10 Secrets - Hybrid Events

Content is King. If content is King then the consort is a great hybrid event. Hybrid events combine face-to-face and virtual audiences and allow you to share your content across a much broader audience. With appropriate use of back channels, either private within the media forum, or on twitter or other mediums a hybrid has the power to connect across borders and boundaries. In our current state of never enough time or money to do it all, hybrid events offer a great solution for bringing together the largest audience to learn and to collaborate. This week Sonic Foundry invited me to present a webinar on Behind the Black Curtain: 10 Secrets for Producing your Best Hybrid Event and these were the tips we talked about. You can also check out the on-demand webinar at the link above.

1. Start with WHY you are having a hybrid event.
2. Plan the structure of your meeting to consider how you will integrate the two audiences.
3. Have an event timeline that allows you appropriate time to setup, test all your lines and rehearse. Long before you go live.
4. Work with trusted partners - venue, av, live streaming, internet - everyone has an important role.
5. Create a collaborative space before, duing and after the event.
6. Consider the whole environment
7. Cameras are critical - minimum of two
8. Sound is critical - don't skimp on mics
9. Define roles - who is doing what before and on-site (including hosts and social media concierges)
10. The beauty of a hybrid is that you can archive for on demand viewing later - do it!

You can also check out more details on the overall meeting design with the White Paper on Event Camp Vancouver: An Experiment in Meeting Design.

If your association is proud of the education you are offering members, consider hybrid as a way to extend education to your community. If your organization needs to engage employees but it isn't practical to have everyone travel, consider hybrid.

STOP Bullying

Be warned - this is not a post about events. This is about life and impact points, suicide and bullying.

This weekend a teenage girl from our local high school committed suicide, effectively ending her life and forever changing her family. While we will never know why for certain, we do know that she was bullied, for standing up for who she was, for leading a group of teens in addressing homophobia and for seeking support.

Children are not born with hate and intolerance, they are (mostly) born knowing love and security. It is critical that as parents we teach our children the world is full of people who will have different religions, lifestyle preferences, skin colors and languages, cultural norms and that while we are all different - we are all humans, and we all have one planet to share. We need to model for them and teach them that abuse and bullying in any form - face to face, telling stories behind people's back, on any medium on the internet, via text message or on the phone - it is NOT acceptable.

Everyone has their own story and should have the right to make (legal) choices that suit them and are not doing harm to others. This can be done one day, one lesson at a time, but it is critical that we continue to share messages of mutual respect in spite of differences and that we seek to help others who are struggling with adversity.

The slogan of the 1996 International AIDS Conference in Vancouver was "One World. One Hope." This applies to so much beyond this meeting and its message remains important.

February 29th is PinkShirtDay - join in and make a statement while looking great!

CMP recertification



Brain Friendly All Day Snacks at
the Vancouver Convention Centre

 Anyone with the CMP usually dreads that five year mark approaching as you have to collect information on what you have done that would let you re-certify. I am no different. This year though has been a bit more fun, as it allowed me to reflect on what I have done beyond finishing (at last!) a degree in Hospitality Management, instructing in the BCIT Event Marketing course (always good for a few points) and producing fantastic events for a wide range of clients, from mountaintops to boardrooms, in art galleries and ski resorts and many other spectacular places.

Thank you to the following organizations that allowed me to share my passion for the industry and for the trends that are continuing to shape how we can do meetings better.

First, talking with @brainstrength Andrea Sullivan on Brain Friendly Food: Changing your Meeting One Meal at a Time at both SPINCon 2011 and FICP 2011 and then putting this into practice at Event Camp Vancouver - spectacular to see the results when you incorporate true brain friendly principles into your meeting environment and meals.

Following Event Camp Vancouver, a spectacular collaboration of many industry partners to create a collective experience second to none in education, connections and relevance, there have been opportunities to share what was learned.   

AssociCom invited me to talk about how we can add social gaming layers to enhance a conference experience - a conversation that still has room to grow!

Trevor Roald and I also had the opportunity to do a quick webinar with etouches on our experiment in event engagement, and how pieces that add to positive experiences can be incorporated.

