Good meeting, wrong answers

I attended yesterday the Dutch MPI chapter meeting during Marcom exhibition at Amsterdam RAI. Terri Breining and Antonio Ducceschi did an excellent double act extracting some very interesting discussion points from the latest FutureWatch study.

An interesting group discussion topic was 'What do you do different to keep customers in a recession'. The answers were things like 'Be more creative', 'Create alliances', 'Maintain relationships', 'Be more flexible on cancellation terms', etc. All of these, in my opinion, were the wrong answers. Then one table said 'Turn USPs into VCPs, Unique Selling Points into Value
Creation Points' which is spot on.

Unfortunately they didn't elaborate on what they meant, but i think your VCPs could be as follows:

1. Explain exactly how the event will increase profit. It either has to create more net revenue from sales or reduce costs, those are the only two ways of making profit.

2. Explain exactly what the event will make the participants do (not just feel or think), the only way of increasing sales or reducing costs is through participant actions.

3. Explain how the event will make them do just that. Show that you know why they are not doing it already. Maybe they lack product information or don't have a good attitude to your company or brand. This is why you need the event and this is why the programme is designed the way it is.

4. Ask your budget owner if the story above makes sence and if he believes it will work. He will probably say yes, then you ask him for the money.

Elling

The Meeting Unprofessionals

When National Business Travelers Association (NBTA) recently launched the Strategic Meeting Management Certification programme (SMMC), meeting planners had it coming.

Meeting planners have been asking for ‘a seat at the table’, suggesting that general management should recognize the importance of meetings and place meeting managers alongside such professions as Human Relations, IT and Procurement managers.

General management took a quick look and asked meeting planners how they take care of the company’s money, applying good procurement practices, for example. The meeting planner explained that buying meeting services is too difficult for the professional buyer, who doesn’t understand meetings, and the meeting services providers agreed; leave meetings to the professionals!

Management didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Not knowing how to do your job is bad. Believing that you know something you don’t know, better than the professionals who know it, is deadly. The executioner is the professional travel manager who just launched the Strategic Meeting Management Certification.

Let us hope, for the sake of the meeting planner, that the General Manager has not asked any more questions, such as how do you manage meeting projects (online, of course), where are your quality assurance procedures, how do you manage risk? If a professional from any of these disciplines were to audit the average meeting planner, the meeting planner would be dead again, several times over. There are exceptions of course, like every reader of this blogpost.

Back to Strategic Meeting Management. What is it? In principle it is the application of good procurement principles to the total meetings spend across a corporation. In practice it means procedures whereby all meetings are registered and centrally approved, purchases are made from approved suppliers according to contracting policies and all payments are made through a system which captures and categorises spend. As a result, savings in the order of 15 – 30% are being reported by large corporations after implementing SMMP.

All of this was explained at the recent Paragon/NBTA Crossroads conference in Paris. I didn’t see many meeting planners there, but you may want to download Kari Kesler’s ‘Diving in to Strategic Meetings Management Programmes (SMMP)' (http://tinyurl.com/crossroadsparis) or check out some of the SMMP white papers on www.nbta.org.

Ford to test social media marketing

Social media marketing is in its infancy, but major corporations are exploring its potential. Ford have just announced its plans to hand over the branding and marketing of the new Fiesta to 100 young people who scored high on ‘social vibrancy’. They will each be given a new Fiesta to drive for 6 months and documenting their experiences through YouTube videos, blogs and other social media channels. Read the full story on http://tinyurl.com/fordsocialmediamarketing

Is there life in Second Life

I envy my friend who was able to visit this year’s Lift conference in Geneva in February (www.liftconference.com), a somewhat geeky example of the unconference to come with the Millennial generation. I have marked Marseilles 18 – 20 June in my diary.

Second Life is dead, was one of the main messages, he told me, It didn't change the world as they thought it would and won't do that in the future.

Don't you believe it! Just join me in a simple line of reasoning:

1. The Millennials play 3D interactive games, like World of Warcraft and hundereds of othes, they are at home in this virtual environment, they play and interact across the globe

2. Simulation and gaming is a growing trend for learning, it is extremely effective

3. The Millennials (gamers) are born after 1985, they were young teenagers when the internet became ubiquitous, 3D interactive gaming came later as they depended on widespread broadband.

4. So the 3D gamers are hardly in their 20's yet, they are in no position to introduce or use seriously the 3D virtual environment in work situations (except geeky companies with a young and internet savvy workforce)

5. Business application of 3D virtual environment (like second life) will become part of daily work life when the gaming generation comes of age.

I don’t know if Second Life will continue to develop as a business platform, and this is not the point, online 3D communities is the point. I know Second Life took a dip when gaming was banned and I recently heard someone say that it has become too seedy (apparently our avatars don’t have the usual sexual inhibitions), but this is also beside the point.

I just read that in January this year, residents spent 41.5 million hours in Second Life compared with 28.3 million in January, 2008 and the number of active users has risen 25% since September, 2008, now more than 15 mill., doesn’t seem like dying....

ROI is History

I watched yesterday a video interview Paul Bridle made with me in Torino recently, and I wasn't sure if I should have said that "ROI is a bit over-hyped". If the hype is what everybody is talking about, I want the ROI Methodology to be the hype of the day, thank you very much. But as the economy started bleeding and everyone I talk to reports event cuts and cancellations, I have had to re-think my pitch for ROI training and consultancy services, which is how I try to eek a living.

ROI is history in the sense that it is something you may measure after the event has happened. It will not secure the budget. But the ROI Methodology might well do that, it is not the same thing, the ROI and the ROI Methodology, please make a note of that.

When meeting owners reduce event budgets or cancel the whole thing, they are making sound business decisions. I would do the same if someone asked me for money in a recession without a plausible explanation for how exactly the expenditure was going to affect the bottom line. It is not enough to say that we need more than ever to strengthen customer loyalty and inspire our workforce through meetings and events. This is just talk. Tell me rather precisely what you have figured out that our customers or employees should be doing differently from what they do today and exactly how the different items in the proposed programme and budget are designed to make them change behaviour.

