The resources for your career growth are “out there,” including an endless array of live and on-demand webinars. The amount of free and low-cost education content available to planners online is astounding.
The MPI Academy, launched in 2015, is a central depot for the well of education and learning experiences available from the world’s largest meeting and event industry association.
Webinars through the MPI Academy are $34.99 each but MPI members get free access to all of them, as well as additional on-demand content and more. You’ll likely find it makes more financial sense to become a member—Student Membership is $40 (only $5 more than a single webinar); an Essential Planner membership is $279. (There are other membership options that can make joining even more valuable for your specific professional needs—learn more.)
Stop Compromising and Make All the Money You Want! – Feb. 5
Maximize ROI of ANY Event (Capture It!) – Mar. 5
Inclusion: Beyond the Law for Meeting Professionals Focus on Gender, Allergies, Families, Ability and Class Before it is Legally Required – Mar. 19
Inclusive XP: Designing Incredibly Welcoming Experiences – Mar. 26
You’re Killing Your Business Because You’re Killing Yourself – 5 Steps to Turn it Around! – Apr. 2
Facing Trans: Education, Advocacy and Inclusion of Transgender Needs for Meeting Professionals – Apr. 16
Check out Page 28 of the Plan Your Meetings Professional Development Guide for a free embedded MPI webinar! In the exclusive webinar “Technology: Fad or the New Normal,” Head of Meeting Innovation Jessie States guides professional learners to discover the advantages and disadvantages of leasing and buying tech solutions, how to manage tech risks by exploring the best options and how to move forward with confidence when investing in technology.
Meetings are an important tool in any business, but they can often go awry. With poorly defined agendas, individuals speaking up for self-validation and poor leadership, catch-ups can easily overrun, breaking up the flow of the day and reducing productivity. Poorly planned meetings can cause more harm than good.
So how can you improve meeting outcomes and what is the best way to get the most out of your team? We’ve done a deep dive into the psychological research surrounding well-being in the workplace and meeting efficiency and here’s what we found.
Does a high-pressure environment improve outcomes?
It’s a common misconception that high-pressure work environments cause better performance in employees through driving financial success. While this might be the case in the short term (indeed a high-pressure environment does superficially drive performance), over time, consistently high stress in the workplace is associated with increased disengagement, decreased loyalty, more time off and more workplace accidents. So, when you’re engaging with your colleagues during a huddle, here’s what you can do to help improve your meeting outcomes over time. Bear in mind that this isn’t a quick fix—it takes time to generate a positive office culture, but once you have it in place, the rewards are more than worth it.
Supporting one another and extending kindness and compassion through treating colleagues as friends can be hugely beneficial for workplace well-being. During meetings, avoiding blame is crucial—take a solutions-oriented approach and forgive mistakes. This positive framing unites the team with a common goal and avoids any feelings of resentment.
Ensuring that the reason for a meeting is clearly defined is key: outlining and emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work can dramatically increase mental investment in a project among team members. In The Social Psychology of Organizations, Katz and Kahn attribute high internalization of company goals to lower absence and increased productivity and innovativeness in addressing those goals.
Does Teamwork really make the dream work?
Research by Nicholas Kohn in 2010 (“Collaborative fixation: Effects of others’ ideas on brainstorming,” Applied Cognitive Psychology), found that brainstorming may not always be the best way to generate new ideas. The act of ideation in groups can actually constrain ideas down a limited channel through unconscious fixation to a particular idea. Essentially, we tend to mimic those who we’re brainstorming with, unintentionally narrowing the potential innovativeness of our ideas.
If you’re looking to host a creative meeting, try to mix up idea-generation activities, offering lone and group opportunities for idea generation to increase the scope of ideas.
Same meeting rooms, same meetings
When scheduling meetings, we often work around time slots, selecting spaces based on when everyone is available, without much consideration as to how a meeting will affect productivity throughout the rest of the day. Scheduling is important. Choosing a slot that will cause minimal disruption to the work day will increase engagement during the meeting, resulting in an all-round more efficient day for all.
