Smart Trade Show Idea

I have a confession, I love trade shows! I love walking through the entrance, seeing traffic on the floor, how organizations use booth space and design to engage clients, seeing colleagues and meeting people you have only had non-f2f interaction with.  This summer I enjoyed my time on the floor at MPI WEC10 - they drew you in with an excellent lunch that was easy to get to and energized you for the next hours on the floor, with some great suppliers to meet. Here the hosted buyer program many were on also worked well to connect qualified buyers with the right suppliers - something that for this reason continues to be popular at shows.

There were some great booths at Incentive Works, the larger hotel booths where you could come right in and at either a stand up table or sitting on comfortable furniture, with a beverage, catch up on the global properties available for your groups.  They did a great job of dividing this up by global destination so you could work through and really think about where you want to take your groups and meet appropriate suppliers along the way. 

Anyone who has spent any number of hours standing on a floor knows how hard this is - staying energetic and focused in a small space for A-type personalities is always a challenge and finding things to draw people in and have them remember you is tricky.  My favorite at this show was the Sheraton Parkway North who had their booth and surrounding area (good thing they were at the end of an aisle) packed with people who wrote a paragraph that started with "I _________ would love to book my next meeting ant the Sheraton Parkway North, only 20 minutes from downtown Toronto".  This paragraph was then analysed by a handwriting expert, she really knows her stuff - it was memorable, and it created a line that allowed the sales team to interact with those waiting - an excellent use of time all around!

I Have a Dream

This week I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing Simon Sinek speak. We were introduced to Simon Sinek during one of our classes this year as the hospitality professionals taking our Bachelor of Hospitality Management when we had to seek things we were interested in and many of us ended up on www.TED.com checking things out. (If you aren't already a regular visitor - go!) This was a message shared between the class that resonated. This was a large motivator for me to go to Incentive Works this year, to hear this message live.


There were so many interesting things he brought up that just made me think. I LIKE thinking as we have that quiet time, in this case on a plane, to see how that translates to us.

Now one of the things he talked about was Martin Luther King's infinitely famous "I have a dream" speech and thinking about some of the parameters of this. In a time of little mass communication as we know it today, nearly a quarter of a million people came to Washington to hear about this man's dream, what he believed in. This is quite a long speech, and it is nearly entirely about what he believed was possible. We can assume that most of the people who came shared this belief, and they came to have this validated in a highly public, highly sharing, highly connecting way.

But the interesting thing pointed out, was that he said "I have a dream" he never said "I have a plan". Hmmm just something to think about.

On another note, I have been following, as many of you have, a linkedin group where someone started a thread asking could anyone recommend a keynote speaker that people would talk about / remember. Now, it turns out that hundreds of people each have their favorite speaker(s) and that each of these has literally hundreds or thousands of groups they could connect with. Each of these seems to have an excellent message to share, through stories and experiences that they will use to find connections with your audience and leave a message that resonates and supports the positive changes you are seeking with your meeting.