that Work

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

What are the fairest rules to use when running meetings? ” I think it’s reasonable to concentrate on fairness to participants : the majority of those involved with the meeting. All meetings have rules, whether overt or covert, conscious or unconscious, that influence how they proceed. Status and power at meetings.

Meetings 323

Meetings Conference Negotiating Speakers 323

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

I’ve been promoting the Conferences That Work meeting format for so long, that some people assume I think it’s the right choice for every meeting. two meeting types and three situations when you should NOT use a Conferences That Work design: — Most corporate events. Well, it’s not.

Meeting Design 120

Meeting Design Conference Meetings Conference Design 120

Conferences that Work

AUGUST 29, 2016

Whenever I’ve had the pleasure of meeting David (not often enough!) However, one recurring theme in David’s magazine irritates me, because it perpetuates a common misconception in the events industry. The cover proclaims “What’s Next in Event Design?” 2 — Elementary Meetings.

Event Design 136

Event Design 2010 2016 2009 136

PCMA Convene

JANUARY 25, 2019

Kate Fairweather (right) and Amy Blackman present results from “The Future of Meetings and Events” report at Convening Leaders 2019 in Pittsburgh. You can’t just get the same people who live and breathe events doing this or you will get the same stuff,” Routh said. This means designing with the end user in mind.

Meeting Design 65

Meeting Design Meetings Consulting 2019 65

Conferences that Work

JUNE 12, 2017

I love my meeting design clients, but there is one mistake I see them making over and over again. Clients invariably ask me to help design their meeting after they’ve chosen a venue! Face The Fear—Then Change Your Conference Design! Here’s why they do it, and why it’s a mistake.

Venues 210

Venues 2010 Meetings Conference Design 210

PCMA Convene

MAY 1, 2017

That observation is at the heart of a new study that Sperstad, program director of the meeting and event management degree at Madison College, is writing with Amanda Cecil, Ph.D., Sperstad will present results from the study at IMEX in Frankfurt, Germany, this month. EVENT DESIGN. “My

Meeting Design 75

Meeting Design Meetings Education Fashion 75

Conferences that Work

JULY 31, 2017

Although I have good reasons to champion meeting designs where the participants get to choose what they want and need to discuss and learn rather than a program committee , there is invariably a place for some predetermined presentations at conferences. Read the full article at Conferences That Work.

Meetings 196

Meetings Meeting Design Conference Speakers 196

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

Here’s a standing invitation for event and hospitality teachers. I will meet online with your class for free. It’s a good time to invite guest presenters into your online classroom. You won’t get a canned presentation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, much education has moved online.

Hospitality 189

Hospitality Education Meeting Design Conference 189

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Events and media consultant Julius Solaris shared at the Unforgettable Experience Design Summit that he was initially very enthusiastic about unconference format events. But Julius didn’t see them catch on and now focuses on other aspects of the meeting industry. So, why aren’t unconferences more popular?

Conference 266

Conference Venues 2023 Consulting 266

Conferences that Work

MAY 11, 2020

I’ve been designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich in person meetings — aka peer conferences — for almost thirty years. Because participants love these meetings ! Now the covid-19 pandemic has forced meetings online. Zoom has rapidly become the dominant platform for online meetings.

Conference 375

Conference 2012 Meetings Meeting Design 375

Conferences that Work

MARCH 14, 2022

Meetings of every kind offer these opportunities. Personal meetings like these, whether brief or extended, between good friends or strangers, are fundamental. Traditional events relegate conversations to the hallways, to breaks and socials. Perhaps that customer will have little or no other human contact that day.

2006 162

2006 Meeting Design Conference Meetings 162

Conferences that Work

MARCH 15, 2021

Recently, I’ve been appearing as a guest at college event planning and hospitality courses to talk about meeting design. (I Rather than lecture for an hour, I’ve been using an Ask Me Anything (aka AMA ) meeting format. A one-sentence distillation: learning is a process not an event.).

Hospitality 169

Hospitality Meeting Design Conference Event Planning 169

PCMA Convene

APRIL 4, 2019

The appetite for experiential tours among those who come to Portland for meetings and conventions has grown noticeably in the last two years, Morgan said. Consumers “don’t want sterile corporate environments,” added Kate Fairweather, who co-presented the session with Blackman. No, Don’t Give Them the Generic.