Changing up the location of a meeting can have a positive effect on meeting outcomes. Taking your meeting to an inspiring setting can increase curiosity and unleash creativity through breaking potentially bad habits. If your team is used to having meetings in the same spot each week, bad habits can become associated with that meeting space. Shaking up the location frees the team from those bad habits. We tend to associate environments with how they make us feel. If our experience within a space is associated with feeling lethargic, our mood is likely to be altered in line with that state. Breaking away from those habitual behaviors can open us up to new ideas and increase innovation.
If you’re taking a meeting out of the office then it’s a good excuse to make your meeting more of an event with scheduled breaks where delegates can socialize. This is turn could benefit productivity through making your delegates feel valued and rewarded for their hard work.
Plan with your goals in mind
When it comes to planning a meeting, it’s crucial to keep your goals in mind. A strong agenda is, of course, key and it’s important to ensure this is shared with the team well in advance. Go over your agenda at the start of the meeting so that your aims are clearly outlined and everyone is on the same page. Once you have a strong agenda in place, make sure you stick to it. Time activities to crystalize ideas but maintain the flexibility to extend discussions if they are proving particularly fruitful.
Whilst the content of your meeting is important, delivery is pivotal to you achieving your goals. Ensuring that the leader of the meeting is inspiring to delegates will increase motivation. Research has shown that expert leaders inspire lively debate and diversity of opinions.
To sit or not to sit?
A study by Bluedorn and colleagues (“The effects of stand-up and sit-down meeting formats on meeting outcomes,” Journal of Applied Psychology) showed that sit-down meetings were around 35% longer than stand-up meetings but showed no difference in the decisions generated. Losing the table and chairs keeps your delegates on their toes and reduces the opportunity for disengagement. The benefits? Less time spent in meetings with no reduction on the quality of ideas output!
Four tenets to remember
Research by Charan (“Conquering a Culture of Indecision,” Harvard Business Review) outlines four main tenets of an effective meeting—that they are open, candid, informal and marked by closure.
Open
As we have covered, defining the goals of a meeting is important, however ensuring that the outcomes are not predetermined will keep delegates open to new ideas. Open-ended questions such as “where can we go from here?” promote a readiness to hear new perspectives where alternative opinions are valued.
Candid
Creating a meeting environment where delegates feel able to express ideas that are not in line with the norm prevents the need to revisit decisions and increases the level of innovation within the meeting context. During group scenarios, individuals will often withhold their opinion if they feel it goes against the thoughts of the group. Placing an emphasis on idea equality (the notion that no idea is off-limits) will allow your team to feel comfortable expressing their thoughts without fear of rebuke.
Informal
Setting up an informal environment promotes honesty and decreases defensiveness. When we feel comfortable in an environment we will respond in a more open way and will feel less constrained by a formal setting, allowing ideas to flow freely.
Marked by Closure
Just as outlining the goals of the meeting is important, so, too, is closure. At the end of the meeting, delegates should be clear on exactly what the next steps should be, what points they need to act on and how they intend to do so. Closure to a meeting assigns accountability to the individual where they are motivated to follow through on their intentions.
As a young company here at Headbox, we know how important it is to maximize meeting outcomes. A time-poor startup ourselves, we have used the above research to inform our meeting strategy and have found these key points to be hugely beneficial. We’re a small team and we’re constantly around the same people and the same meeting rooms. That’s why we’re keen to keep things fresh and interesting to make sure that we are constantly pushing ourselves to be innovative in our approaches.
Take a look below at a handy downloadable graphic for you to keep close at hand to reference when you’re next hosting a meeting.
Meetings are an important tool in any business, but they can often go awry. With poorly defined agendas, individuals speaking up for self-validation and poor leadership, catch-ups can easily overrun, breaking up the flow of the day and reducing productivity. Poorly planned meetings can cause more harm than good.
So how can you improve meeting outcomes and what is the best way to get the most out of your team? We’ve done a deep dive into the psychological research surrounding well-being in the workplace and meeting efficiency and here’s what we found.