This is the ROI Methodology in action as a planning tool. You must first to set Business Impact objectives, explaining how the event is directly connected to the bottom line. Then you have to set Application objectives, defining the behaviour by participants after the event which will create value to stakeholders. Then you have to look at every application objective for every category of participants at your event and ask yourself; “How do I make him do that?”. “Why is she not doing it already?” Maybe he or she needs some practical information, or a change of attitude, or maybe some improved personal realtionships.

This story about the inter-connected objectives between what you need participants to do afterwards and the way in which you plan to achieve that, is your best chance for getting the budget for the event you know needs to happen.

You may read a longer article on this subject on www.eventroi.org/roiishistory.pdf

This blogpost was first published on www.cimunity.com

Presentation Zen

If you are giving a presentation in the near future, postpone it! Please read first Garr Reynolds’ book Presentation Zen.

You think you are an expert presenter? I thought so, until I read this book. Now I am getting closer.

Reynolds doesn’t just explain why some presentations are good and most are bad, he really makes you realize why this is so and gives you a fundamental insight into how you prepare and deliver messages which the audience will understand and remember.

This is a very practical and easy to read book, he explains and illustrates the power of simplicity and white spaces, simplify to amplify, good design principles, how to use pictures and where to place the text, contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity.

And when you have made your presentation, he tells you how to deliver it, how to connect with the audience and be completely present. Your presentation will never be the same.

Read more on http://www.presentationzen.com/

The neurology of face-to-face meetings

I never quite understood when told that only 20% of our communication is words, the rest is body language. Then I picked up ‘Social Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman, thinking that maybe this was my problem. Now I understand.

Based on research in social neuroscience, Goleman explains what it really means when someone has charisma or autism or is just liked by everybody, how a group of people may turn into a lynching mob in a matter of seconds, how excellent speakers spellbind their audience and why actors make such excellent speaker coaches.

Most of the body language is subconscious, we don’t even know it is happening, the socalled ‘mirror neurons’ in our brain pick up an incredible array of signals, from tone of voice to the slightest re-configuration of nearly 200 facial muscles.

And it is not just a matter of observing the other person, if our brains are attuned we physically feel the emotions of the other person, like the contagious smile or laughter.

Our ability to empathize with others depends on a number of factors demonstrated by neurological science, like light, colour, sound, food, drink, smell and temperature, but these are perhaps subjects of other books, I don’t know as I am not half way through Goleman’s yet.

The implications for how we design interactive environments are obvious and huge. But what has become even more clear to me is how the virtual relationship does not come anywhere near the quality of face-to face interaction. It becomes meaningless to think of virtual relationships taking the place of physical interaction, they are two completely different forms of exchange, supplementing rather than replacing each other.

I think all this is fascinating, you should read the book yourself, it is the kind of book you can’t read without a yellow marker at hand.

Finally an uplifting message, our brain is hard wired for empathy and kindness, don’t believe what the papers write.

And imagine, this was only 20% of my message, without the body language.

This blogpost was first published on www.cimunity.com

The Connected Conference Destination

I had occasion to visit Tallinn recently, and discovered something I hadn’t expected. I was connected all the time, my laptop I mean, to high speed internet access. At the airport, in the hotel, on the street, in shops, everywhere. I didn’t even have to accept terms and conditions, I was just connected. The Estonians seemed to take it for granted and told me that the ferry to Helsinki was connected, even the bus to St Petersburg, at least on their side of the border.

Several people told me with pride that Skype is being developed in Estonia, and they are a leading nation in developing applications for the internet.

When I asked the taxi driver if he would take a credit card, it was as if he didn’t understand what the alternative might be, except perhaps the mobile phone, which you and I know can be used as a means of paying money, the Estonians do it, all the time. By the way, I came from Frankfurt, where I had to make the taxidriver stop at a cash machine on the way to the airport.

That was when it struck me; this is a connected society, they could become the first ‘connected conference’ destination, a brand which to my knowledge is up for grabs.

The connected conference starts before and finishes after the physical meeting with blogs, wikis, tweets, networking communities, virtual meetings, online planning, webcasts and podcasts and more. The physical meeting is connected to participants, speakers, organisers and sponsors as well as the sources of information and experience that we are used to having at our fingertips.

The connected destination, its DMCs, venues, agencies and others, know all there is to know about being connected, they master all the latest technologies and don’t miss any new ideas. The connected destination is a leader not a follower, creating the market for its services.

I am not proposing to the Estonians or anyone else to take the leap just on faith, but I shall be surprised if some serious research and scenario planning doesn’t reveal an opportunity. And if being connected is part of the future of meetings, you might as well start now to build the brand, selling a better city wall than the city next door is a waste of breath anyway.

This blogpost was first published on www.cimunity.com

Face to Face on Facebook

(also published on EventsReview http://eventsreview.com/news/point_of_view/918/)
I received a phone call out of the blue some weeks ago from a student in South Africa doing a Ph.D. on sustainable meetings. She had come across my name and wondered if I could give her some guidance. She didn’t really sound like a young student, sounded more mature, but you don’t ask a woman her age, I have been taught, so I was left wondering. It wasn’t a good time to talk anyway, so I gave her Fiona Pelham’s contact details, and we agreed to talk again at a more convenient time.

In the mean time I looked for her on Facebook, as I routinely do with strangers. She promptly accepted my request for friendship and after five minutes of reviewing her profile I knew she was indeed a mature student of 34, I had seen pictures of her family and friends, what books she reads, what music and films she likes, what countries she has visited or lived in, what Facebook groups she belongs to and her really cool 1958 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia sports car.

