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CONNECTING WITH YOUNGER AUDIENCES
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THOUGHT LEADER TRAITS
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May 2009 • Volume 2 • Number 5
In It Together
EDITORIAL STAFF
EDITOR IN CHIEF David R. Basler, dbasler@mpiweb.org
MANAGING EDITOR Blair Potter, bpotter@mpiweb.org
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Pinchera, mpinchera@mpiweb.org
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jason Hensel, jhensel@mpiweb.org
ASSISTANT EDITOR Jessie States, jstates@mpiweb.org
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jeff Daigle, jdaigle@mpiweb.org
DESIGN AND PREPRESS Sherry Gritch, SG2Designs, sherry@sgproductions.net
Learn from Gen Y
DOING BUSINESS FASTER, MORE EFFICIENTLY AND FROM ANYWHERE
AT ANY TIME. That’s today’s business model that has been born out of a gen-
eration of young minds who have become change agents in our busy world.
There are those who think this business model is the end of the meeting
and event industry as we know it; I am not one of those people. I see it as an
opportunity to learn a new way of seeing the world at work and how the next
generation of leaders envisions that world connecting.
There really hasn’t ever been a solid definition of the term Gen Y that clearly
defines these newcomers who are shaking up the way the world does business.
The best (and probably most common) explanations I have heard are that Y
comes after X (so that sequentially makes sense) and that the group has always
questioned everything. What generation hasn’t? Gen Yers are simply asking different, more time-relevant questions.
For instance, business newcomers in the 1980s asked why can’t we shift our
businesses globally? For today’s Gen Yers, the question is not just about thinking globally but about connecting with those people around the globe.
Why can’t I send an e-mail to China while on a conference call with
my office in New York all from the comforts of my backyard hammock in Denver?
As you will learn from our cover story (Page 76), members of Gen
Y are kicking the slacker, trend-bucker stereotypes they have
been labeled with and are showing the world new solutions
for the same old problems. They are stepping up and
taking a lead role as change agents in life and in business, and I think we can learn a lot from them. Our
industry specifically has a very strong student
population that is taking a proactive
approach to improving the status and success of the industry
around the globe. The key for
us in the generations before
them is to put out the welcome mat and embrace the
change, the new ideas and
thought processes and teach
each other how to continually
be evolving and growing as an
industry.
COVER DESIGN Jason Judy, jjudy@mpiweb.org
MPI ADVERTISING STAFF
Dan Broze, dbroze@mpiweb.org, Phone: (702) 834-6847
(AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID, NV, OR, WA)
Yvonne Christensen, ychristensen@mpiweb.org, Phone: (952) 938-5281
(CT, DC, DE, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, VA, VT, WI, WV)
Antonio Ducceschi, Director of Sales/Partnership Development-EMEA,
aducceschi@mpiweb.org, Phone: + 352 26 87 66 63
(Europe, Middle East and Africa)
Katri Laurimaa, klaurimaa@mpiweb.org, Phone: (817) 251.9891
(AL, AR, CO, IA, IL, KS, KY, LA, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NM, OK,
SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WY)
Mary Lynn Novelli, mnovelli@mpiweb.org, Phone: (214) 390-8858
(FL, GA, Canada, Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, South America)
Carolyn Nyquist, Manager of Client Services,
cnyquist@mpiweb.org, Phone: (972) 702-3002
Kathryn Welzenbach, Publications Coordinator, kwelzenbach@mpiweb.org
MPI EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
Bruce M. MacMillan, C.A., President and CEO
Jeff Busch, Vice President of Strategic Communications
Katie Callahan-Giobbi, Executive Vice President, MPI Foundation;
MPI Chief Business Architect
Meg Fasy, Vice President of Sales and Marketplace Performance
Trey Feiler, Chief Operating Officer
Vicki Hawarden, Vice President of Knowledge and Events
Diane Hawkins, SPHR, Director of People and Performance
Greg Lohrentz, Chief Financial Officer
Sandra Riggins, Director of Governance and Chief of Staff
Didier Scaillet, Vice President of Global Development
Junior Tauvaa, Vice President of Member Care and Chapter Business Management
INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Chairman of the Board
Larry Luteran, Hilton Hotels Corp.
Chairwoman-elect
Ann Godi, CMP, Benchmarc360 Inc.
Vice Chairman of Administration
Eric Rozenberg, CMP, CMM, Ince & Tive
Vice Chairman of Finance
Sebastien Tondeur, MCI Group Holding SA
Vice Chairwoman of Member Services
Alexandra Wagner, SunTrust Banks Inc.
Immediate Past Chairwoman
Angie Pfeifer, CMM, Investors Group Financial Services Inc.
BOARD MEMBERS
Marge Anderson, Energy Center of Wisconsin
Matt Brody, JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort and Spa
Luca Favetta, SAP SA
Caroline Hill, Eventful Solutions
Kevin Hinton, hinton+grusich
Kevin Kirby, Hard Rock International
Karen Massicotte, CMP, CMM, BA, PRIME Strategies Inc.