Meeting Design 40

Meeting Design Meetings Food and Beverage Hotels 40

EventMB

JANUARY 8, 2024

Skift Take: In the latest episode of the Skift Meetings Podcast, the spotlight is on Joe Pine, a visionary thinker whose groundbreaking work on the Experience Economy has reshaped the way businesses approach customer engagement. Miguel Neves Read the Complete Story On Skift Meetings .

Meetings 152

Meetings Meeting Design Event Design Events 152

Conferences that Work

APRIL 1, 2019

This (slightly edited) interview by JT Long appeared in the March 2019 issue of Smart Meetings Magazine. Often it is more like a discussion than a presentation, but that is why it is effective. What led to writing the book, Conferences that Work ? Often, the results are unexpected.

2014 244

2014 2019 Conference Meeting Design 244

Conferences that Work

JUNE 7, 2021

Why am I writing about social learning on a blog that’s (mainly) about meeting design? Which means, to create the best meetings we need to maximize the social learning that takes place. Instead, build social learning into your meetings as much as possible. Humans’ true superpower.

Meeting Design 284

Meeting Design Conference Meetings Event Design 284

Social Tables

OCTOBER 6, 2018

Change is imminent — and in the meetings industry, it’s upon us. From more engaging, holistic experiences to the the bold new expectations of “bleisure,” event planners and suppliers are racing to adapt in an industry that’s as dynamic as it’s ever been. Millennials are the decision makers now.

Meetings 158

Meetings 2016 Trade Shows Social Media 158

Conferences that Work

JULY 3, 2023

Back in 1992 , I developed The Three Questions as a fundamental opening process for participant-driven meetings and conferences. Answering it gives every person present, in turn, an opportunity to share what they would like the ensuing meeting to be about.

Conference 156

Conference 2023 Meeting Design Meetings 156

Conferences that Work

JANUARY 24, 2022

Have you attended in-person meetings where your hallway conversations were the highlight of the event? But I see meetings where hallway learning trumps a majority of, if not all, conference sessions as failures of design, rather than a fact of life. I’ve certainly experienced my fair share, and I bet you have too.

Food and Beverage 360

Food and Beverage Meetings Conference Meeting Design 360

Social Tables

OCTOBER 6, 2018

Meetings don’t look how they used to. Today, planners are racing to adapt to trends that make conferences and events more engaging and dynamic than ever before. But when it comes to trends, where should meeting industry professionals put their focus? Here are five meeting industry trends that are changing the game.

Meetings 157

Meetings 2016 Trade Shows Social Media 157

Conferences that Work

JANUARY 11, 2021

For each domain, I’ll include examples of meeting processes you can use to satisfy participants’ problem solving wants and needs. Their expertise can, therefore, be shared with participants via traditional presentations. How to help solve participants’ obvious, complicated, and complex problems at conferences.

Conference 342

Conference 2010 2011 2014 342

Conferences that Work

MARCH 21, 2022

This coming June will mark my 30th year of designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich meetings. So I designed the workshop as an “ Ask Adrian Anything ” about meeting design and facilitation. I’ve shared the why? and the details of how I typically run this format here.

Meetings 348

Meetings Meeting Design Conference Speakers 348

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Let’s look at these three conclusions in the context of meeting design. Most meeting presenters still lecture. And most meeting session presenters resort to lecturing as their dominant session modality. Attendees learn more when presenters use active learning modalities. Conclusion.

2012 213

2012 Speakers Education 2019 213

Conferences that Work

JUNE 3, 2019

At the time, I had no idea that what I instinctively put together for a gathering of people who barely knew each other would lead to: a global design and facilitation consulting practice; over 500 posts on this blog, which has now become, to the best of my knowledge, the most-visited website on meeting design and facilitation; three books (almost!)

Conference 170

Conference 2014 Consulting Meeting Design 170

Endless Events

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

Care to join us for some stimulating conversation about multi-hub meetings? Because this week’s episode of Event Tech Podcast is all about this up and coming, exciting topic. Everyone who works in the event industry knows the power of meetings. And who says we have to stop at single-hub meetings?

