This article was submitted by a great new friend of Elite Meetings from Europe, Maarten Vanneste, CMM. He writes on Meeting Architecture, the discipline that focuses on the content side of meetings and conferences: al meeting objectives in the Learning, networking and motivation of participants.
You can learn more about Maarten Vanneste, CMM here.
Much later, in more recent ages, only the rich and powerful could talk to larger groups, armies and other audiences.
And even more recently, thanks to sound equipment, we all can afford to address a public, larger than the campfire crowd.
With this history, it should not surprise us that we don’t have the right approach to large group methods in our genes. It simply never was something we humans did, or could do naturally. So we do it like last year. Or like another meeting we have seen; theatre or classroom style. Additionally, rows of chairs enable us to put more people into a room which seems to make good business sense. Such a lay-out of the meeting room determines the format in a firm and rigid way. It is designed to present to the audience, and the audi-ence (from audio) is listening. Several decades of research however have shown, over and over again, that top down presentations and listening alone, are not as effective as one would expect.
In a decade of ROI and crisis, the meeting industry is slowly starting to realize that the value meetings generate needs to go up. If top down presentations are not generating the best possible value, we must innovate and introduce new formats. Or should we say, old formats, like the campfire format which we all have in our veins.
The complexity of our world, our meetings, our groups make tinkering with meetings and their formats a scary, and maybe even dangerous venture. So we may need help from a Meeting Architect; a master builder (archi tect) of meetings. Meeting Architecture is a discipline that is only just starting to develop, so for now we will have to do with the rare breed of meeting designers or take matters into our own hands.
A few tips may help.
Tip one: Bring the camp fire logic back into large meetings. We need to do away with theater style and welcome the round table. Setting 7 or 8 people around a table (even a square table) creates the small cell we all feel comfortable in. This will take a room that is about 50% bigger, but value may increase by 100%. The table allows us to have small conversations, discussions, sharing of stories and learning from each other. People learn more by sharing than by being spoken to. People learn more if they are engaged participants instead of a passive listening audience. This works. People learn more from each other than from the expert on stage, that is a fact.
Now don’t do away with the experts yet! We will need them to start conversations, to stimulate, challenge thinking, to introduce new ideas.
Tip two: Slice presentations. Instead of one long presentation of 90 minutes, we can help speakers to increase their value by cutting the presentation into shorter 5 or 10 minute chunks. In between presentations, 3 to 5 minutes is given to the participants to discuss what they just heard at their table, with their peers. And when allowing for a few minutes of feedback from several tables, we change the 5 minute Q&A, another classic, into a much broader meeting of minds.
If you fear that this could be difficult with some groups and cultures, you may be right.
Tip three: Seek help to manage that process. Like you seek the help of a plumber for the plumbing when building a house, or an electrician for the electricity, here, in building a meeting, we can get help from a facilitator to facilitate this process. Maybe someone from your own organization or a specialist facilitator. One to help speakers understand what to do & why and another one to manage the process of discussion and feedback during the meeting.
These three elements; round tables, time for engagement and professional facilitation are the fundamental building blocks for better meeting formats. Like the foundation, the walls and the roof are for a house. Your work as a “Meeting Architect” now starts: hundreds of variations can be made with the use of time, space, tools, techniques and creativity, and like with any business project, we need to make our design based on objectives. First get the meeting objectives written down and only than designing the format. There are a number of popular formats like Open Space, the Fish Bowl, Pech-Kucha, TED and many more unknown formats. They are all much better than traditional theatre style.
You could even imagine a real campfire format with a large circle of LCD screens on the floor. A fire burning on the screens when people walk into the room followed by slides when an expert speaks. Up to 100 people can sit in a circle, and the 7 that sit in front of one screen can form a small group for discussion and reflection.
Whatever it is you do, the time to introduce new formats is now. We lost a lot in the past decade, so now is the time to innovate. We can be part of an improving value model for meetings and conferences. And who knows, in decade or so, you and I will be able to take on the CMA exam (Certification in Meeting Architecture) and become the first true Meeting Architects.
by on August 18, 2010
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
The Meetings Architecture movement is very interesting to me – but so far the “alternative” style of gathering just doesn’t seem to be gaining traction. Part of the problem is the pre-event preparation required for participants (wow, say that five times fast).