When we spoke again some days later, I felt that I knew this person, and I expect that she had checked my Facebook profile, so we knew a lot about each other even though we were almost perfect strangers. This is almost a new paradigm, and I am not sure what it really means. When I think of my many good business friends who I have learned to know over the years, there is not one of them that I know as much about as my five minutes Facebook friend. This is weird. What does this mean? We used to say that meeting people in Cyberspace is one thing, but to get to know someone you have to meet face to face, now I am not so sure any more. What does it mean to know someone? Why do I think of some people as business friends and others just as acquaintances? Common interests, values, age and background, something more intangible perhaps, just ‘liking’. What is the probability of me liking someone who is of similar age and background, member of the same groups or societies, enjoys the same music, films and books? Probably quite high. I take particular interest in what people read, didn’t someone say tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are?

Facebook is just one example of many social networking tools and all are part of the so called web 2.0 phenomenon where we have become active contributors to web content, not just passive readers. Where does this leave our traditional meetings and events? Out in the cold I recon - unless we understand and adapt.

It is no coincidence that ‘experiential’ is the hot trend for meetings and events as we enter the web 2.0 era. I was in Copenhagen last Saturday for a board of directors’ annual retreat. We went to this fabulous dinner cabaret show in the old circus building and it annoyed me that we had decided not to bring our spouses as this was an experience I would have liked to share with my wife. I spent all of last week in Brussels with thirteen meeting planners learning ROI from Jack Phillips. E-learning could never have been the same. On the other hand, why would you go to a conference with a string of presentations when speaker – audience interactive sessions are much better on the web. We need to exploit the uniqueness of face-to-face meetings. The thirteen participants from Brussels now have a secret group on Facebook, nobody will know that it even exists without being personally invited. Some have pictures to share, others have follow up questions or experiences to share when putting learning into practice.

I have registered for ‘Learning 2007’ in Orlando next month and I know that I will meet some very interesting people. I know because I have already identified them in the pre-conference online community. I have shared some information about myself, what I am interested in and what I have to offer, and the application returns a chart showing the distance between my profile and that of other participants. For all I know, someone has already developed this kind of application as a Facebook plugin - there are hundreds. It would save me entering personal data in yet another application and I could look for others to meet based on a much richer set of information.

Did you think that Facebook was just fun and games for the young generation? The largest and fastest growing segment of the Facebook 34 million membership is 35+. If you think that relationships are important in business, then Facebook gives you the hard business data. If you think that keeping in touch with friends and family whilst you are hard at work, then you need Facebook. If you have lots of time on your hands, then you may try using only telephone, e-mail and face-to-face meetings, but even if you spend all the hours of the day, you will not be able to develop and maintain relationships like the Savvy Facebook Professional (SFP).

Poke me on Facebook, I’ll poke you back and we can see each others’ profiles for a few days, maybe we’ll become friends.

Confucius revisited

Confucius knew how people learn, more than 2500 years ago when he said: “Tell me and I will listen, show me and I will remember, involve me and I will understand."

I attended a two-day educational conference some time ago. The organizer was a highly reputed commercial conference organizer and the audience counted more than a hundred meeting planning professionals, keen to learn how to make better meetings and events for their employers.

During the two days we had 520 PowerPoint slides and more than 1600 bullet points, one presentation following the other in quick succession. The conference had been sold as a great peer networking opportunity which was all together left to random encounters at coffees and lunch breaks. Nobody measured the delegate return on investment, I am sure, and if anyone did, I am sure it was negative.

Some time later, I was invited to attend a two-day annual corporate kickoff event of a multinational company in the financial services sector. More than one thousand senior employees were brought together for the annual stock-taking and a dose of inspiration for another year in the service of the shareholders.

It started off with a blast of a video featuring some senior management personalities exercising the new martial art of corporate social responsibility. Good topic, great opportunity to define the concept of CSR and develop its ramifications within the company culture, something for a thousand managers to get their teeth into.

Then, like Jack-in-the-box, a motivational speaker on the subject of creativity popped up on stage. He did his forty five minutes act like a thousand times before, excellent performance, good message, no wonder he is one of the most expensive motivational speakers in the business. As it turned out, he was the first in a string of seven motivational speakers over the two days, all of them excellent, all of them with a good and worthwhile message, all of them keeping the attention of the thousand managers lined up in their chars across the ballroom.

Sure, the CEO did an excellent summary of the previous year and shared his visions for the future with a singing and dancing PowerPoint presentation to prove the marvels of the IT department. The annual award dinner created new heroes and company values were shared and reinforced by their heroic achievements through the year.

But we never got back to corporate social responsibility, just as every other topic it was overpowered by something else, and for the full two days the large audience of expensive managers were passive listeners in what everybody agreed had been yet another best ever annual kickoff.

Some basic questions

These experiences led me to rewrite Confucius anno 2007, and it runs like this: “Tell me and I will listen, then send me the PowerPoint and I will study it later and understand.”

The frightening thing about these two examples is that they are not unique, they are the norm rather than the exception. They were both enjoyable and seemingly meaningful events, but of little or no consequence. Nobody could have asked the questions: a) What change in behaviour are we trying to achieve and b) How will the audience learn, remember and use their newly acquired knowledge.

Every teacher knows that new knowledge has to be applied immediately after learning. We need to relate what we learn to what we already know in order to understand and remember. We need time to reflect and discuss, or we will not remember. We need to play an active role in the learning process in order to learn.

Going experiential

But with experiential communication being the new hype, there is hope for the future. Maybe we are eventually coming around to Confucius. I walked into a good example at Stockholm Central Station some months ago where Microsoft were launching Vista. Right there on the forecourt they had built a living room, an office and a teenager’s bedroom. I sat down in the sofa and enjoyed Vista as I could be doing in my own living room before moving on to the office where I could try out the new applications. Certainly a touch and feel marketing experience. The message itself was not experiential, it was pretty much the boring facts of new screen layouts and buttons to press, but it was communicated through the experience of the product in its intended setting. The difference between communicating the product experience, rather than the features of the product itself, should not be confused with the mode of communication which can or can not be experiential in either case.