I am also looking forward next week to joining Erica St. Angel at Sonic Foundry's headquarters in Madison, WI to look "Behind the Black Curtain" on hybrid events.

What is fun about all this? For me and many others we work in the meeting and event industry because we enjoy seeing the difference we make for people who attend, and being able to talk about how we do it and open dialogue and create discussion - well that is why! I look forward to seeing you all at upcoming events and having fun together!

Social Gaming - What can it mean for your organization?

I was invited by Terry Coatta to join him in a discussion on their bi-monthly AssociCom show, a show designed to provide information that will help associations facing interesting times as the changes come fast and furious to demographics and expectations.

There is so much data out there on how games can positively influence collaboration, productivity, engagement and innovation that in my opinion not looking at ways to include them is missing a potentially huge opportunity. if you follow the basics of good game creation, that have thousands of years of history to back them up, then your chances of success improve.

Some of the challenges we hear

• we don't have enough space to play a game
• our participants are here to learn, not play
• our participants are here to network, not play a game
• not everyone likes games
• it will take too much time
• you need a good enviroment and a good process for a game to succeed
• "we" don't think it will work

Some of the opportunities we see

• achievable goals a community can work towards create synergy, discussion and a sense of accomplishment
• you can close skills gaps in a more fun way that better engages participants
• you can create a common ground to build from in an environment that is safe - a game does not necessarily have real - life consequences but does require that you make decisions that will impact the outcome
• engaged learners find more ways to make the learning relevant to their own situations - play engages more senses, has more synapses flowing and creates more "connect-the-dot" moments
• people attend meetings to create connections - as Plato said "you learn more about a person in an hour of play than a lifetime of conversation"
• being part of something bigger than oneself opens up participants to a greater sense of community and connectedness
• combined depth of experience can be created and positive emotions are created - and as we are all emotional learners this will create better memories and more reason to return

Should you consider adding social gaming to your event? Heck yes! Consider though the basic constructs of your game. It has to have clear goals and rules, clear and continuous feedback, and it has to offer voluntary participation that shows agreement to the above inherent goals and rules. This takes time and clarity to achieve, and it may mean finding someone smarter than you (as we did with EventCamp Vancouver) to build out the game elements. You want to create achievable opportunities, and you also want to challenge participants - play to the highest level and you will be pleasantly surprised at the results.

What can you expect when you add a well constructed social gaming to your next conference or event?

• better collaboration among participants as they work together to achieve shared objectives
• unleashed creativity and strategic thinking as participants seek to "level up" and achieve the next goal
• the creation of optimism and hope - when we can see regular progress, or face setbacks in the game environment and move beyond these, positive emotions flow
• With success comes a perception of control over our environment and the associated  powerful feelings can translate to our daily lives
• the release of positive endorphins leading to good feelings (hey you can't argue basic physiology)
• greater camaraderie among participants throughout and beyond game play - you have a shared experience that connects you to others
• this shared experience can be with the people in your space or it can be with remote players around the world - games can become much bigger than your physical meeting space

Consider the next time you are planning a meeting or event how you can use the knowledge we have about great meeting and game design and add even an element, test it out and see what the response is. All you have to lose is an opportunity to create deeper connections amongst your participants!

If you are using gaming, or scared to try it, please comment and keep this discussion going.

Talking Tech

Thank you to the MPI BC Chapter who invited me as the keynote to open the Technology Roundtable Education at this month's chapter meeting. It was a privilege to join the roundtable presenters Marc Smith from Amuse Consulting, Mike Granek of AI, Ciprian Bandu from PSAV, Romulus Tang from Vernon Technologies and Trevor Roald of QuickMobile to talk tech.

It was definitely daunting to consider how much technology is changing our (meeting and event) world, at a pace that it is difficult to keep up with and that determining not only where to focus our own organizations but also our clients', well it can make one's head spin! Deciding what to focus on in a maximum of 30 minutes was also a bit daunting, but knowing that if I was able to provide a solid overview, the participants who had the opportunity to attend three roundtable sessions and delve deep into the specific technologies would leave with more options in front of them made it less so.