Carole McKellar, MA, CMM, MCIPD, HelmsBriscoe
Patty Reger, CMM, Johnson & Johnson Sales and Logistics Company, LLC
David Scypinski, ConferenceDirect
Ole Sorang, The Rezidor Hotel Group
Carl Winston, San Diego State University
Paul Cunningham (Europe Middle East and Africa Advisory Council
Representative), IIMC International Information Management Corporation
Rita Plaskett, CMP, CMM (MPI Foundation Board Representative), agendum
Katherine Overkamp, CMP (ICLC Board Representative), US Airways
Jonathan T. Howe, Esq. (Legal Counsel), Howe & Hutton, Ltd.
POSTMASTER: One+ (Print ISSN: 1943-1864, Digital Edition ISSN: 1947-6930)
is published monthly by Meeting Professionals International (MPI), a professional
association of meeting + event planners and suppliers. Send address changes
to One+, Meeting Professionals International, 3030 LBJ Freeway, Suite 1700,
Dallas, TX, 75234-2759
SUBSCRIPTIONS: Members receive One+ as a membership benefit paid for
by membership dues. Nonmembers may subscribe to the publication for $99
annually. “One+” and the One+ logo are trademarks of MPI. © 2009, Meeting
Professionals International, Printed by RR Donnelley
CONTACT ONE+: Contact us online at www.mpioneplus.org or e-mail us at
editor@mpiweb.org. View our advertising, editorial and reprint policies online
at www.mpioneplus.org.
Keep reading and enjoy!
MPI VISION: Build a rich global meeting industry community
GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS:
Dallas, TX
David R. Basler is editor in chief of One+.
He can be reached at dbasler@mpiweb.org.
REGIONAL OFFICES:
Doha, Qatar
Ontario, Canada
Luxembourg
Singapore
The body of One+ is printed on 30 percent post-consumer-waste
recycled content and is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified.
Please recycle this magazine or pass it along to a co-worker when
you’re finished reading.
One+ is a proud member of
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SSUE
ISSUE
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Intellectual Guidance +72
Identifying the traits of an effective
thought leader and ideas ripe for
crystallization.
Youth Connect +76
Understanding the desires and
needs of younger audiences, clients
and co-workers is essential to
tapping their value.
Tomorrow’s Networking
Today +80
The desire to extend professional
networks is growing as fast as
unemployment figures—and all
generations in the workforce are
striving for unique, meaningful online
and face-to-face encounters.
Decisions, Decisions +84
+76
Jonah Lehrer wants to help you
make better decisions.
Meetings Change the World +88
The 2009 World Education
Congress in Salt Lake will equip
meeting professionals with the
knowledge and support needed
to excel in the current global
marketplace…and beyond.
+80
+72
No Hiccups +58
+64
Even during the economic
downturn, the new Phoenix
Convention Center is outperforming
its original attendance projections.
Joining Forces +64
It was a tall order, but the Virginia
Beach CVB was up to the task of
playing host to three concurrent
events at the Virginia Beach
Convention Center.
+84
A Fortuitous Thaw +69
Atlanta turned out to be
just the medicine needed
for a convention’s ailing
attendance.
+69
+58
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5
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E
ISSUE
05
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CONVERSATION
In It Together +2
Editor’s note
World Education Congress +12
Let’s change the world in
Salt Lake
The Energy of Many +14
Global update from the
CEO of MPI
Impressions +18
Letters to One+
Overheard +20
Rumblings from the industry
Irrelevant +46
Thirsty Much?
IGNITION
Abu Dhabi Leads the
Charge +48
Rohit Talwar
Global View
Bathroom Phantoms
of Delight +50
Tony Carey
Across the Bow
Planners are From Mars,
Delegates are From Venus +52
Jon Bradshaw
Open-Source Everything
The Dark Side of E-mail! +54
Tim Sanders
Transform the World
INNOVATION
Agenda +23
Where to go, in person and online
+44
Art of Travel +38
The latest in transportable
technology
RECOGNITION
Top Spots +24
+26
+24
New venues + re-openings
Focus On +26
Sean Hoy’s audience is crying
Spotlight +28
Industry leaders announce job
advancements
Your Community +40
The Gulf Meetings and Events
Conference, Jeff Busch, students
in action, MPI Career Connections
Meet Where? +100
Wow us with your knowledge
CO-CREATION
Hot Buzz +32
Event Planner Spain, incentives
mean business, GIBTM, 24-hour
stays, Thoughts+Leaders, Disney
greens meetings, Drum Café,
Top 10 meeting trends,
Hotelicopter Co., Plus/Minus
Making a Difference +42
AT&T Park and the Venetian/
Palazzo match individual
donations to the MPI Foundation
Connections +44
Supplier + Nonprofit
mpiweb.org
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www.mpioneplus.org
online
Free to Decide
In an exclusive video, author Jonah Lehrer
(How We Decide) explains how to avoid metacognition—thinking about thinking—pitfalls.