Does a high-pressure environment improve outcomes?
It’s a common misconception that high-pressure work environments cause better performance in employees through driving financial success. While this might be the case in the short term (indeed a high-pressure environment does superficially drive performance), over time, consistently high stress in the workplace is associated with increased disengagement, decreased loyalty, more time off and more workplace accidents. So, when you’re engaging with your colleagues during a huddle, here’s what you can do to help improve your meeting outcomes over time. Bear in mind that this isn’t a quick fix—it takes time to generate a positive office culture, but once you have it in place, the rewards are more than worth it.
Supporting one another and extending kindness and compassion through treating colleagues as friends can be hugely beneficial for workplace well-being. During meetings, avoiding blame is crucial—take a solutions-oriented approach and forgive mistakes. This positive framing unites the team with a common goal and avoids any feelings of resentment.
Ensuring that the reason for a meeting is clearly defined is key: outlining and emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work can dramatically increase mental investment in a project among team members. In The Social Psychology of Organizations, Katz and Kahn attribute high internalization of company goals to lower absence and increased productivity and innovativeness in addressing those goals.
Does Teamwork really make the dream work?
Research by Nicholas Kohn in 2010 (“Collaborative fixation: Effects of others’ ideas on brainstorming,” Applied Cognitive Psychology), found that brainstorming may not always be the best way to generate new ideas. The act of ideation in groups can actually constrain ideas down a limited channel through unconscious fixation to a particular idea. Essentially, we tend to mimic those who we’re brainstorming with, unintentionally narrowing the potential innovativeness of our ideas.
If you’re looking to host a creative meeting, try to mix up idea-generation activities, offering lone and group opportunities for idea generation to increase the scope of ideas.
Same meeting rooms, same meetings
When scheduling meetings, we often work around time slots, selecting spaces based on when everyone is available, without much consideration as to how a meeting will affect productivity throughout the rest of the day. Scheduling is important. Choosing a slot that will cause minimal disruption to the work day will increase engagement during the meeting, resulting in an all-round more efficient day for all.
Changing up the location of a meeting can have a positive effect on meeting outcomes. Taking your meeting to an inspiring setting can increase curiosity and unleash creativity through breaking potentially bad habits. If your team is used to having meetings in the same spot each week, bad habits can become associated with that meeting space. Shaking up the location frees the team from those bad habits. We tend to associate environments with how they make us feel. If our experience within a space is associated with feeling lethargic, our mood is likely to be altered in line with that state. Breaking away from those habitual behaviors can open us up to new ideas and increase innovation.
If you’re taking a meeting out of the office then it’s a good excuse to make your meeting more of an event with scheduled breaks where delegates can socialize. This is turn could benefit productivity through making your delegates feel valued and rewarded for their hard work.
Plan with your goals in mind
When it comes to planning a meeting, it’s crucial to keep your goals in mind. A strong agenda is, of course, key and it’s important to ensure this is shared with the team well in advance. Go over your agenda at the start of the meeting so that your aims are clearly outlined and everyone is on the same page. Once you have a strong agenda in place, make sure you stick to it. Time activities to crystalize ideas but maintain the flexibility to extend discussions if they are proving particularly fruitful.
Whilst the content of your meeting is important, delivery is pivotal to you achieving your goals. Ensuring that the leader of the meeting is inspiring to delegates will increase motivation. Research has shown that expert leaders inspire lively debate and diversity of opinions.
To sit or not to sit?
A study by Bluedorn and colleagues (“The effects of stand-up and sit-down meeting formats on meeting outcomes,” Journal of Applied Psychology) showed that sit-down meetings were around 35% longer than stand-up meetings but showed no difference in the decisions generated. Losing the table and chairs keeps your delegates on their toes and reduces the opportunity for disengagement. The benefits? Less time spent in meetings with no reduction on the quality of ideas output!