First, shifting attendees from being audience members to active participants demands more energy and effort on their part. Save for a handful of people, most attendees have been schooled in such a way that when there is anything besides a classroom or theatre setting, they are uncomfortable and unhappy about having to put forth effort into the experience. They want to be talked at and entertained.
Second, for those who are interested and excited about the experience, there has to be some kind of pre-event preparation when it comes to learning a new topic. Whether it be reading some basic literature or watching a webinar or video, there really must be some ground work in order for a fluid and engaging conversation to take place.
Finally, event organizers need to stop asking for “speakers” and start seeking “facilitators”. They should prepare attendees for the experience and change language to “participant” instead of “attendee”, and emphasize the responsibility of those participants in shaping their own education.
Although I fundamentally agree with the Meetings Architecture and similar families of thought (ie Adrian Segar, Velvet Chainsaw, EventCamp, etc.), I still think there is far more to the concept than just rearranging a design and expecting great things to happen!!
Midori Connolly, Chief AVGirl
@GreenA_V
Amen Midori! Im with you!
Just changing up the room set is not enough to change the meetings experience! There is so much more that needs to be considered and meetings professionals must begin to see themselves as conduits for experiences, not just logistics planners. If they don’t make that transition, we’ll continue to have boring meetings with out much value or real ROI that causes attitude and behavior change.
I’m right there with Midori as well. We keep talking about changing formats and creating different learning experiences, but where is the data and the facts to back up that this is really what the audience wants, or needs.
Midori and Jeff are right that there is a great deal of work that will need to go into educating audiences/participants and speakers/facilitators in terms of preparation and setting of expectations if we want to fundamentally change the way we have been designing event and meeting formats.
First, my belief is that it needs to start with a rigorous and thorough look at audience breakdown and audience concerns – both macro and micro. I don’t know any other way of really delivering value and setting the right objectives and measures and figuring out the right story to tell and how to tell it without that information. This is sorely lacking in most event and meeting design or architecture today, and it’s unclear if we are really training the industry in any methodology that takes this into account. I don’t even really see it in any of the SMMP materials.
This is not to say that I’m against trying to innovate. I’m involved with designing a conference right now that we hope will be very innovative, with a number of the points made in the blog taken into account. What is unclear, and likely won’t be known until after the event, is whether the audience is ready for this, or whether we have so ingrained our audiences to the traditional style of events with theatre seating and a speaker at the front of the room that almost anything else is too intimidating.
Midori, Jeff, and Paul – I agree with all of you! Midori – you’re right, plunking a participative format session into the middle of a traditional gathering doesn’t work very well, for the reasons you describe. Jeff: “meetings professionals must begin to see themselves as conduits for experiences, not just logistics planners” – well said! And Paul, yes, setting expectations (and communicating them effectively) is key to getting participant buy in for new meeting formats.
As the three of you know (but haven’t experienced yet!) I’ve developed, and have been facilitating for almost twenty years, an entire conference design that addresses all these issues. Because safety, participation, and support for connection is an integral part of the design of the whole event, I’ve found that attendees are indeed willing to try something new, and end up benefiting from and enjoying small group, participative sessions. And because audience concerns and desires are shared and polled at the event, rather than estimated beforehand, in my experience the conference reflects the participants’ wishes and needs as well as any event with a diverse audience could.
The main resistance I am hearing from event planners about my design revolves around the fear of loss of control: control of the schedule, control of learning objectives decided on by the organizers, control over outcomes. Even after twenty years, I still feel these fears before an event. But they dissipate at every conference I run, because it quickly becomes clear that the participants are buying in. Silly me.
A big limitation of the Conferences That Work design is that, so far, it’s restricted to small events: 100 or fewer participants. I am working on implementing my design for larger conferences, but some things, including the dynamics of group interaction, just don’t scale.
Paul, I know that you are considering attending EventCamp East Coast in November, which will be a pure Conferences That Work style event for event planners. Midori & Jeff – I’d love to see you there too (and anyone else who’s reading this!)
@Adrian I’ll have to learn more about your format – you have a book, yes?
Two things struck me about what you said:
1. I’m interested in the fact that you said planners fear the loss of control of objectives and outcomes. And I believe they are justified with this fear. We have a purpose for gathering, isn’t that why we hold meetings? Outcomes should meet our goals and expectations, *particularly* where it concerns learning/education. That’s how we know we’ve succeeded, right? And in that sense, this is why we create objectives. So we know what success looks like.