CSR Trends
+
Keep your chapter at the
forefront with help from MPI
Atlantic Canada Chapter
President Alana Hirtle, CMP.
Sense of Community
Join a conversation about the
meeting and event industry with
the editors of One+ on their blog,
PlusPoint—consistently updated,
always relevant, sporadically funny.
Looking to maximize the benefits of your MPI involvement? Then
be sure to keep up with your industry community on our Facebook
page! Get all the latest updates on One+ straight from the editor
in chief at Twitter.com/OnePlusEditor.
Complete issues of One+ are available
in digital flipbook and PDF formats!
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Contributors
A native Texan, writer KIMBERLY KING
now resides in New York City. Her interviews, essays, book reviews and articles have
been published or are forthcoming in Time
Out New York, Artcyclopedia and Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, where
she was former editor in chief. She used to
be a copywriter for an online obituary Web
site, an amanuensis for a writer and an office
manager at a private school for celebrities’
children. She is a development director for a
prestigious literary magazine and is writing a
short story collection about liars.
JASON RYAN DORSEY is “The Gen Y
Guy.” His keynote programs show audiences how to bridge the four generations
for maximum workplace performance.
Dorsey has been featured as a Gen Y
expert on 60 Minutes, 20/20, The
Today Show and The View as well as in
FORTUNE magazine. A bestselling author
of four books, his newest is titled My Reality Check Bounced! To watch Dorsey in
action and request a customized speaking
proposal, visit www.jasondorsey.com.
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ART KLEINER is editor-in-chief of
strategy+business (a management quarterly published by Booz & Co.) and former editorial director of Peter Senge’s
Fifth Discipline Fieldbook series. He is a
speaker on management and thought
leadership, a longstanding consultant to
business writers and thinkers and the
author of two business classics: The
Age of Heretics: A History of Radical
Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate
Management and Who Really Matters:
The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege and Success. His Web site is www.
artkleiner.com.
San Francisco-based freelance writer VANESSA
RICHARDSON has written about small-business
management, personal finance and urban planning
for Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review,
MSNBC.com, Money and Red Herring. To keep
up with 21st-century networking, she has profiles
on Facebook and LinkedIn, and just started using
Twitter. However, she does as many face-to-face
meetings as she can, especially when cappuccinos
or margaritas are involved.
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World Education Congress
Let’s Change the
World in Salt Lake
One of the best pieces of advice anyone ever gave me
was to always know the difference between what was
urgent and what was important. It’s so easy to have
every moment sucked up by what’s urgent, since urgent
matters tend to jump up and down and scream in our
faces, while the more quiet-spoken important issues of
our lives get perpetually put on tomorrow’s “to do” list.
I believe attendance at MPI’s World Education
Congress (WEC) is important, to your success and to
the recovery of our industry. We’ve all taken quite a
beating—in the media, from our politicians and from
the understandable reactions of corporate executives
in cancelling meetings. Your job may be in danger, or
you may be working 80 hours a week to make up for
the colleagues who were laid off. Or you may just be
too nervous to take time off. Whatever
the urgent issues compelling you to
stay at your desk, consider the
importance of WEC.
However good your ability
to show ROI on your events,
you are likely to be expected
to become even more sophisticated in your data collection
and interpretation. However
compelling your content or
experiential your learning program, your
attendees will
be expecting
you to raise
the bar next
time. No
matter how
strategically
you manage
your spend,
your boss
is likely to want even more cost reductions or strategic
approaches from you.
It’s all a lot to figure out on your own. But using
your precious time and money to connect with experts
who have tried something new, with partners who have
solutions to share and with colleagues who have walked
a mile in your shoes can change your world. And that’s
what meetings are all about.
We also need to keep telling our stories, so corporate
America will once again feel safe to hold the meetings
that drive their business results. We’ve made a lot of
progress, but it didn’t happen by accident. People have
written letters, called their newspapers and shared the
ROI of their meetings with their bosses. We need to
keep the momentum going, and that doesn’t happen
without your help.
For any of you out there who would attend, but
the registration fee is the only barrier, call me and tell
me what you can pay. I don’t want anyone to miss this
meeting that will change our world just because of a
registration fee. My direct line is (972) 702-3039. And
for those of you with stories to tell about how a meeting you were involved with changed the world, send me
an e-mail with your story, or attach a video of you telling your story, to vhawarden@mpiweb.org. We’ll weave
these powerful testaments into the WEC experience, so
you’ll be reminded, in a personal way, that what we do
matters. Meetings really do change the world.
VICKI HAWARDEN is MPI’s vice president of knowledge management
and events. She can be reached at vhawarden@mpiweb.org
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The Energy of Many
Connections & Conversations
I like to say that MPI, and indeed all the members of
our global community, are in the business of connecting
people, ideas and marketplace opportunities—human
connections. What is increasingly important to each of
these types of connections are the inherent conversations
that crystallize as a result of our efforts.