Four tenets to remember
Research by Charan (“Conquering a Culture of Indecision,” Harvard Business Review) outlines four main tenets of an effective meeting—that they are open, candid, informal and marked by closure.
Open
As we have covered, defining the goals of a meeting is important, however ensuring that the outcomes are not predetermined will keep delegates open to new ideas. Open-ended questions such as “where can we go from here?” promote a readiness to hear new perspectives where alternative opinions are valued.
Candid
Creating a meeting environment where delegates feel able to express ideas that are not in line with the norm prevents the need to revisit decisions and increases the level of innovation within the meeting context. During group scenarios, individuals will often withhold their opinion if they feel it goes against the thoughts of the group. Placing an emphasis on idea equality (the notion that no idea is off-limits) will allow your team to feel comfortable expressing their thoughts without fear of rebuke.
Informal
Setting up an informal environment promotes honesty and decreases defensiveness. When we feel comfortable in an environment we will respond in a more open way and will feel less constrained by a formal setting, allowing ideas to flow freely.
Marked by Closure
Just as outlining the goals of the meeting is important, so, too, is closure. At the end of the meeting, delegates should be clear on exactly what the next steps should be, what points they need to act on and how they intend to do so. Closure to a meeting assigns accountability to the individual where they are motivated to follow through on their intentions.
As a young company here at Headbox, we know how important it is to maximize meeting outcomes. A time-poor startup ourselves, we have used the above research to inform our meeting strategy and have found these key points to be hugely beneficial. We’re a small team and we’re constantly around the same people and the same meeting rooms. That’s why we’re keen to keep things fresh and interesting to make sure that we are constantly pushing ourselves to be innovative in our approaches.
Take a look below at a handy downloadable graphic for you to keep close at hand to reference when you’re next hosting a meeting.
Meetings are an important tool in any business, but they can often go awry. With poorly defined agendas, individuals speaking up for self-validation and poor leadership, catch-ups can easily overrun, breaking up the flow of the day and reducing productivity. Poorly planned meetings can cause more harm than good.
So how can you improve meeting outcomes and what is the best way to get the most out of your team? We’ve done a deep dive into the psychological research surrounding well-being in the workplace and meeting efficiency and here’s what we found.
Does a high-pressure environment improve outcomes?
It’s a common misconception that high-pressure work environments cause better performance in employees through driving financial success. While this might be the case in the short term (indeed a high-pressure environment does superficially drive performance), over time, consistently high stress in the workplace is associated with increased disengagement, decreased loyalty, more time off and more workplace accidents. So, when you’re engaging with your colleagues during a huddle, here’s what you can do to help improve your meeting outcomes over time. Bear in mind that this isn’t a quick fix—it takes time to generate a positive office culture, but once you have it in place, the rewards are more than worth it.
Supporting one another and extending kindness and compassion through treating colleagues as friends can be hugely beneficial for workplace well-being. During meetings, avoiding blame is crucial—take a solutions-oriented approach and forgive mistakes. This positive framing unites the team with a common goal and avoids any feelings of resentment.
Ensuring that the reason for a meeting is clearly defined is key: outlining and emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work can dramatically increase mental investment in a project among team members. In The Social Psychology of Organizations, Katz and Kahn attribute high internalization of company goals to lower absence and increased productivity and innovativeness in addressing those goals.
Does Teamwork really make the dream work?
Research by Nicholas Kohn in 2010 (“Collaborative fixation: Effects of others’ ideas on brainstorming,” Applied Cognitive Psychology), found that brainstorming may not always be the best way to generate new ideas. The act of ideation in groups can actually constrain ideas down a limited channel through unconscious fixation to a particular idea. Essentially, we tend to mimic those who we’re brainstorming with, unintentionally narrowing the potential innovativeness of our ideas.
If you’re looking to host a creative meeting, try to mix up idea-generation activities, offering lone and group opportunities for idea generation to increase the scope of ideas.
