Event Industry Thoughts

Your Event Needs Refreshing

When you first started your event, conference, tradeshow or meeting, everything was new and exciting and bold and the sky was the limit.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted to come over and see what was going on what was happening and you were top dog. For years you smashed attendance records, there was a waitlist and you could do no wrong.

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Hybrid Events - Yes You Should

Most events, conferences, trade shows and meetings could successfully make the transition to becoming a full blown hybrid event if they wanted, the reasons that most don't is a combination of factors that include fear, laziness, lack of understanding and other assorted irrational road blocks.

Your event can have a hybrid component, it should have a hybrid component and if you do not have a hybrid component, you are going to fail at some point. Not tomorrow and not next week, but at some point it is going to bring you down.

Yin and Yang, that is a Hybrid Event. The merging of the offline and online worlds to make the attendee experience better, to bring together like minds and to expand the reach of your event.

I am currently working with a client on their second Hybrid Event, their first did not go so well for many reasons, but they understand the importance of trying again.

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What Meeting Planners Can Learn From Huck Finn

The most amazing thing crossed my eyes today, here it is:

New edition of 'Huckleberry Finn' loses the N-word -

Not much on its surface, but this is certainly a part of the dumbing down of America.

NPR.org writes:

Saying they want to publish a version that won't be banned from some schools because of its language, two scholars are editing Mark Twain's classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to eliminate uses of the "N" word and replace it with "slave," Publishers Weekly writes.

The edition, from NewSouth Books, will also shorten an offensive reference to Native Americans.

As PW says, "for decades, [Huckleberry Finn] has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation's most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word."

Good Ol Huck Finn is part of America as much as apple pie and the communist witch hunts of the 50s and can teach us many of life's hard lessons, both good and bad. It is up to the teachers and parents to help kids understand why the N word and other offensive language is in the book and why you don't walk down the street saying those words.

I grew up reading Huck Finn and I knew that there were some words, that although just words, had the power to bring people to their knees or rise up in anger. I never speak those words. I do use a lot of other foul language....but there are some things that I will never say.

What can meeting planners learn from this whole episode?

That is easy......Do not treat your audience like idiots, they are smarter than you think and they have the power to hear the real story, word for word.

Do yourself a favor, skip the candy coating, making something sweet does not make it better.

Why Failure is Good for Meeting and Event Planners

I Fail all of the time and I use a capital F in fail because some of the failures that I have had have been some amazing doozies worthy of a spot in the Guinness Book of world records.

What makes me different than many is that I am actually proud of many of my failures and have no problem sharing the fact that I am far from perfect..........

The difference between me and the masses when it comes to failure is that I do not make excuses for the things that go wrong, I try and learn from the failure so that the next time I approach a problem, I do it with a little more knowledge than I had the day before.

This is what can make failure a good thing, important and and necessary. Without failure, you cannot have success. If you do not try, you cannot fail, if you cannot fail, than you cannot possibly succeed. Success comes from your ability to look at your failures and figure out why they turned into heeping piles and crap instead of amazing triumphs. 

Think about this, you took a lot of time to plan and implement something that turned into an epic failure, you did not go into it thinking that it was going to collapse, so it is on you to figure out why it toppled over and then create a plan to keep it standing or clear away the debris for the next time.

If you are always trying new sessions, new styles, new speakers or perhaps trading the boring rubber chicken for Indian or Mexican food, not all attendees are going to like what you do and that is the point. You are challenging people to have a little passion, a different view and an opinion. Sometimes you will fail, sometimes you will succeed, sometimes you will have to go back to the drawing board and think about it, but understanding why something soars or crashes makes it possible to recreate, reinvent or scrap.

Here is an example of how failure can actually be turned into a success.

A few years ago before Pecha Kucha was a rage, we convinced a client that they should try something different. We all sat around and decided that all of the speakers on the second afternoon would only have 10 minutes.. no more, that was it, stick a fork in them, we were turning off the sound if they went over their alotted time. They would not have any PowerPoints but could have one picture that we would put up on the screen... a background if you will.