Research shows that meetings and events are the biggest driver of business results. However, societal shifts,
technology developments and demographic changes are
positioning meeting professionals into a different type of
role as conversation and connection leaders.
This really struck me at DigitalNow 2009 in April
at Walt Disney World. The annual conference brings
together association executives and leading-edge business thought-leaders to consider the future in a time
of disruptive change. This year’s conference focused
extensively on the way people are increasingly connecting, sharing, collaborating and activating without
the benefit of a formal organization.
Should association CEOs whose organizations
have tried to manage these conversations be worried?
Should meeting professionals who have looked at the
face-to-face event as the source for all conversations be worried? The lineup
of blue-chip speakers such as
Clay Shirky (author of Here
Comes Everybody), Peter
Hirshberg (chairman of
Technorati) and Allen Blue
(co-founder of LinkedIn)
say no way. The key is for
associations and meeting professionals to stop
trying to control the conversations and instead
find ways to stimulate
their creation, as well
as coming out from
behind the organization
and becoming part of
the conversations. And
after seeing the way the DigitalNow speakers, Fusion
Productions and the Disney Institute meeting professionals collaborated to stimulate conversations that inspired
sharing and innovation using some of these tools, this is
an enormous opportunity for meeting professionals to
grow their value proposition.
Using Linkedin, attendees were offered pre-conference thought-starters to help guide the speakers’ focus
and equip attendees with current case study examples
and business strategy developments. Attendees shared
their perspectives well in advance so that live conversation was rich and relevant. Throughout the conference,
including during the sessions, Twitter was used by
attendees and speakers to share thoughts, takeaways
and video content to keep the conversation alive and
also to share the energy with those not “in the room.”
At one point during the event, DigitalNow was the
third-most “tweeted” conversation on the planet—
perhaps not too surprising since the opening session
webcast and an “offsite user guide” extended the experience beyond the venue.
After the event, attendees were able to go back and
mine both LinkedIn and Twitter threads for important
takeaways as well as the DigitalNow Web site that
linked to these conversation threads and conference
content. My personal takeaways were well beyond my
expectations. It’s now time to put them into practice.
And we will.
As part of our Future of Meetings initiative, you told
us that extending the meeting experience before and
after the face-to-face experience was essential but difficult to effectively implement because attendees would
not make the effort. Now this is no longer essential but
imperative to getting greater meeting results. The tools
are now readily available, and they are free. If we think
about ourselves as building human connections through
conversations (that most human of activities), we will
succeed, and our attendees will love us for it.
BRUCE MACMILLAN, CA, is president and CEO of MPI.
He can be reached at bmacmillan@mpiweb.org. Follow
him at www.twitter.com/BMACMPI.
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Impressions
Green Spend
[Re: “Reducing Spend, Growing Green,” April 2009] The
“Green Movement” is about strategic re-thinking and decisions based on responsible, long-term use of resources—both
financial and environmental. Since this is also a good business practice, businesses and organizations looking at longterm viability will simply have to adopt greener practices if
not for environmental and social reasons, then for financial
reasons. The bottom line is that green practices save money
overall. Isn’t that what we are all looking to do during economic hard times?
—Michelle Scott, CMP
Gatherings by Design, LLC
Northeastern New York Chapter
Thank You, MPI
EDITOR’S NOTE: We appreciate
the feedback on MPI and your
magazine, One+. Your ideas
and thoughts are important to
us. Let us know what you think.
E-mail the editorial team at
editor@mpiweb.org.
You Tell Us
How do you maximize time on
the trade show floor? Send us
an e-mail at editor@mpiweb.org.
[Re: “Earthquake in Italy,” PlusPoint blog] On behalf of the Italia
Chapter I wish to thank all of you
who showed solidarity after the
terrible disaster that occurred in
our country. We appreciate your
concern and realize that we are
really part of a community.
The Italian government, even
if thankful for the many offers for
aid and financial support received
from many countries, has decided
not to accept them as it says we
have enough resources to recover
from the emergency ourselves.
I wonder how the MPI Italia
Chapter can contribute to this
recovery. Rather than considering additional fundraising (which
anyone can do through existing initiatives), we should focus
on how to attract and support
investments for the reconstruction. Maybe planning a meeting
in the affected area could be of
help. Your ideas on this subject
are welcome!
—Sergio Moscati
Concerto Srl
Italia Chapter
Hotel California
[Re: “You Are the Solution,” April
2009] I am a firm believer that
remarkable things happen when
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diversity and solidarity are both
part of the equation. When I
entered the industry 20-plus years
ago, a colleague said to me, “You
know Susan, the meetings industry is like that Eagles song…’you
can check out anytime you like but
you can never leave.’”
—Susan S. Radojevic
The Peregrine Agency Ltd.