Same meeting rooms, same meetings
When scheduling meetings, we often work around time slots, selecting spaces based on when everyone is available, without much consideration as to how a meeting will affect productivity throughout the rest of the day. Scheduling is important. Choosing a slot that will cause minimal disruption to the work day will increase engagement during the meeting, resulting in an all-round more efficient day for all.
Changing up the location of a meeting can have a positive effect on meeting outcomes. Taking your meeting to an inspiring setting can increase curiosity and unleash creativity through breaking potentially bad habits. If your team is used to having meetings in the same spot each week, bad habits can become associated with that meeting space. Shaking up the location frees the team from those bad habits. We tend to associate environments with how they make us feel. If our experience within a space is associated with feeling lethargic, our mood is likely to be altered in line with that state. Breaking away from those habitual behaviors can open us up to new ideas and increase innovation.
If you’re taking a meeting out of the office then it’s a good excuse to make your meeting more of an event with scheduled breaks where delegates can socialize. This is turn could benefit productivity through making your delegates feel valued and rewarded for their hard work.
Plan with your goals in mind
When it comes to planning a meeting, it’s crucial to keep your goals in mind. A strong agenda is, of course, key and it’s important to ensure this is shared with the team well in advance. Go over your agenda at the start of the meeting so that your aims are clearly outlined and everyone is on the same page. Once you have a strong agenda in place, make sure you stick to it. Time activities to crystalize ideas but maintain the flexibility to extend discussions if they are proving particularly fruitful.
Whilst the content of your meeting is important, delivery is pivotal to you achieving your goals. Ensuring that the leader of the meeting is inspiring to delegates will increase motivation. Research has shown that expert leaders inspire lively debate and diversity of opinions.
To sit or not to sit?
A study by Bluedorn and colleagues (“The effects of stand-up and sit-down meeting formats on meeting outcomes,” Journal of Applied Psychology) showed that sit-down meetings were around 35% longer than stand-up meetings but showed no difference in the decisions generated. Losing the table and chairs keeps your delegates on their toes and reduces the opportunity for disengagement. The benefits? Less time spent in meetings with no reduction on the quality of ideas output!
Four tenets to remember
Research by Charan (“Conquering a Culture of Indecision,” Harvard Business Review) outlines four main tenets of an effective meeting—that they are open, candid, informal and marked by closure.
Open
As we have covered, defining the goals of a meeting is important, however ensuring that the outcomes are not predetermined will keep delegates open to new ideas. Open-ended questions such as “where can we go from here?” promote a readiness to hear new perspectives where alternative opinions are valued.
Candid
Creating a meeting environment where delegates feel able to express ideas that are not in line with the norm prevents the need to revisit decisions and increases the level of innovation within the meeting context. During group scenarios, individuals will often withhold their opinion if they feel it goes against the thoughts of the group. Placing an emphasis on idea equality (the notion that no idea is off-limits) will allow your team to feel comfortable expressing their thoughts without fear of rebuke.
Informal
Setting up an informal environment promotes honesty and decreases defensiveness. When we feel comfortable in an environment we will respond in a more open way and will feel less constrained by a formal setting, allowing ideas to flow freely.
Marked by Closure
Just as outlining the goals of the meeting is important, so, too, is closure. At the end of the meeting, delegates should be clear on exactly what the next steps should be, what points they need to act on and how they intend to do so. Closure to a meeting assigns accountability to the individual where they are motivated to follow through on their intentions.
As a young company here at Headbox, we know how important it is to maximize meeting outcomes. A time-poor startup ourselves, we have used the above research to inform our meeting strategy and have found these key points to be hugely beneficial. We’re a small team and we’re constantly around the same people and the same meeting rooms. That’s why we’re keen to keep things fresh and interesting to make sure that we are constantly pushing ourselves to be innovative in our approaches.
Take a look below at a handy downloadable graphic for you to keep close at hand to reference when you’re next hosting a meeting.
Here is a conundrum, to which, perhaps, you have an answer: Meeting professionals often go to extraordinary lengths and sometimes pay huge sums of money to ensure a well-run and effective conference. Yet, in most sessions the information provided is quickly forgotten. Participants attend, leave and soon cannot recall much if not all of what they were exposed to.