So what does experiential mean for our every day meetings and events? It could mean a lot of fancy re-designs of the entire event and an out of this world learning experience, but it does not have to be. And we don’t have to re-invent anything either as there are many good examples to learn from. How about just changing the format of the event to allow for a bit of Confucius, time to reflect and discuss, relate new knowledge and impressions to existing information and attitudes, that is experiential communication as good as any.

Online exhibition and conference

I receive almost daily invitations to online webinars, some of which are very good. I thought this was just another one, but it was not, it was a web exhibition and a number of different webinars:
http://events.unisfair.com/index.jsp?eid=182&seid=10
So far I have just had a quick walk through the exhibition hall, put some brochures and white papers in my briefcase..., and I attended a presentation by Forrester research on how companies are using different tools to communicate their message and develop customer loyalty in the B2B marketing process, it was very interesting, I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the changing face of B2B marketing.

The event was on 13 June, which unfortunately I missed, the experience is quite different on the day when you can ask questions to speakers, chat with other attendees or company representatives at the exhibition booths.

My office in Second Life

I belong to several online communities; www.linkedin.com, www.xing.com, www.ecademy.com, www.mice-contact.com, www.micenetwork.com, www.facebook.com, etc., but I don't really exploit the potential of any of these except perhaps Facebook for keeping up to date with family and friends.

So a few days ago I decided to search for groups of people who share my interest and registered for the "Ecademy networking lounge in Second Life" who invited me to a meeting a few days later where I met Ecademy founder Penny Power and Second Life business consultant Joaqim Mutim (joaquim.mutim@gmail.com). This was just like a chatroom meeting, but somehow it feels very different from an ordinary chatroom when you can se the avatars of the people you are chatting with (see picture).

It was of course nice to meet Penny Power (she was not impressed by my Ecademy performance), but Joaqim Mutim turned out to be someone I have been waiting to meet for some time. Not because he gave me a motorcycle (BMW - my favourite), but because he can take my hand and guide me through the process of setting up office in Second Life, which I did!

A couple of hours later, I had rented a large, all glass, 2 story office from Joaquim for USD 23 a month, including some furniture and consulting services on how to organise the office in order to do some real life business there. My office is within sight of the Ecademy networking lounge and probably I can rent or borrow their meeting room for larger meetings. I need to get up some posters with information about the European Event ROI Institute, a chat facility so that visitors can get me on a chatline if I am available but not in my SL office, maybe the possibility of sitting down and watching a ROI webcast, this is just the beginning, I am sure.

If you want to visit, get yourself an avatar in www.secondlife.com, search for 'elling' and teleport to my office.

Meeting the Facebook Generation

The International Association of Facilitators (IAF) has asked me to speak on 'Facilitating the Facebook Generation' at the European Conference in Edinburgh in October. Here is the blurb:

MySpace, Facebook, You Tube, MSN, Skype, LinkedIn, Second Life, blogs, mobile messaging, wiki….. web 2.0, user generated content, online communities, virtual networks….. the way we communicate and learn is in turmoil and the digital divide is growing between the generations. What is really happening, does it stop here, or is this just the beginning? How do we play our role as facilitators in a rapidly changing digital world?

I have also suggested that the session could be run as a 'hybrid' meeting with a group of virtual participants from different parts of the world.

My key message is that we should exploit the possibilities of social networking and online collaboration and figure out the consequences for how we organise conferences and events as well as how we communicate and teach through other channels, eg. print vs. digital, classroom vs. e-learning, etc.

More meetings in the Flat World

Optimism reigns at IMEX in Frankfurt this week as many suppliers refer to 2006 as their best year ever and 2007 looking even better. Is this just the meetings industry getting its fair share of general economic growth or is something more fundamental happening? One insight was offered by Gary Grimmer in the ICCA panel debate who pointed to globalization and the proliferation of corporate offices around the world. “You no longer meet your colleagues at the water cooler in a single location, your colleagues are all over the world, facilitated by technology, but naturally you have a need and desire to meet them face to face” said Grimmer.

Several speakers, including Neil Jones at the ‘UK Corporates at IMEX’ seminar, pointed to the substantial change taking place in the marketing mix, whereby ‘above-the-line’ spending on advertising is loosing ground to the web and live event communication with ‘experiential communication’ being the current buzz. We are already seeing advertising agencies re-branding themselves as live communications agencies in the emerging new environment where we will not accept to be ‘interrupted’ by advertisers, but will instead ‘opt in’ to receive live marketing messages. There appears to be no statistics to prove this shift in live events’ proportion of the total marketing spend, but nobody seem to question the fact that it is happening to a substantial degree.

The experience economy is not a new concept, but combined with the effects of globalization, we could well be seeing the beginning of a new era of worldwide growth in the meetings industry.

EventsReview

EventsReview is my favourite online industry journal and I am pleased to have been invited to publish my own opinions at regular intervals, you may read about it here: http://eventsreview.com/news/newsstories/519/

Aligning Objectives

(You can also read this story on http://eventsreview.com/news/newsstories/520/)

Two speakers at Confex this year made my ears prick up. First it was Peter Rand, now Director of Industry Relations with Zibrant, to whom he sold his event management and venue finding agency last year. By his own acclaim, Peter more or less gave birth to the concept of commission based venue finding in the UK more than 30 years ago. RAND would find your most suitable meeting venue at absolutely no charge, being paid instead a commission by the venue. At Confex he confessed to his sins, having long since recognized that the commission based business model is flawed, to say the least. As his penance he now encouraged agencies and their customers to make agreements where the customer pays for the services performed by the agency, or better still, the agency is rewarded by performance or results.