While each individual will leave with their own takeaways based on the roundtables chosen, here is what I hope I was able to convey.

1. A girl opened technology day! I know that in the industry there are a few female producers and leaders in the event technology space but it is not the norm, interesting in an industy that is otherwise heavily weighted to the female gender. My point - if how technology impacts your events interests you, then dig in, learn about it and have some fun!
2. Start with Why. Technology can create WOW environments and support learning and connections. It can also be budget intensive so know why you are adding elements and how it will support messages and engage participants.
3. Technology provides tools that can create efficiencies - web registration, marketing, iPads with or in place of binders, replacing paper information with electronic distribution, and so much more. Find the tools that suit your needs.
4. Consider how a mobile app can fit into your overall event strategy and how it can benefit your community building efforts in particular.  With hundreds of thousands of apps in the world and millions of tablet users attending our meetings, this will become the new norm, an expectation of the participants.
5. Social media is not going away, so if you are not already using social media to promote your events and build community, start experimenting. It was great to see that at least half the room was already using this to their advantage.
6. Consider how a hybrid meeting can extend your reach, break down borders, allow for presenters and participants to both be included, and how it can be your best marketing tool to increase registration year to year as people see the great content, but still crave the human connections that come with face to face attendance.
7. Gamification can be fun, enhance learning, create a collective goal and friendly competition, and add context and excitement to learning.  It boosts endorphins, and creates hope and optimism, all positive feelings that will then be connected to your organization / event.
8. Make technology comfortable for people to use. Selling Vancouver at AIBTM and IMEX this year using the touchscreen presentation supported with the iPad app specific to selling the local hotels made it easy for people to access information in their own way, and they really, really liked it.
9. QR codes and their variants are also here to stay for a while and are inexpensive (or free) and fun to include.
10. FourSquare, NFC - near field communication and other location based software is not going away and it has many potential applications for conferences and events that connect people and could be worth exploring or promoting. 
11. Find trusted partners, collaborate, be transparent in your needs, expectations and budget, and then go forth and create really cool stuff.
12. Do not forget the human connection. If you are going to have a hybrid event, you need human hosts to embrace the remote audience and engage through the back channels. If you are going to create a game, you need creators and then you need players. If you have guests, the technology should enhance the experience, and add to the learning or connections.
13. Create space and time for conversations. Understand that some of these may be face-to-face and some may now be via other mediums, and that all are important.
14. Technology is a tool, not a strategy.

`The essential difference in service is not machines or things. The essential difference is hearts, minds, spirits and souls.`   Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines

We Have NO Ball - the Blogalog Continues!

In an ongoing discussion with @projectmaven Deborah Pannell, we look at the differences between events in New York and Vancouver, and as New Year's approached, where I was up the coast in Sechelt, a quaint community only reached by ferry where we celebrate with neighbours at a beach party and launch fireworks at New York New Year's (letting those with children have fun and then still get home at a decent time) I realized, we have no ball.

Heading down to the "beach shack" for the party

Times Square for as long as I can remember has owned New Year's Eve. Millions of people join in via live feed to count down New York time, even though only a slice of the people watching live in that time zone. A perfect example of Event Marketing - make your place the "go to" place!

While I plan large events all the time, I have to say that I don't really like being in the midst of large crowds, perhaps it was all the risk management training I have done and knowing the seven ways crowds move... However my friends who have experienced NYNY have said it is one of their most memorable experiences EVER and would do it again!

In Vancouver there is no first night, no central gathering, no ball. There are instead snowshoe hikes and fondues, warm homes with friends and gourmet dinners, restaurants and nightclubs full of revellers, and even a special occasion venue or three hosting an event of their own. Would it be cool to have a ball? Of course! I would also like to have the tree like they have at Rockefeller Centre, but these, the famous window displays, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parage, these are part of the magic of New York and we wouldn't want to compete with that!

We are lucky here, we can celebrate with NY at 9pm, and then celebrate again at midnight in our own time zone! What we do have, all around Vancouver and the areas nearby, ios the opportunity to wake up on New Year's Day and enjoy that first cup of coffee with this kind of view!




The view on New Year's Day



Loyalty in the New Age

Who's in?