This started out being a cool idea and ended up being a disaster on the planning end. The speakers were not used to this, some of them went over time, some of them could not speak without 80 slides and some talked like chipmunks on crack trying to get mountains of information crammed into the 10 minute limit. It was like a 3 ring circus with no ringmaster and 50 lions.

From our perspective, it was a nightmare.... a pure and epic failure.

The client said... We are never doing that again.

But viewed from a different angle, from an attendee perspective, it was unique, it was new and it was happening. The surveys came back and our little experiment in terror was the highest rated portion of the conference. What we perceived as a failure was the thing that all of the conference attendees loved the most. They liked the style, they liked the spontaneity and most of all they liked the no powerpoint rule. The attendees were actually having fun, laughing and thinking.

That is when we went back to the drawing board and figured out that it was not the idea that failed, it was the implementation. We worked to get the speakers on board early the next conference, we let them know what was expected and we made sure that their was an understanding.............BAM, the next time around it went like clockwork. Now, the speakers were ready, presenting one point (not 100) and knowing that they had to move off because the next speaker was coming right behind them.

Most would have abandoned the idea and gone back to the old way. What we learned was that our idea was 100% great, it was us that was the problem and we worked to fix that issue, thus saving an amazing idea.

So, I guess the moral of the story is go out on a limb and try something new. If you fail, so what, you can now cross that off the list and know that it will not work, you may be surprised that a failure is nothing more successfully understanding how to not do something.

Does Your Conference Sell Out to the Sales Department

Many years ago I worked in sponsorship sales at a for-profit conference company and one of the tools (tricks) that we used to get big money sponsorship dollars what to allow large sponsors the opportunity to present a session during the conference. This was not a "hey introduce the keynote" type thing, it was pure "pay to play". You ponied up the tall cash money and you get on the speakers list.

The conference planners would always be up in arms, pouting, yelling and stomping their feet but they always gave in because this company was for-profit and the boss was an ass... all he wanted was the money, he could care less about the content (I was not there long).

I was just reading Jeff Hurt's post about conference education titled "Why do conferences offer education sessions" and it got me thinking about the good old days and how conference sessions have gone down hill, and yes,  they have gone down hill.In many instances they have not only gone down hill, they have plummeted off of a cliff and exploded in a fiery mess at the bottom of the ravine.

Across the board, with limited exception, conference education is sucking pond water. The question is, are you making it worse.

Back in the good old days, "pay to play" was accepted at the for profit conference shops because it helped make a buck, it was the economic engine. These sales departments were set up like a scene from the movie Boiler Room with 10 sponsorship guys making 100 calls a day. If a conference could not sell sponsorships, it was dumped.

Sponsors were happy to pony up to get a speaking slot because this is where they were able to get them, they were not going to get them at the large, industry association events because the associations had integrity and presented straight forward stuff.... no "pay to play", no way, never, hit the road dude.... nothing to see here..

This is changing, especially in these tough economic times. Good, honest, association planners are having to sell-out to the sales department because revenue is falling and the association needs the moola.I have seen it happen at really, really, good association events that you would never think would fall victim to this money trap.

This is a REALLY bad idea on a lot of levels..

First, there is the events integrity. You are going to take a hit when you play this game because attendees always know and no matter how much you tell a "speaking sponsor" that their session cannot be a sales pitch, these sessions always end up being a sales pitch because speakers talk about what they know and what they know is their product or service. Conference planners will not win at this game.

Second is the rule of "once you start it, you can't stop it".  A planner may make the conscious decision that "only this one time" or "only this year" will I allow a sponsor "pay to play".

Good for you! Only this time! But just like the drug addict who swears, just this last time and never again, this is never the way that it goes. There will always be a next time and there will always be more. It will become and insatiable need... a thirst that cannot be quenched. Money is an amazing motivator.

Once you head down this slippery slope you are doomed. The sponsors that ponied up for that coveted keynote, seat on a panel or educational session will always expect it from this day forward and they will never sponsor again unless you give up the goods.