The second speaker to catch my attention was Nigel Cooper of P&MM and Eventia Chairman. More than 50% of P&MM’s client agreements, he said, included a performance incentive. In other words, the better the event ROI, the more P&MM would get paid for the work to plan and execute the project. More than half, that’s astounding, we really have come a long way from commission based business models, it seems.

What’s wrong with commissions?

But whereas industry leaders like Rand and Cooper clearly recognize that transparent and incentivised business models is the path to better results for both parties, our industry is still riddled with commissions. Why are commissions so bad, lots of customers seem to be very happy to have the services they buy paid for by someone else? Commissions are so bad because they define a win-loose relationship between supplier and customer. The higher the price paid by the customer, the greater the value of the commission as a percentage of the price.

Customers need to reduce prices, preferably getting more value for less money by better and smarter event management. To succeed, the help and support of suppliers is a must, they have to be on your team and provide you with all their special skills and resources in order to continuously improve event ROI. How can you honestly expect them to do that if every time they do better, reducing costs and improving value, you punish them even more?

Alignment Magic

The litmus test for any commercial relationship is whether objectives are aligned. If what is good for me is good for you and what is bad for me is bad for you, then you can start developing a symbiotic relationship.

As soon as what we may call a value based incentive contract is in place, a certain magic starts to unfold. Because it makes good commercial sense for the supplier to provide better value at lower cost, he will incessantly search for opportunities to do just that. You need fewer resources to police supplier performance, making sure they deliver their promise according to contract. Cutting corners to make more money for themselves, is no longer a supplier option. Instead, suppliers will be seeking to cut costs where it does not really matter and spend more where a disproportionate increase in value may be achieved.

Moving the Goalposts

To align objectives, you have to know what the objectives are, and how to measure success. What you measure improves, what you cannot measure you cannot manage, and probably should not be doing in the first place. This is the second dose of magic; you simply have to figure out what your objectives really are, in detail, communicate them to your suppliers and develop the measurement tools.

You always want more, more for less, that is how the world moves forward. To be best you need the best team. You don’t need the cheapest bidder, you need suppliers who have world record breaking potential, the competence, smartness, ambition and relentless drive to always do something better next time. Don’t’ negotiate price, negotiate goals and incentives. Nothing should make you happier than good supplier profits earned from record-breaking performance.

Outsourcing for profit

Unless your core business is the planning and execution of world class meetings, you are not going to break world records. Why then, is there a widespread reluctance to outsource meeting planning to those whose core business it is to do it better than everyone else? Maybe you are afraid to loose control, or you believe that supplier profits could be your cost saving, or you don’t want to invest in the long term relationship needed to understand your business because next year’s cheapest bidder could be somebody else.

This is the third dose of the supply chain magic. Because you have alignment of objectives and performance is rewarded against clear and measurable goals, control is much less of an issue, transparency is no longer an issue because there is nothing to hide, and there is no need to begrudge suppliers their profits because they are not earned at your expense.

Procurement on the team

If you are lucky enough to have a procurement department taking an interest in your meetings, their skills and experiences will be invaluable in setting up value based incentive agreements where objectives are aligned. This is what they learn at business school, this is state of the art good procurement practice.

You think this sounds a bit like a fairy tale, with the magic and all that? It is not. It works. But it takes courage, time and commitment. You have to show trust in your customers or suppliers, expose your weaknesses, develop measurable objectives and a scorecard for continuous improvement.

Happy Returns

Most meetings and events provide happy returns to their stakeholders, but most of the time the stakeholders don't really know. I speak my mind on the subject in this video:
http://eventsreview.com/news/events/452/

Inkling the wisdom of the crowds

I just received a newsletter from Elliott Masie who never ceases to amaze me (did you get the pun?). One day I will find the time and money to attend his Extreme Learning Lab (http://xlearn.masie.com).

Today he gives me 5000 playdollars to buy shares on www.inklingmarkets.com, in particular to invest in whatever I think is the best answer to his question: " What will employees, in 2009, use as their PRIMARY tools for everyday learning in the workplace?". I was given different choices, as shown in the screendump below, and I put some money on Google searching and Robots.

This is 'The Wisdom of Crowds' (James Surowiecki, 2005) on the web. Apparently you can just go ahead and post an issue and invite people to make their prediction. Their incentive to participate and give you their opinion is that if they manage to be ahead of the crowd, put their money on one particular alternative which later becomes the preferred choice, they can sell shares and cash in some playdollars.

It will be interesting to watch the wisdom of crowds, at the moment the money is on John Edwards to win the Democratic primaries, at $15.99 a share I think I will put some money on Hilary Clinton...

A better Confex

This year's Confex at Earls Court 20-23 Februar was a better than usual experience. I was wearing my journalist hat, and here is what I wrote for Meetings International:

International Confex Revived

International Confex at London's Earls Court is one of many national European meetings and events shows, and it happens this week with 1018 exhibitors and the number of visitors certain to exceed last year's 13000.

Confex Event Director Duncan Reid had promised a different show this year, recognizing that the world of the meeting planners and their suppliers is changing. 'You no longer need to visit an exhibition to get venue facts and figures' says Reed, 'Google or one of the many venue finding services on the internet is quicker and better for the purpose'. Instead, Reid knows from extensive market research, visitors want to network and improve their professional skills, they want to be excited and wowed.

And so they were, from an endless list of show floor events and activities, an abundance of networking bars and lounges, including the Secret Garden where visitors could enjoy a variety of massages and other spa niceties.

The opportunities to learn from industry experts were also abundant with four show floor theatres running continuous parallel educational sessions, around 40 in total and including Tony Blair's favourite spin doctor Alistair Campbell among the daily keynotes. And if you missed one session, or could not be in two places at once, all presentations were recorded and will be made available in webcast and podcast formats on www.international-confex.com.