I’ve made 960+ presentations and attended at least an equal number. In that time, I’ve received a book or audio program from the speaker perhaps 30 times (less than 4 percent of the meetings I’ve attended). Following a worthwhile speech or presentation, such books and audio products are valuable to me. I do tend to review them, keep them and reflect upon what I learned.
So, which speakers’ presentation and information have the greatest impact upon me—those who only offer handouts or who employ some type of take home learning aid?
An investment with legs
If you are paying a small fortune for the conferences you arrange, to ensure that my message or any other speaker’s message has optimal, if not lasting, impact, I encourage you to acquire books or audio products from speakers. This represents far more than a dollar transaction that benefits speakers, it is an investment in your people.
Rather than have a speaker sell “from the platform,” which I don’t enjoy and you probably loathe, the supporting materials can be negotiated in advance of the presentation. My 34-year experience confirms that audience members are thrilled to receive an autographed book or audio product from a speaker, and that the meeting planner who arranges such distribution is considered a forward-thinker.
Such learning tools usually don’t cost more than standard giveaways such as t-shirts, mugs, notebooks or tote bags and can have much more residual value. The pre-speech announcement of such gifts can generate goodwill and greater attendance. Participants often keep the book or audio for years, sometimes displaying them in the office, or storing them in their personal home library.
Enhanced learning, all around
When a substantial learning tool is given, attendees can relax and take fewer notes. The entire session, from start to finish, invariably proceeds on a higher note. At the conclusion of the meeting, the book or audio product is one of the treasures that participants look forward to bringing back with them.
Because you’re buying in quantities, the price per learning aid can drop significantly. Over many years, I’ve had clients large and small, take advantage of this opportunity, and I know other speakers who have witnessed the same. To the best of my knowledge it has been a win-win-win situation (meeting planner, speaker, audience participants) all the way!
Destination Colorado @ColoradoMeeting
When planning a Colorado meeting or event, utilizing a request for proposal (RFP) process saves precious time. Need help? Destination Colorado has you covered with a 1-2-3 process.
Topgolf @Topgolf
Topgolf is the perfect place to host your corporate event! Flexible food & drink catering menu options and a dedicated staff make it fun and easy.
Caesars Entertainment offers meeting and event planners one dedicated team that works as a united front, committed to providing the most successful meeting experiences possible. Enjoy elite perks, rewards and privileges with our Total Rewards Meeting Diamond Program.
Click here to fill out the survey for your chance to win!
The Oregon Trail Generation is an outstandingly apt title for those born between 1977 and 1981, so named as many members of this group played the epic educational game The Oregon Trail during elementary school computer classes. This generational segment possesses “both a healthy portion of Gen X grunge cynicism, and a dash of the unbridled optimism of Millennials,” according to Anna Garvey, the writer who coined the term.
During a time in which we were sponges seeking any and all data, we crossed our fingers hoping our digital oxen didn’t drown as we tried to ford the river. (And like many people my age, I, too, experienced countless virtual deaths by digital dysentery.) Along with a keyboard typing course, this was standard computer-based education for my generation until the final years of high school when CD-ROM encyclopedias and, for the lucky ones, 2400 baud modems became more widespread. Then everything changed. The free expanse of the World Wide Web’s growing well of data led to, a few years later, overload via the information super-highway, and we struggled to manage the flood of input.
By most accounts, that overload got worse in the decades that followed—we went from struggling with AOL access number busy signals to having perfect connectivity, always on and embracing a new ridiculous meme each day. In the process, thanks to the hard work of information curators flexing human logic and fancy algorithms, that endless well of data was organized so now computers can deliver real education in ways of which we could have only dreamed while hunting pixelated bison in the 1980s.