Times are tough, we all know it, but you have to keep your conference integrity if you hope to survive the long haul. Offering pay to play may get you over the hump and get you past the recession but in the long run it is dooming you to failure because attendees know... they will always know and they will leave you like the rats off a sinking ship.

No one ever said the rats were stupid.

A Great Look at Pecha-Kucha

I was sitting outside of Caribou Coffee this afternoon, waiting to pick someone up when all of a sudden I got an earful of Pecha-Kucha via All Things Considered on NPR. I was kinda shocked because not much of the meetings and events industry makes the news so it was pretty cool to listen about something that many of us have been talking about for a few years.

I also thought it was cool to hear the origins of Pecha-Kucha as well.

Here is a little of the article, you can read more or listen to the story here:

It's the bane of students, business people and even the military: If you've ever yawned through a slideshow, you're probably familiar with that dreaded malady of modern times, known as "Death by PowerPoint."

Now, for the long-suffering audience, there's some good news. Tokyo architects Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein hit on the antidote to presentation overload — a style they dubbed pecha-kucha, Japanese for "chitchat" — and their elegant solution is taking the world by storm.

Dytham and Klein are easygoing by nature, but if there's one thing they can't stand it's slideshows full of hot air. So when the pair staged a forum featuring the work of their architect friends, they laid down one rule as simple as it was extreme.

"The problem with architects is they talk too much. So how could we find a way to stop them? You get passionate about whatever you're talking about and you go on forever and ever — so we came up with 20 slides, 20 seconds a slide," he says. He says 10 slides, 10 seconds per slide was too short and 30 slides, 30 seconds per slide was too long.

"We were trying to find a catchy 5 minutes or so for the architect to present," he says.

With speakers allotted a draconian 6 minutes and 40 seconds each, Dytham and Klein were able to pack 20 speeches — or rather, speechlets — into a single evening. Klein named these curious events after a quaint old Japanese onomatopoeia.

"We were looking for a name, and somebody says, 'It's just chitchat, it's pecha-kucha, pecha-kucha, pecha-kucha — people talking too much. So that's where we came up with pecha-kucha," she says.

Pecha-Kucha Goes Viral

At first, pecha-kucha (pronounced: PEH-chakh-cha) was purely local. But then, something strange happened. Without any prompting or publicity, and to the astonishment of its founders, the format went viral.

In just the past three years, the speech events have taken root in hundreds of cities in the U.S. and worldwide, from Amersfoort, Netherlands, to Saragossa, Spain. New cities are added, on average, every 72 hours. Nearly a quarter of a million people every year gather in warehouses, old prisons and forest clearings for pecha-kucha nights — a spectacle that seems to belie the pretenses of the online age.

 

Attendees are always shopping, are you selling?

If you think of your conference, meeting or event like a product on a shelf, would you buy it? Are you forcing your attendees to shop around?

If you are not adopting and trying new technologies, creating an event experience and providing an environment where your attendees can thrive, you are forcing them to look for alternatives.

They will shop other industry events that they know, the internet for others they don’t and if they cannot find what they are looking for, they may even create their own. Ultimately, they will find what they are looking for and that is where they will put their time, their money and their heart.

It is better and far wiser to sell a product that people want to buy rather than one they don't need.

Are your attendees pretending?

Here is one of the biggest reasons to change up your meeting or conference strategy. People become immune to the message over time, repetition and familiarity are not your friend.

Are you are a fairly regular air traveler? If so, how many times have you listened to the pre-flight safety speech given by the flight attendants? Ten times? Twenty times? One thousand times? Nope.. You probably listened the first time, maybe the second and you have never REALLY listened since. Oh, you may catch a sentence here or a sentence there but you are not really paying attention.

You don't really care because you have already heard the message and it is not really going to change aircraft to aircraft. The masks all go on the same way and the seat belts click just like every other seat belt.

Instead, you put on your headphones, open a magazine or stare blankly into the distance pretending to be enthralled.

How many of your attendees are just pretending to hear the message?