In addition to the friendlier and more entertaining show floor experience, Confex has another highly commendable feature in that more than 20% of the exhibitors offer non-venue products and services. It takes more than a good venue to make a good event and the demand for good event agencies, production companies, technology solutions, entertainers, and the like will increase as the demand for better event ROI is increasing. Other meeting industry shows should take note of Confex's high non-venue exhibitor ratio as this will increasingly be a measure of show quality.

This year's Confex was also a reminder of other industry changes, like the presence of several insurance brokers among the exhibitors. Risk management is certainly a very topical issue, and very appropriately so. Significantly also, a whole day's programme in one of the educational parallels was devoted to sustainable events. Probably the most frequently occurring word in the entire seminar programme was ROI, a subject which is certainly not about to be written off as last year's hype.

Trends for 2007 were also addressed by one of the industry's grand old men, Peter Rand, now seemingly enjoying life very much as director of industry relations with the event agency Zibrant. His list of trends includes online booking of meeting facilities, industry codes of conduct elevating the level of professionalism in many areas, and the strengthening of city brands at the expense of rather volatile hotel chain brands.

Confex is strictly a UK industry show, not attempting in any way to compete with IMEX or EIBTM. But Confex is different from many of the other national shows in that most of us understand the English language and can thus benefit from all that takes place at the show. If you are thinking of the UK as a possible event destination, then Confex is not to be missed, and even if you are not, it might well be worth a visit.

What the buyers think

I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply - CIPS - the largest association of its kind in the world with something like 40.000 members. The cover story of the 4 January issue of Supply Management journal is predictions for 2007, from where I have selected some quotations to the benefit of those who say (and therefore experience) that cutting the price is the only thought in the mind of the buyer:

"Many hope the role of procurement will be raised in 2007, but much depends on how purchasers behave - whether they can successfully promote their function and align themselves with wider business priorities."

"Procurement departments can show they have a much greater role than just making cost savings - which is now expected by chief executives."

"More departments will ask for our help on the procurement element to help tighten up processes and also gain greater efficiencies - not just cashable savings."

"Procurement should be used not only to add value but contribute to a business's real competitive advantage."

Read the full article in Supply Management, 4 January 2007, Volume 12, Issue 1

Another perspective on life

I am spending this week in Fortaleza, Brazil, with my daughter who has been a voluntary worker with the street children for the past six years. It is a week I shall never forget, for the gluesniffing children on the street, the stench and hopelessness of the favelas, the courage and commitment of the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) volunteers and also the smiles of the children who experience at least that someone care. We also visited the YWAM farm outside Fortaleza where children are given a home off the streets, education and the prospect of a meaningful adult life.

Backup dream came true

Backup is a pain, but you just have to do it, and remember to store the backup in a different building in case of fire or theft...

Now there is www.carbonite.com which offers unlimited, continuous backup over the internet for just $50 a year! Whenever your internet connection is idle, it backs up your latest changes, you don't notice it at all.

If you are a natural sceptic, there is a good discussion on http://www.briankotek.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/8/14/Carbonite-Backup

Meeting Industry Trends

For a couple of days this week, I reverted to my old trade as a journalist, covering the International Meeting and Travel Fair - Reiseliv 07 - in Oslo for Meetings International. Here is what I wrote:

The Trend is Safety

The 20th Norwegian International Meetings and Travel Fair – Reiseliv07 – opened this week, expecting 10 000 trade visitors and 30 000 members of the public to visit more than 1000 exhibitors from 66 countries.

The associated meeting and travel management conference programme is excellent, with future trends as one of the main themes. And this young but fastest growing industry in the world is not short of trends with globalization and information technology fuelling the experience society.

But the trend over all trends, according to CEO Patric Delaney of the Irish event agency Ovation, is safety. This is not just, or not even primarily, the fear of terrorism and bird flu, but first and foremost due to the rapid growth of corporate social responsibility (CSR). All major corporate and association brands are adding CSR to their values, pledging to protect the physical and social environment, including the safety of their meeting and events participants.

It is not enough to have a good and updated emergency response manual, said Delaney, every employee must know it by heart. Emergency response preparedness may be ingrained in your company culture, rest in the spine of every employee, but if you cannot document it, you will loose the business.

European society is becoming more litigious, although not yet as bad as the US where you can expect to receive almost any customer complaint in the form of a lawsuit. But you will increasingly have to answer to the law, which says that you are responsible for the health and safety of your attendees. The all embracing legal phrase is “due care and diligence”. You must do, and be able to document that you have done, all that could reasonably be expected of you to ensure delegate safety. You cannot blame your suppliers, you are responsible for all that they do and don’t do. You cannot pass the responsibility on to the delegates themselves, that’s illegal. In fact, if you have your participants sign a waiver before taking them rock climbing or river rafting, it could be used against you as proof of the fact that you knew it was a dangerous activity!

The first aid kit of Delaney’s company includes a defibrillator and the equipment list for major events will probably include an ambulance. Everybody pays lip service to safety, now you have to prove it, on paper and in action.

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Destroy the box

The highlight of a very good conference programme at Norwegian International Meeting and Travel Fair – Reiseliv 07 – this week was Johan Johansson, Creative Director, FutureLab AB. To design a successful meeting, you have to think outside the box, preferably destroy the whole damn box, said Johansson.

We receive in the order of 11 million ‘bits’ of information per second through our five senses, what we see, hear, smell, touch and taste, and what we hear is only 1 (one) per cent of the total. This is why “touch and feel” and “experiential marketing” is the new buzz.

Johansson gave the concept of design a whole new meaning. To most of us, design is the shape and colour of furniture and clothes. To Johansson, design is the purpose, rather than the physical appearance. He is a meeting designer, creating interactive environments which communicate the message and achieve the purpose by using all the five senses. And his company takes their own medicine by putting on the annual award winning Future Design Days, a meeting designed to develop and communicate the very concept of design. Among last year’s 4000 participants was Motorola’s design director Ignacio Germade who said: “Design is to the 21st century what marketing was to the end of the 20th century. The companies that get this will be the leading companies of the 21st century.