Toronto Chapter
Smoking Kills
[Re: “Blowing Smoke,” April
2009, Online Exclusive] I don’t
mean to offend, but there’s an
unfortunate irony in attaching
the veneer of social grace to
a highly addictive product that
leads to an agonizing, premature
death and billions of dollars in
health care costs. In October, I
watched my mother die of lung
cancer, the result of a 40-year
addiction…OK, to cigarettes,
not cigars, but the difference
is minimal in the context of this
discussion.
I understand that if this were
a conversation about the cuttingedge meeting planning practices
that had been developed and
refined by a member who happened to work for a cigar manufacturer, it would be fair game,
for our association and for its
magazine. MPI’s fundamental
role is to help members improve
their practices and maximize
benefits to their organizations,
whatever their organizations
produce, and it would be a very
slippery slope if we ever set out
to change that. But since when,
and with what rationale, does
a meeting industry magazine
or blog become a promotional
sheet for different cigar brands?
—Mitchell Beer, CMM
The Conference Publishers
Ottawa Chapter
Hologram Tech
[Re: “Stay Hip to the Digital
Tip,” April 2009] Great story
and thanks for the many tech
leads. Can you give me anything on holograms—both the
ICC in Malaysia and Australia
used them to bring speakers to
the podium in late 2008? The
speakers apparently interacted
and were life size. But it’s hard
to find out what technology was
used and if it’s very expensive.
Is it more than a return ticket
flying in a speaker from another
continent?
—Peta Helen Thomas
Total Impact Communications
At Large - Southern Africa
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Overheard
Competitive Edge
“We have decided that the only way to address comprehensively the detriment to passengers and airlines from the
complete absence of competition between BAA’s southeast
airports and between Edinburgh and Glasgow is to require
BAA to sell both Gatwick and Stansted as well as either
Edinburgh or Glasgow. Given the nature and scale of the
competition problems we have found, we do not consider
that alternative measures will suffice.”
Book It, Dano
—Christopher Clarke, chairman of the BAA Airports Inquiry for the U.K. Competition Commission
Ladies First
Cell Phone Crisis
Only in London
“Marriott is committed to
training, advancing and
empowering women and
minorities to attain senior
leadership positions. Championing diversity and inclusion
provides our company its
strength and competitive
edge.”
—David Rodriguez, executive
vice president of global human
resources for Marriott International, after the company
was named one of the top 10
U.S. companies for women
“Cell phone connectivity has
become so critical to business competitiveness that lost
calls due to poor reception
can mean much more than
frustrating conversations. It
can mean millions of dollars
lost in business deals or lack
of repeat business.”
—Scott Groff, president of
Repeated Signal Solutions, on
a survey showing that 54 percent of travelers who can’t get
strong cell phone reception at
a hotel may not return
“‘Only in London’ is a confident
and recognizable phrase that
rings true with people who
both visit and live in the city.
What’s often familiar to us is
very special to visitors. It’s a
great way of reminding the
world and ourselves of the
sheer range and depth of
attractions, events and history
that make our city unique.”
—Sally Chatterjee, interim
chief executive of Visit London,
on the city’s new marketing
campaign
“The humble paperback is the
ultimate travel accessory.
It’s a low-cost, no-tech form
of entertainment that you
can take anywhere—from the
beach to the bar. You don’t
need to worry about books
getting lost, stolen or damaged, or that your battery will
die mid-flight.”
—Rob Innes, head of marketing for
SkyScanner.com, on a company
survey that showed books remain
the No. 1 travel item (24 percent),
followed by MP3 players (22 percent), perfume or deodorant (14
percent) and laptops or PDAs (10
percent)
Best of the Blogs
Meetings in China
Posted by Brian McDermott
MPI Minnesota Chapter
Luxury Travel?
Posted by Michael Owen
MPI Tennessee Chapter
Snakes NOT on a Plane
Posted by Jessie States
One+ Assistant Editor
Change outside our control happens in the
world every day. It hits without reason or
explanation. Our initial reaction to this crazy
flux is instinctive and often displays as a negative or positive. But in the end, weathering
change, thriving through change, doesn’t
depend on your first response. What matters
most is how fast you can get back on track.
Meetings are important, but business trips
are NOT a luxury, regardless of whether the
hotel sits on a beach, a golf course or the end
of an airport runway. I don’t know about you,
but I’ve attended meetings in Miami Beach
and never seen the ocean and meetings in
Las Vegas and never left the hotel. Spa? Who
has time for a spa? I can barely find time to
hit the treadmill. For our company, business
trips are a necessity if we hope to remain in
business.
Four baby pythons escaped their container
in the cargo hold of a Qantas flight, and staff
was unable to find them. At first, authorities
thought they were eaten by other snakes in
the container, but all logged in at their preflight weight. The plane was fumigated,
which makes me really sad. Poor snakies.
▲
Find out what the editors of One+ think about the industry’s
hot trends and late-breaking news on the One+ blog,
PlusPoint. Share your thoughts at www.mpioneplus.org.