In reading the latest issue of Plan Your Meetings (maybe even the analogue print edition) in search of education opportunities you will often be directed elsewhere online—and there you’ll proceed seamlessly and actually learn. Not only will you find leads for scholarships, free and affordable resources and ways to attend professional conferences at no cost, but we’ve even included a full webinar from the MPI Academy (head to Page 18 of this magazine’s digital edition).
How much all of this can help your career is solely up to you. In the right hands, I see this information changing lives. (How’s that for “a dash of unbridled optimism?”)
P.S. Don’t miss free education opportunities at PYM LIVE events throughout North America—see future dates and register.
Topgolf @Topgolf
Topgolf is the perfect place to host your corporate event! Flexible food & drink catering menu options and a dedicated staff make it fun and easy.
Caesars Entertainment offers meeting and event planners one dedicated team that works as a united front, committed to providing the most successful meeting experiences possible. Enjoy elite perks, rewards and privileges with our Total Rewards Meeting Diamond Program.
Click here to fill out the survey for your chance to win!
In Canada, where I am based, now that Thanksgiving and Halloween have passed, Christmas is just around the corner. In the United States, while Christmas shopping season won’t kick into high gear until after Thanksgiving, November is prime festive event season.
This year, why not use some of the technology we’ve been exploring here at Plan Your Meetings for a new twist to traditional seasonal event décor? Virtual reality (VR), drones, GoPro, 3D projection mapping, DVD projections and animations are just a few examples of what’s possible. We’ve combed the globe to inspire you some of the most delightful examples.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) has grown into even more of a hot trend this year and is slowly making its way into the meeting, conference and event space.
VR viewing booths have come on-steam. As we discovered in a previous story, YPO Edge, powered by Mobileye, demonstrated that it is now possible to have a large group participate in a shared VR experience.
Companies can even incorporate their branding into virtual reality whether it’s live action or animated. Here is a Christmas campaign that Coca-Cola released, initially in Poland and then all around the world using VR.
A similar approach can integrate branding into VR for association and corporate Christmas events.
Drones
Drones capture indoor and outdoor event footage from unique vantage points. This footage can be used as a keepsake video and even edited and played back towards the end of an event to ensure that participants leave on a high note.
Drones can create dazzling light shows to delight audiences of all ages. The following mesmerizing experience was brought to you by Disney, Intel and 300 drones.
Drone light shows have been created with as many as 1,000 drones synchronized in perfect harmony.
GoPro
While drones bring viewers unique angles and perspectives, GoPro footage places them in the center of the action. For example, if an event planner wants to create a winter wonderland theme and give participants in a warm climate the feel of skiing, dog sledding or dashing through the snow in a sleigh, it’s possible with GoPro.
Snow polo anyone?
3D projection mapping
3D projection mapping can be used on any surface including trees, plants, grass, snow, pavement, dining tables and dinner plates. How about adding a touch of fun to a dessert course?
3D projection mapping can bring even the drabbest event venue exteriors to life for a holiday event or the entire festive season.
DVD projections
Even on a tight budget, DVDs, simple projectors and a white screen or sheet at the window can make magic at any event venue.
With musical animations, event planners can amp up Christmas décor without blowing the budget. These items can be placed under Christmas trees, on dining tables (as centerpieces) or on side tables to enhance the ambiance.
Some are snow globes while others are 3D miniature animations of Christmas toys, activities, venues and characters. From nutcrackers and carrousels to toy stores and holiday villages, animations bring music color and excitement to any events.
Strategical placed giant animations can surprise and welcome festive event guests.
Happy decorating–and check out more of my festive ideas for more considerations over the holiday season.
Imagine you’re planning an annual event. Everything has been ordered and confirmed. The event is only a few days away. Then, Hurricane Matthew hits and your supplier can’t deliver as various components of your order were in a building that now has six feet of water in it. Or you are a supplier and I-95 is shut down in key areas forcing traffic into long detours thereby causing your perishables that were ordered to arrive too late. Or perhaps a two-week-long riot (Baltimore 2015) prevents your supplier from meeting a key deadline. Or something as simple as a power outage that lasts for more than eight hours forces the venue to close just a few hours before the event. Did your event contingency plans prepare you to deal with those incidents?