In a prior (long ago) post I looked at what it takes to build a team, which is at its best, a collection of Talent. Organizations around the world work hard to recruit the "right" talent, the people who will add to their team. As a Producer who has worked closely with a number of the best organizations in the world on meetings and incentive programs we see how hard these same organizations strive to create programs designed to reward hard work and increase loyalty. We see employee engagement surveys, performance reviews and SMART goal setting and succession planning all designed to inspire employees. As event professionals, we build unique, once in a lifetime experiences that employees can aspire to be rewarded with, and when they leave, we see the tangible results of a well planned program in their smiles and warm goodbyes as they thank the team - both their management as well as the on the ground support teams - for this incredible experience.

This all works. We see the employees who are working often long hours and being constantly available to their clients and the demands of the clients, making deals and high-fiving (literally or figuratively) when "success" is achieved. This success is often tied to revenue generated, often due to sales made, and occasionally to incredible service provided, when it surpasses expectations and is noted by a client or colleague. This is the norm in many organizations, across all sectors. Recruit well, develop talent committed to success, grow the organization, reward the talent - this can include saying thank you, offering public recognition in meetings, or providing tangible rewards with cash or prizes or, the ultimate, an experiential trip usually shared with a special guest, often a supportive spouse or partner.

We all know many hard working people. The more our world goes on line, the more it is assumed we will be available at all hours and on all days. We can now do nearly everything on line, increasing not only the time we spend available to others on line, but the amount of things we now all do for ourselves at work that may have in the past required support staff - from courier dispatch to travel booking, and everything in-between. We seek jobs that will provide us with job satisfaction, where we can feel part of a collective greater than ourselves with values we believe in, and where we want to be part of the success. We are chosen, we fit ourselves in, work hard, and have loyalty to where we work.

There is some criticism of the millenial generation that perhaps because they are better than the previous generation at setting boundaries, that they are not as committed. The current research shows that they are not perhaps as loyal to an organization but perhaps more loyal to their particular leaders within that organization, and yes, they are better at "turning work off". In my experience they work very efficiently at work and produce incredible results time and again. I think there are lessons to be had here, that perhaps work should not be the be all end all that we can make it when we commit to an organization and make work a priority.

Here is another reality I have seen more perhaps in the last decade, and have certainly been on the receiving end of (when an organization closed suddenly). Organizations, even those that invest resources and energy in creating loyalty, are quite simply not that loyal back. I would bet we all know someone whose life has been turned upside down when one day the doors where they work close suddenly (horrible, I can assure you) turning out a workforce into a quiet economy, or when they are suddenly, without warning and without cause finding themselves being walked out, their jobs eliminated, no chance to say good-bye or clear out any personal items from their desk. The iPhones and blackberries, laptops and filled rolodexes removed. Shame felt when there is no reason for shame, the organization has "decided to make a change" or "eliminated this role" and "it's not personal, it's just business." Of course, the organizations and the leaders who make these decisions have reasons for making these decisions and often these are financial and certainly nobody out of that decision making process is privy to the details, as it should be and will of couse remain. Sometimes this is fast, like a bandaid mercilessly ripped, and sometimes, as I have had friends go through it is a long and arduous "who will go next to meet the required numbers?" Loyalty destroyed, hope ripped open, and trust eroded, in the space of a heartbeat.

Disbelief settles in. So what are we to do when we find ourselves on the receiving end of an organizations need to move forward without us? Here is one of the best posts I have ever read on Life After Layoffs by meeting professional Arlene Sheff - heartwrenchingly honest, and worth the read.

The harsh reality I see is that this cycle won't change. Loyalty will be sought and rewarded, often to degrees that are awesome when you are a leader in your organization. This will ensure that loyalty programs and incentives have a healthy future, good for the meeting industry. Often though you can work as hard, as efficiently and with as much passion for your job and your clients,  and just as quickly this can be taken away - the message may be delivered by one person, they are often in the position of being a messenger without having been the decision maker - a time not enjoyable for anyone.

 So what can we do to protect ourselves? I surely do not have the answer to that question... maybe you have a suggestion or two?