The audience was spellbound by Johansson’s concept of designing interactive environments and processes for meetings and events, in particular when he was able to reduce theory to practice in the form of four alternative meeting designs for different purposes and sizes of audience. He was painting a picture of meetings and events in the 21st century.

The attentive audience reflected the need of the meeting industry to catch up with a rapidly changing society. Meeting planners and their suppliers are just beginning to understand the impact of globalization, the experience society, information technology, environmental concerns, and other megatrends.

As most aspects of meeting logistics are being commoditized through information technology, the profession is already gravitating towards strategic purpose and content. Designing the meeting environment and interactive processes needed to achieve return on investment in a rapidly changing world, is the next step.

Some clever Swedes

It is hard for a Norwegian to admit, but there are some clever Swedes, at least 10, as the Swedish industry journal Meetings International have just placed me 11th on their list of the 100 'hottest names' in the Swedish meetings and events industry ;-)

I have maintained for many years that Meetings International is the best meetings industry journal in the world (maybe that is why they included me). It is not a typical current news journal, but an educational journal providing really good insights into important industry issues. The only problem is that it is all in the tribal language of the Swedes, this is sinful.

Meetings International also has a news website and a version of this is available in a language that we all understand: http://www.meetingsinternational.se/index.asp/id/10/lang/1033

Thank you to the editor and publisher of Meetings International.

Corbin's just for fun

Corbin Ball is the undisputed world leading expert on meetings industry technology and I read his TechTalk newsletter from beginning to end every other month (www.corbinball.com). Well, that is not quite true, I read everything, but not from beginning to end, I always start with his 'Sites for Fun' section, here are some you just have to watch:

Here is my all time favourite, customer tracking taken many steps too far: http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

Overloaded vehicles, don't do this! http://www.ezprezzo.com/crazypics/overloaded.html

Juggling taken to the next level: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776181634656145640

If you are not among the tens (maybe hundreds) of millions who have seen the German coastguard movie from Berlitz, here it is. In fact, the story is that Berlitz decided to scrap it in order not to offend their German speaking audience. Whether this was really the case or just part of the marketing ploy, I don't know, it certainly became one of the most celebrated examples of 'viral marketing' whether they wanted it or not. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6077326441742307086

'Viral marketing' is the name for promotional videos that are so good they spread like a virus, here is a good one, you will find out at the very end who paid for it all (clue: how dirty boys get clean) http://www.ifilm.com/video/2805434

Marriot to require accreditation from agents

I read on today’s MeetingsNet that Marriot will require agencies to be registered with IATA or IATAN to receive booking commissions: (http://meetingsnet.com/news/marriott_accrediatation_independents/).

Here is a bag of worms. They want to make sure that their ‘sales representatives’ are bona fide agencies.

I shall never understand why a customer, say a corporate meeting planner, will hire an agency to be paid a commission by the supplier for the work. The higher the price you pay for the venue, the higher the commission. If the agency does a good job and gets you a good price, you don’t reward him, you penalize him! His commission is now calculated on a lower price. This is a textbook example of a win-loose business model.

I don’t really blame the hotels, they have a brilliant concept with large numbers of agencies selling their properties at the highest acceptable price. I don’t really blame the agencies either, although they should know better than getting themselves into such a split loyalty situation. I blame the end customer who allows this nonsense to happen.

Measuring Learning

When applying the Phillips methodology for meeting evaluation, we measure results on several levels:

Level 1: Satisfaction and planned actions (was it a good meeting, did you get enough time for networking, were the speakers good, can you use what you learned in your job, etc.)

Level 2: Learning (information, knowledge, attitudes and people)

Level 3: Application (how was new knowledge applied by the participants?)

Level 4: Business Impact (how did participants’ application of learning benefit the stakeholders?)

Level 5: ROI (the meeting profit (benefits minus costs) as a percentage of costs)

Level 1 (Satisfaction) is easy, we do it all the time, was it a good meeting, were the speakers good, can you use what you learned in your job, etc.

Level 2, (Learning), is best measured by a test before and after the meeting, but good tests are difficult to make and often time consuming to complete. An alternative method is to ask the participants how much they learned, how much did they know about different topics before and after the meeting. Not as accurate as a test, but maybe good enough to verify that your messages were understood and remembered.

I just did this for a full day MPI Platinum seminar for Sweden Chapter on Supply Change Management, improving the knowledge of participants by 375% across 10 different topics (judging by the first 40% of responses). If you want to see the survey questions and the results, click (or copy paste) http://www.surveymonkey.com/Report.asp?U=300655288402

Note also question 13 where I ask them what they intend to do with their newly acquired knowledge. Maybe I will ask them again in 2 – 3 months what they did, measuring Level 3 (Application).

Shall we meet in Second Life

Everybody is talking about Second Life, The Economist, the Financial Times and every other reputable business journal or newspaper is writing about it (for example http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7963538).

Membership is exploding, approaching 2 mill, adding several hundred thousands a month.

Marriot just had a grand opening of the new Aloft Hotel brand, not to appear in real life until 2008. I attended the opening and the following rock concert and mingling party, met a couple of interesting business journalists.

So what is it?

Second Life is a computer simulated reality on the web where real people move about in the shape of their avatars, meet other people, make impressive buildings (like the Aloft Hotel), vehicles and any other artifact you can think of.

It is free to join (www.secondlife.com), but you can spend real money buying land, buildings, services, etc.

Companies like Marriot, Toyota, Sun, and others spend big money building their presence in Second Life. They don’t do it just for fun.

You move about in Second Life by walking, flying or ‘teleporting’, the latter takes you anywhere in seconds. You can also drive a car or a motorcycle, if you have one. Someone took me for a ride in his helicopter the other day, amazing.