A planner considers the “what if” as a normal part of business. When organizing an outdoor event, a tent or indoor venue should be ordered or made available just in case bad weather occurs. But, how many planners have thought to consider a “rain event” that dumps almost two feet of water in 24 hours, such as flooding in Louisiana in August 2016 or Hurricane Matthew, which left most of the community of Lumberton, N.C., flooded with six feet of water in some areas. Picture the venue that has been booked for over a year that is now being used as shelter for over 400 people and a variety of animals due to a 5,000-year flood (Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, La., August 2016). Imagine if you were one of those in the shelter because both your home and business were flooded? How easily or quickly could you recover?
The severity, magnitude and frequency of natural disasters, civil disturbances and political turmoil have seen an increase over the past few years. What originally appears to be a small-scale disaster, can take weeks, months or sometimes years from which to recover. To make matters worse, due to today’s reliance on just-in-time delivery, many suppliers do not keep large amount of supplies of key components on hand.
What can be done about it? We can’t stop nature or riots from happening. All we can do is become better prepared and in doing so, allow us to recover quicker and easier.
Developing your event continuity plans
Continuity plans are plans that consider risk and threats then develop strategies and procedures that, while protecting personnel and assets, a company can either continue functioning during a disaster or can quickly return to normal operations after.
A first step is to consider what processes and/or tasks on a daily (e.g., checking email, develop invoices, deposit payments), weekly (e.g., pay bills, pay salaries), monthly (e.g., account reviews) and yearly basis. (e.g., taxes). They can then be divided into tasks that must be done and tasks that should be done when time permits.
What information is needed?
Where does that information come from?
What files are needed to complete them?
Then consider what is done with it when a person is done with it (i.e., make or follow-up on a decision; write a document; hand the completed task to someone else; etc.). Does one person complete the function or is it handed off to someone else to complete? If so, what do then need to complete the task?
You may need to consider things such as needing additional direction, researching additional information or requiring specialized equipment.
What if a vital function is completed by one specific person and that person is not available for whatever reason? A component of the continuity plan could be writing procedures for key function(s) and having them available if needed.
Identify and develop long term relationships with suppliers in a variety of geographical locations so that if something were to happen, you have a backup supplier.
Finally, ensure that all computers are backed-up off site. (Having a backup that sits in the office desk will not do any good if the office is destroyed.) Take photos of all equipment and their serial numbers as well as their location in the office which are kept with insurance information offsite. If something were to occur, having this type of documentation will make completing insurance claims easier.
We cannot prevent things from happening, but with a little preplanning, we can be better prepared for when things do occur and recover quicker.
Did you know more than 50 percent of meeting and event organizers don’t have an event-specific emergency plan in place? Get MPI’s Essential Guide to Safety and Security and start improving the safety and security of your meetings here.
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During a time in which we were sponges seeking any and all data, we crossed our fingers hoping our digital oxen didn’t drown as we tried to ford the river. (And like many people my age, I, too, experienced countless virtual deaths by digital dysentery.) Along with a keyboard typing course, this was standard computer-based education for my generation until the final years of high school when CD-ROM encyclopedias and, for the lucky ones, 2400 baud modems became more widespread. Then everything changed. The free expanse of the World Wide Web’s growing well of data led to, a few years later, overload via the information super-highway, and we struggled to manage the flood of input.
Imagine you’re planning an annual event. Everything has been ordered and confirmed. The event is only a few days away. Then, Hurricane Matthew hits and your supplier can’t deliver as various components of your order were in a building that now has six feet of water in it. Or you are a supplier and I-95 is shut down in key areas forcing traffic into long detours thereby causing your perishables that were ordered to arrive too late. Or perhaps a two-week-long riot (Baltimore 2015) prevents your supplier from meeting a key deadline. Or something as simple as a power outage that lasts for more than eight hours forces the venue to close just a few hours before the event. Did your event contingency plans prepare you to deal with those incidents?
