Meeting Design - It's time to disrupt!
Samme Allen
CEO of The Attendee Experience Company (atex) and Knowledge Director at The Meetings Show (Asia Pacific/UK)
Last week, I had the privilege of being a hub of the Fresh 18 Conference. For those who don’t know Fresh, or ABBIT, then please take a minute now to check them out. You are seriously missing on innovation and meeting design if you don’t.
This was a multi-hub meeting with delegates in London, Basel, Johannesburg, Copenhagen and for an hour of the first day, Philadelphia.
The format was a mixture of varied content, with speakers in each hub speaking to all delegates across the 4 countries, break out rooms where groups from each hub joined and networking both locally and via technology across all venues.
Interaction was the theme and the big question was whether interaction could be achieved with this type of meeting design.
I’m relatively new to facilitation and the night before, seeing the room layout for the first time and trying to get my head around the programme was daunting to say the least. I went to bed that evening more sceptical than our 200 delegates that were joining from their various hubs.
Having faith in the technology is the number one item on the “things to consider as a meeting planner” list. The London hub was at the Kia Oval, where the first cricket match was played in 1742. We were in one of the oldest areas of the club and everything ran smoothly. We must realise that with the right briefing, the right venue and the right team, this should no longer deter us from considering this type of meeting design. Most importantly is getting to the crux of your delegates and the meeting objectives and THEN choosing the technology to support their ROI.
(I am not getting any royalties from this but go and check out the new book, Multi-Hub meetings, it gives you everything you need to know regarding the brief needed for venues)
My take-aways from FRESH18: 1) Multi-hub meetings are real, effective and here to stay 2) Interaction isn't an end in itself but a means to an end. Clear meeting objective are more important than ever 3) With all this talk of the "why" don't overlook the "who." Having the right people in the room (or hubs) is THE key success factor (we had them) 4) To present is human, to facilitate is divine. Learned so much from master facilitators in action (Elling, Jeff, Bev and Samme!) 5) To innovate we must experiment, and to experiment we must tolerate imperfection. Not easy for planners :)