Taking the first step toward changing your events, meetings and trade shows

Changing the way that your events, meetings or conferences operate is not easy. It is hard. Even when your attendance is declining, attendees are unhappy and you know that you need to switch things up, it can be one of the most difficult things you will ever experience; especially if the event has a history.

I don't think that what I am writing can console you or that I can tell you it will all be better, I can't. What I can tell you is that by changing, and changing radically you can breath new life into your events before they die.You do have the power to make the changes but you have to start. You must take the first steps and jump off the ledge into the unknown.

Before it is too late and there is no hope, read up on the latest trends, what is working and who is successful. Investigate ways that you can get your audience involved and make them care again. There are plenty of resources out there and plenty of people who are successful and willing to share.

Even if you think "your attendees" are not ready for crowd-sourcing, smartphone apps or paperless conferences, you might be surprised, maybe they are ready, they are just waiting for you.

Go for it.... What do you have to lose? There is nothing wrong with trying and failing, there is something wrong with failing and not trying.

Meeting Planning? Don't be like the FCC

Yesterday, the United States 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York struck down an long-standing Federal Communications Commission policy that said “a single, non-literal use of an expletive (on air) could be actionably indecent.”  (Read the Story: Chicago Sun Times).

I always had a problem with this rule because it fined broadcasters for things that were out of their control or accidental, specifically at live events. One of the fines that was levied was because during the Golden Globes or some event, U2 lead singer Bono uttered the "f" word. How was the broadcaster supposed to know that the normally composed and decent Bono was going to drop an f-bomb.

One could of course argue that because they were airing the event and they could have had a time delay and bleeped it. Yada, Yada. My point is, accidents happen, it is really not a big deal. It really isn't. The point is, the FCC was not taking into consideration the spirit of how it was done. Was it planned, or was it simply an excited utterance.

By the time I was 5 or 6, I knew all of the dirty words and by the time I was 9 or 10 I had actually heard George Carlin's version of what you can and can not say on air. I don't run around swearing all of the time because of it, but that is for another time.

This little news item actually made me think of all of those times as a meeting and event professional, you are confronted with the same types of things that happen at your event. I could only imagine the profanities that were being thrown around the control room when Bono dropped the bomb. "Holy $*it, did he just say that...." "My f%$$ing heavens, we are going to get fined for that" or "F&^K, there goes my job, I can't believe that *a$$hole just said that"..

It is funny to reminisce, because I have been in the back of a conference room when an award has been given out and a normally composed Senior VP has gotten up to accept said award after too many vodkas and proclaimed that he "Loves all you Fuc&$^$" and on an incentive trip where a CEO falls getting onto the stage and lets out a string of expletives that would make a Drill Instructor fall over. I have also been at a conference where the Keynote's act was a verbal assault on the senses. The two are very different and should be handled very differently.

How do you handle it? In the case of the accidental gaffe, you should handle it a little better than the FCC. First, take it with a grain of salt. One or two words are not going to bring the place to its knees. Second with a little laughter. It was a slip and everyone knows that is what it was. Let it go, it will be in the dustbin of history soon. Should you be confronted by a drunken lout that is spewing filth from every orifice, simply turn the microphone off and walk them off the stage (while handing a live microphone to someone who can segue out of the embarrassing mess and get back on topic).

In the case of the hired keynote that is on stage and every other word is a swear word, well, that is most likely the fault of whoever hired them. Keynotes don't  typically change their act that radically from event to event so all hired keynotes should be screened before they are allowed to grace your stage. It is imperative that you find someone that fits with your brand (and brand applies to companies, associations.... anybody).

Watch their YouTube presentations, their DVD promo materials, all of it. There are a hundred other things you should do before you hire a keynote as well, such as speaking with them and letting them know that is expected. Most good keynotes like to learn what is expected and also some details about your brand so that they can work it into their presentation. Dude swears every two seconds and talks about your mother, you should have caught it before you ever sent him a contract.

That being said, relax. It will actually be funny a couple of months from now when you are telling the story at a party. Really, it will be.