I don’t build things in Second Life, it would have to become a hobby for which I don’t have the time at present. I mainly go there to meet people, and unlike real life I can check their profile before approaching them. I can chat by typing, this works very well in small groups, I have also installed a voice plugin, but so far I have not been able to make it work. You can make free telephone calls from phone booths in Second Life to any US phone number.

Will meetings take place in Second Life? Of course, they already do. What is the point? I don’t think I will be able to attend the opening of the first Marriot Hotel in real life, unless I happened to be where it is going to be, and I would not have met some interesting people, some of whom I have met again on later occasions. When I speak with people in Second Life I get this feeling that our telephone conferences or webmeetings are so terribly old fashioned.

Why don’t you go there, have a look, let the mind boggle. Teleport to ‘aloft island’ for the Marriot hotel, or search for ‘campus’ for some interesting university sites, or ‘sandbox’ to see how people experiment with making things. Have some fun, be amazed, it is allowed, you know. (Marriot Aloft Hotel and me in the foyer below)

Event security question

One of the European events journals is publishing an article on security and asked me the following question:

"What would you say are the security issues you find most commonly overlooked by meeting planners?"

At first I answered as follows:

"If I was to have a heart attack, I would of course prefer to be already in the intensive care unit of a hospital and my probability of survival would be more than 90%. For every minute before I am given first aid by the use of a defibrillator, my chances of survival drop by 10%, after 4 minutes, my chances are 50/50. If I am not in a hospital, I would prefer to be at O'Hare airport in Chicago where there is a defibrillator every 50 meters and all staff know how to use it. The average survival rate is 80%. Where is your defibrillator, and who knows how to use it?"

Then I got a reply from the editor suggesting that probably none of the readers had ever heard about a defibrillator, could I please answer something else.... so I wrote instead:

"The most overlooked security issue is the most fundamental one; they don't have an emergency response plan, they don't check or review the plans of the venue and they don't make sure that the event is covered by the coordinated emergency response plans of the organiser and the venue. And since they have no plan, they have not done even a basic risk analysis; a) what can happen, b) what is the probability, c) what are the consequences, and d) how can we reduce either the probability or the consequences. All meeting planners who organise events without doing a risk analysis and without an emergency response plan are irresponsible amateurs."

Maybe a bit harsh... but I am serious, I spent most of my career in the offshore oil and gas industry where you would not lift a spanner without a risk analysis.

The risk analysis does not only apply to illness, accidents, acts of terrorism and the like. What is the probability of one of your speakers not turning up, or a hotel room not being booked, or a dietary requirement not being communicated, or a microphone not working, or anything else that you don't want to happen, what is the probability, the consequence, and what should you do to mitigate either or both. This is elementary quality assurance, I presume you all do it.

Supply Chain Magic

I keep a Google alert on myself (and others) (www.google.com/alerts) and today came a reference to an article in www.eventsreview.co.uk about supplier-customer relationships: http://eventsreview.co.uk/news/business/263/. It seems to be based on my paper "Supply Chain Magic", nicely edited, you should read it, or the original article on www.elling.no/blog/docs/scmmagic.doc.

Do you Plaxo?

I met Ahmad Beyranvand at EIBTM and he recommended www.plaxo.com, the online address data repository. I receive these Plaxo update requests from time to time, but had not joined. When I did I was amazed to find that a couple of hundred people in my Outlook were already members and now my Outlook will be automatically updated when they change their details. I agree with Ahmad, this is ingenious. The basic version is free, USD 50 for the premium which has a few more bells and whistles. I am still a novice Plaxo user, but it looks very promising.

How do you stay updated?

How do you keep updated on meetings industry news? Here are some sites which I check more or less regularly:

http://www.eventreview.co.uk Interesting video interviews

http://www.bbt.be

http://www.mice-contact.com

http://www.meetpie.com Check discussion under ‘Mailbag’, interesting at times, heated even

http://www.meetingsinternational.se

http://www.mimegasite.com

http://www.traveldailynews.com

I am sure there are many more, please let me know in your comment to this message.

The purpose of meetings

In the WTO report 'Measuring the Importance of the Meetings Industry' the purpose of meetings is defined as:

"To motivate participants, to conduct business, share ideas, to learn, socialise and hold discussions"

I don't agree, or maybe it is just semantics? Discussing, learning and socialising are means to an end, they are not the end. I think the purpose of any meeting (or event, conference, exhibition, etc.) is:

"To educate participants to do something which adds value to stakeholders."

By education, participants learn new information, skills or attitudes or they learn to know people. They have to do something, it is not enough to think or feel. It is what they do which creates value to stakeholders.

This is why we start the planning process for any meeting by asking the question: "What do we want participants to do after the meeting?" Something they would otherwise not have done.

Do you belong to the automotive industry?

Just because you drive a car, you don't belong to the automotive industry. If you plan meetings, you don't necessarily belong to the meetings industry, you belong to the meeting planning profession, not the industry. Conference hotels, transportation companies, event agencies and others who sell products and services to meeting planning professionals belong to the meetings industry.

A meeting is a meeting

Meeting, event, conference, congress, etc. are now all 'meetings', if we accept the generic term proposed by the World Tourism Organisation in the recent report 'Measuring the Economic Importance of the Meetings Industry'.

Here are the definitions proposed:

Industry nomenclature: Meetings Industry

Meeting aims:
To motivate participants, to conduct business, share ideas, to learn, socialize and hold discussions

Meeting size: Minimum number of 10 participants

You can download a copy of the report from http://www.elling.no/blog/docs/unwto06.pdf

Welcome to my blog

As a meeting management consultant, I lead a very interesting life. I meet new people all the time and they inspire me to develop my thoughts about where the meeting industry should be heading, how to make better meetings and events for less cost. I also read a lot, mostly on the web (I'm a devoted paperless person), and I speak frequently at conferences which gives me useful feedback on my ideas.

The purpose of this blog is simply to share some of my thoughts about the meeting industry with you, and in particular to get your comments. Please comment!