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Agenda
JUNE 24-25 RSVP
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
RSVP Melbourne invites corporate planners to meet and do business with
any number of industry suppliers including event producers, venues, caterers
and florists as well as entertainment, audiovisual and staging companies. In
2008, the event welcomed more than 3,780 event planners. Visit http://
melbourne.rsvpevent.com.au.
JUNE 24-25 Excite!
LONDON
Formerly the Exhibiting Show, Excite! connects to the diverse and demanding needs of modern meeting professionals. Brand experience case studies,
exhibit workshops, industry debates and live marketing insight highlight educational content at the conference, while a diverse trade show attracts more
than 3,000 buyers. Visit www.exciteshow.com.
JULY 11-14 World Education Congress
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
Join MPI in Salt Lake City as the industry rallies to focus on meetings as the
birthplaces of ideas, the drivers of business results, the sparks of innovation
and the connections between people. Attendees will enjoy customizable education tracts, meaningful networking events and the MeetingPlace 2009 trade
show. See page 88 or visit www.mpiweb.org.
JULY 28-30 DMAI Annual Convention
ATLANTA
Destination Marketing Association International presents its 95th annual conference for destination management and marketing professionals with a focus
on education, networking and business solutions. Courses will be offered
toward the Certified Destination Management Executive certificate. Visit www.
destinationmarketing.org.
Connected
HOW BAZAAR
BOOK ‘EM
CREATIVE WRITING
Avoid cancellation penalties. Offer
for resale already contracted—but
no longer needed—meeting space at
EventSpaceBazaar.com. Sellers can
mitigate attrition costs while buyers
find rooms at great prices. Hotels and
event venues benefit from increased
exposure to value dates as well as
room blocks filled with guests. New
offerings and opportunities are posted
regularly.
Online talent directory GigSalad.com
lets bands book themselves, saving
commission fees on both sides of the
supply chain. Spanning the spectrum
of entertainment from fire breathers
to folk singers to tribute bands, the
site gives event planners access to a
growing roster of talent, all searchable
by name, genre and location throughout the U.S. and Canada.
YourFonts.com is a free online font
generator that allows users to create their own fonts within a couple
of minutes. Upload a template, and
Your Fonts uses an advanced rasterto-vector conversion algorithm for
unbeatable personal fonts. More
than 135,000 fonts have been generated since August 2008, and the
site plans to ask for a small fee once
it hits 250,000, so act quickly!
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Top Spots
N E W VEN U ES + RE-O P ENING S
1.
1. The Peabody Orlando
When The Peabody Orlando’s expansion construction is completed in
November 2010, it will be among
the largest non-gaming hotels
in the U.S. The Florida hotel’s
expansion will feature a total of
1,641 ultra guest rooms; 210,000
square feet of flexible event space;
a parking garage for 2,100 cars;
the 22,000-square-foot Peabody
Spa & Athletic Club; a Napa Valley
Wine-themed restaurant overlooking
a new, three-acre, exotic grotto pool;
food-on-the-go outlets throughout;
and covered walkway access to
all sections of the Orange County
Convention Center.
2. Omni Fort Worth Hotel
Wrapped in glass and sculpted from
native stone and rich hardwoods,
the 614-room Omni Fort Worth
Hotel opened in January. Inside and
out, the hotel is decorated in Western Chic, with elegant public spaces,
amenities and restaurants. Big even
by legendary Lone Star standards, the hotel features 68,000
square feet of meeting and event
space. Equally appealing is the
new hotel’s proximity to other city
attractions, as it sits directly across
from the Fort Worth Convention
Center and within walking distance
of the city’s thriving cultural centers,
restaurants and nightlife.
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3. Fairmont Le Montreux
Palace
The Fairmont Le Montreux Palace,
originally built in 1906, completed
a renovation in April by interior designer Fiona Thompson. The hotel,
which overlooks the French Alps
and is located on the shores of Lake
Geneva, introduced a contemporary
new redesign of its guest rooms,
Brasserie and public spaces,
including the addition of the Freddie
Mercury Suite, celebrating the
legendary singer-songwriter who
was a Montreux resident and
frequent guest of the hotel. The
235-room resort offers 12 conference and meeting rooms and the
21,000-square-foot Willow Stream
Spa in addition to the resort’s renovated Brasserie, a new lobby lounge
and bar, and the famous Harry’s
New York bar.
1. 2.
2.
3.
4. Hard Rock Cafe Prague
The Hard Rock Cafe Prague
opened last month in the historic
V.J. Rott Building, a UNESCO World
Heritage site in the city’s Old Town
Square. The cafe features three
floors, a 388-seat restaurant, two
bars and a Rock Shop featuring
Hard Rock’s limited-edition merchandise. Memorabilia from Hard
Rock’s iconic collection will adorn
the walls of Hard Rock Cafe Prague,
including a custom-made, crystal
guitar that will hang suspended
from the ceiling. The basement
of Hard Rock Cafe Prague is also
a luxury lounge area incorporating
both gothic style and contemporary
design.