Perhaps that’s not what you meant…I might be reading it wrong.
2. “Dynamics of group interactions don’t scale.” I do agree – so in some way we should strive to find what it is that generates this desirable dynamic and bring it to scale. We have to bear in mind that many of our events are a commercial undertaking – it’s not a non-profit scenario for most tradeshows and association meetings!!
I will definitely consider Event Camp East Coast – sounds like it will be really cool!! Especially in being able to compare with my facilitation experience at Twin Cities.
mec
@Midori, thank you for your reply. Yes, I wrote a book, published last November, “Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love” which contains many of my ideas about participant-driven and participation-rich conference design.
I think you and I are touching on two core issues about events: who is the event for, and what is the event’s purpose? Sometimes the answers to these questions are clear; for example, an annual corporate meeting for sales staff where they will strategize about and learn how to increase profits over the next twelve months. In cases like this, the event exists to achieve outcomes for the organization, via appropriate brainstorming and training of attendees. Outcomes are improved sales strategies and a better trained sales force.
But there are many situations where “our goals and expectations” are not monolithic requirements of an organization but of the individuals attending the event. And I think this is where I part company with the worldview of many event planners. If an event is for its participants and not for an organization or mission, then “goals and expectations” become something that is personal and unique for each individual at the event. Under these circumstances, we need an event design that adjusts to what participants want, rather than a design that fulfills predetermined “objectives”. Committing to such an event design is scary for event planners because 1) the attendees are in control of what happens, not the organizers; 2) “success” is defined by individual responses to the event, not a single external set of metrics.
On the scale issue, I wish it were easy to “find what it is that generates this desirable dynamic and bring it to scale.” There are many reasons why you have to work differently with a group of 10 people, a group of 50 people, or a group of 200 people, and there is surprisingly little research on effective large group process for optimized individual learning. When I think back about the important things I’ve learned in my life, hardly any of them occurred while I was in a traditional group-learning environment with 100+ people, and I suspect this is true for most people. Moving away from broadcast learning and towards small group learning environments requires more resources (e.g. space, facilitators), increasing the cost/attendee of the event. My experience is that the increased efficiency and effectiveness of the learning and community building that results is well worth the increased investment. Whether event planners will eventually be similarly convinced remains to be seen.
As a producer of corporate events, i am very much aware of the need to innovate and freshen the approach. Midori’s concerns about the resistance of thr audience to participation are very real, as is the reality that clients are increasingly pressurising us to deliver tough messages in tough times with smaller budgets.
We are treading a path down the centre with new elements mixed with old fashioned presentations and storytelling. I expect that gradually new interactive techniques, audience involvement, crowdsourcing and the backchannel will grow in proportion at our events but never replace the basic need of our clients to share the instruction or information necessary to ensure their outcome.
To begin, thank you all for weighing in on this topic! Amazing conversation and some excellent points being shared by all.
When I first read the article, I was drawn to the Maarten’s belief in making our meetings more interactive, something that I think we can all agree on. I believe that all of our meetings are different and the exact format, tools, and design we choose will ultimately depend on the group of individuals we are pulling together and the purpose for which they are meeting.
The core piece of information I took away from the article was that as meeting professionals we need to maintain a vigilance over the outcomes and make sure we are doing everything we can to create the interaction that is necessary for strong relationships and learning.
Change is never easy, however if we begin with small and purposeful adjustments to our formats and design, we can help our attendees to gradually grow in their own engagement. These same small and purposeful changes are also more manageable from the planners perspective and can help to keep the sense of control.
Keri Russell wrote “Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever”. I am confident there are small changes that we can make which will have an impact on the success of our meetings and events.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to generalize about the meetings industry, because it is so diverse. But one thing I have heard over and over again is that once people have experienced a meeting with well-planned interactive elements, they don’t want to go back to just listening to a speaker on a stage. I also think that people want diversity within the same meeting — entertainment serves a purpose, as does the fun of sitting in a great presentation and letting someone else’s brilliant ideas and stories wash over you.
This is a “micro” comment on a “macro” topic, but Paul Radde opened my eyes to the drawbacks of big, round tables in his fascinating book, “Seating Matters.” He suggests smaller rectangular tables set in starburst pattern, so that groups seated around round tables don’t split into smaller groups. Since talking to Paul, I’ve noticed how much dead space there is in those big round tables that seat ten.