Meetings 70

Meetings 2012 Event Tech Tech 70

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

After I talked about my meeting design work with pioneer tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, the testing community somehow adopted the term peer conference for their get-togethers. The queues to briefly present the proposed topics were really long, and the emerging schedule looked amazing.

Conference 156

Conference 2022 2004 Meeting Design 156

PCMA Convene

JANUARY 25, 2019

The appetite for experiential tours among those who come to Portland for meetings and conventions has grown noticeably in the last two years, Morgan said. Consumers “don’t want sterile corporate environments,” added Kate Fairweather, who co-presented the session with Blackman. No, Don’t Give Them the Generic.

Travel 74

Travel Event Design Food and Beverage Hotels 74

PCMA Convene

MAY 24, 2019

Homeless individuals present one of empathy’s most difficult tests. One meeting professional, William Thomson, founder of Gallus Events in Barcelona, organized Homeless Hackathon Glasgow last year, after reading statistics about homelessness in Glasgow, Scotland, his hometown. The duo will be back at this year’s Educon.

2019 94

2019 Meetings 2009 Education 94

PCMA Convene

JUNE 1, 2017

Attendees who want more from their meetings don’t want to sit and listen passively to a formal presentation. Welcome to the era of disrupted meetings, in good company with other industries and institutions whose established norms are being taken down to the studs. They have expectations of involvement.

Meetings 103

Meetings Meeting Design Speakers Tech 103

Conferences that Work

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Presentation & panel capability. So you can’t use Rally to create a presenter or panel session for more than (currently) 36 people. Anyone speaking on stage will be heard by everyone in the room, and presenters can hear audience response at a reduced level, rather like as if they were speaking at a live event.

Conference 202

Conference Venues Marketing Meeting Design 202

Conferences that Work

APRIL 16, 2018

(Fun fact: the testing community often uses my term “peer conferences” for their get-togethers, due to a chat about meeting design I had with tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference.) Most meeting conveners concentrate on feedback about meeting content (“great speakers!”)

2018 145

2018 2004 Conference Trade Shows 145

Conferences that Work

MARCH 25, 2019

Though it’s clearly sensible to keep a conference running on schedule, we’ve all attended meetings where rambling presenters, avoidable “technical issues”, incompetent facilitation, and inadequate logistics have made a mockery of the published program. I did so, and noticed that the other presenter did not.

Contracts 175

Contracts 2011 Conference Education 175

PCMA Convene

JANUARY 16, 2018

When FRESH18 — which bills itself as the first annual conference focused exclusively on meeting design — gets underway Feb. 27-28, it will be showcasing its own solution to a common event-design problem: getting the audience to participate. It is a chance to meet people from your industry with similar interests.

Tourism 79

Tourism Speakers Hospitality Meeting Design 79

The MICE

JULY 27, 2022

One of the presentations that highly inspired me to think differently about event design took place in 2019 at the MICE Forum at ITB Berlin (Organised by VDVO ). One of the talks that impressed me the most was ‘Participant experience design – how do we create meetings which move people more deeply?’

2019 59

2019 Conference 2009 Speakers 59

PCMA Convene

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

We’re tapping the talent of PCMA’s staff so they can share the design thinking and process behind the innovative experiences they create for PCMA events. In other words, we’re showcasing the event professionals behind the events for event professionals. I don’t know if nervous is the right word.

2023 72

2023 Conference Meeting Design Events 72

Conferences that Work

AUGUST 26, 2019

Here’s a teaser: the introduction to my new book Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need. The social and cultural differences that shaped our frequent meetings fascinated me. Interested? Then buy the book ! I’ve always been curious.

Consulting 168

Consulting Conference Travel Events 168

Planning Pod

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

Say you are preparing for a meeting, or a conference, or a class, or a banquet, or a wedding, and you want to optimize the venue or space you are using so that the seating and tables are set up for the best attendee experience. Every event has a unique set of objectives when it comes to what you are trying to accomplish. Banquet Setup.

Speakers 95

Speakers Trade Shows Conference Entertainment 95