6
2
1
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4.
4.
5.
5. Shangri-La Boracay
Resort and Spa
5.
4.
6.
The Shangri-La Boracay Resort and
Spa—the first five-star resort on
Boracay Island in the Philippines—opened in March. The 219room resort features a wide range
of dining facilities including Rima, an
Italian restaurant on a hilltop offering
views of the ocean and forest, and
the seafood restaurant Sirena, offering fresh favorites from a cliff top
overlooking the sea. Recreational
facilities include a health club, one
of the country’s largest free-form
swimming pools, a marine center, a
water sports pavilion, two outdoor
tennis courts and an entertainment
zone for adults and children alike.
The resort also provides meeting
and banqueting facilities including an
outdoor, oceanfront pavilion.
6. Four Seasons Hotel
Vancouver
3
4
5
The Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver
is undergoing a CAD$25 million
renovation of all guest rooms and
meeting spaces to be completed
this spring. It’s recent renovation
of the lobby and opening of the
new YEW Restaurant is complete. The restaurant features an
open kitchen and a bar set against
the backdrop of a wall of live foliage.
Other focal points include Ottoman
lounge chairs near a fireplace, an
interactive kitchen counter/bar and
various dining options including a
communal table and intimate dining
booths. The restaurant also houses
an exclusive glass-enclosed private
dining room.
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4/13/09 3:31:59 PM
Focus On...
Audience members didn’t
think Sean Hoy’s comedy
skits were very funny. In
fact, most of them were
crying.
Sean Hoy
Saguaro Blossom at the Four Seasons
Resort Scottsdale (Ariz.) at Troon North
5 Things You Don’t Know
About Being a Bartender
1. You’re the quarterback. I am in a position to see
everything that is happening around me. My job is to
make sure that everyone on the floor is doing well.
2. Preparation is key. Not many people understand all
the work that goes on behind the scenes before a shift
starts. It’s like a mini-event every day, and the better
prepared you are, the better the results.
3. It takes showmanship. People expect to be entertained at the bar, especially at a hotel bar. Some bartenders like to do tricks like juggling. I use my talents
as a comedian. I’m the Johnny Carson of bartenders.
4. Be smart, even if you’re not. People think bartenders are knowledgeable about everything. We do hear
and learn a lot every day—maybe just enough to be
dangerous.
5. Respect the dynamics. The range and diversity of
our clientele is remarkable. From smoothies for the
kids to prickly pear margaritas, you have to be ready
for just about anything.
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Turns out people who just
lost their pets aren’t in the mood
for cat and dog jokes. Hoy had
booked a Humane Society gig
for his corporate entertainment
firm, and the organizers had
urged him to gear the presentation toward pets.
“We even wore dog and cat
noses to play different parts,” he
laughs. “We were really going
places. Watch out Saturday Night
Live! One lady finally stood up to
tell us that it was a pet bereavement seminar and that most of the
audience members had recently
put their pets to sleep.”
The troupe was promptly
shown the door. But Hoy learned
his lesson. “It was then I realized
the importance of knowing your
audience and getting background
on the intent of an event.”
Fortunately, not all of Hoy’s
performances have gone as
poorly. He has appeared on stage
with Andrew Dice Clay, Tommy
Davidson and Bill Maher (to
name a few) and has performed
for high-stakes clients including
State Farm, Qwest and Johnson
& Higgins. But it wasn’t until
resort owner Gordon Zuckerman
approached him in 1999 about a
bartending position that he found
his true calling.
Hoy joined The Resort Suites
in Scottsdale for three years of
making and shaking, before leaving in 2003 to pursue his other
passion (cartooning).
But he would not stay away
for long. By 2005, Hoy was scouring the classifieds for another bartending spot when he ran across a
posting for the Saguaro Blossom
at the Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North. It was a
perfect match, though Hoy will be
the first to admit that “bartender”
doesn’t really describe his role.
From his renowned margarita
demonstrations—including some
fictional facts about a “troon”
bird—to a trivia hour and a (currently unsanctioned) Extreme
Kids Fear Factor, Hoy runs a full
agenda of activities. He also meets
with sales clients, helps the marketing team and works with artists
from the local high school.
It seems Hoy has found his
niche, a place where he can balance his skills as an entertainer
and his ongoing career as a cartoonist. But it was the lesson he
learned early in his career that has
helped him succeed today: always,
always know your audience,
onstage and behind the bar.
—JESSIE STATES
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Spotlight
Blue Harbor Resort
& Conference Center has promoted
Terri Bain, CMP, to
sales and marketing
director. She will be
responsible for achieving occupancy and
revenue objectives,
directing the daily efforts of the field sales
managers and creating sales and marketing programs. Prior
to her promotion, she
was the organization’s
Illinois sales manager.
Bob Dallmeyer has been named
North American sales representative for the Brussels International
Tourism and Congress and the
Brussels Convention Bureau. In his
new position, Dallmeyer will work
with the VisitBelgium New York
office and the Brussels Convention
Bureau team.
Awilda Rivera has accepted the position
of general manager for the Coste d’Este
Beach Resort of Vero Beach, Fla. A hospitality veteran with extensive operational
and human resources experience, Rivera
previously served as general manager for
Villas Caletón, Cap Cana of Punta Cana in
the Dominican Republic. She held the same
position for the Casa Ybel Resort on Sanibel
Island off the southwest coast of Florida.
Susan Perry was recently hired
as northeast sales director
for John Ascuaga’s Nugget in
Sparks, Nev. Perry is past executive vice president of business
development for the International
Sleep Products Association and is
the current president and CEO of
The Perry Group, based in Alexandria, Va. Perry will be responsible for the Nugget’s national
association and corporate sales
endeavors in Maryland, Virginia
and Washington, D.C.
Event marketing and advertising
firm Cheil USA Inc. has appointed
Arun Bordoloi as executive strategy director, where he will work
with clients to define market strategies in the current business environment. Bordoloi has held senior
positions at Draftfcb and Avenue
A | Razorfish. Prior to joining Cheil,
Bordoloi was senior vice president
of services at LinkShare, a performance marketing services and
technology company.
Visit the careers blog at www.mpiweb.org by clicking
“resources” and then “career connections” to tell the
meeting community about your recent job change.
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HOT BUZZ
+
En Español
Despite the worsening global economy, Event
PlannerSpain.com has introduced several new
products, including video content and translations in three additional languages, according
to content manager Thomas MacFarlane.
Formerly focused just in Andalucía, the site
now offers event planners access to more
than 550 venues, tech suppliers and destination marketing organizations from across
Spain. And with an average of 80,000 unique
visitors and 180,000 page views a month, it
provides the country’s most diverse industryspecific content.
“For us, content quality is of utmost importance,” MacFarlane iterated. “We ensure that
our news and events section and monthly
newsletters cater to all tastes, with a mix of
general news, articles by international experts
and press releases from Spanish MICE service
providers.”
With its new service, EventPlannerSpain.
com allows both members and non-members
to post property, service and event videos,
providing a behind-the-scenes look at the quality and magnitude of each supplier’s portfolio.
Likewise, as part of the site’s strategy to tap
new markets and increase traffic, the portal is
now available in French, German and Russian
as well as Spanish and English.
PILAR MILLÁN
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05.09
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4/23/09 1:12:38 PM
Now You Know…
Companies that use recognition and
incentive programs are often rewarded
with increased revenue and higher
profits while competitors close their
doors, according to a new white paper
by the Incentive Marketing Association’s Recognition Council. The Time
for Employee Recognition and Rewards
Programs Is Now examines current
research and demonstrates why
employers should keep
programs that recognize
workers despite temptations to
eliminate them as a way to reduce
strained budgets.
The white paper determines that
a) companies with recognition and
reward programs outperform their
competition; b) recognition and
reward programs are compatible with
ROI; and c) cu
customer
satisfaction, em
employee
loyalty and profitability are all
tied to recognition. The paper concludes that today’s economic realities
are churning the business environment
and talent pool in ways heretofore unforeseen and that recognized employees become engaged employees who
are measurably more productive.
Parents Not Invited
Just what the doctor ordered—for a 10 year old.
The Steigenberger Hotel
Gstaad-Saanen (Switzerland) offers a wellness area
for children, which includes
a tree sauna, an experience
grotto and a climbing wall
with mountain crystals. The
11,840-square-foot Spa
World Luxury extends over
three floors, with one floor
reserved for children.
Here, little ones are
given a gentle introduction
to the concept of wellness:
the tree sauna is set at a
pleasant 104 degrees Fahrenheit, offering the perfect
24 Little Hours
Gulf Dreams
New research shows that the Gulf region enjoys more growth potential
than any global market for meetings and incentives. The Middle East
Meetings Industry Research Report was issued to a capacity crowd at
the Gulf Incentive, Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition March 29-31 in
Abu Dhabi.
The event welcomed a record number of exhibitors, hosted buyers and
trade visitors. Pre-audited
figures show a total visitor
attendance of 1,904,
including 236 hosted
buyers (up 15 percent
from 2008). The event
immediately followed MPI’s
Gulf Meetings and Events
Conference (see Page 40).
For information on GIBTM
2010, visit www.gibtm.
travel.
+
p032-037 Hot Buzz 0509 14-07-42.indd 33
initiation into the world of
saunas. To cool off, children can enjoy the grotto,
which has both an experience shower and a waterfall with two optional settings of warm tropical rain
or thunder and lightning.
A special scent station
allows children to test
their senses before relaxing
in hammocks, hanging
chairs and sofas. Meanwhile, Wii consoles set up
in the mountain hut provide
sporting action.
Address Hotels & Resorts has
introduced a 24-hour stay across
all its hotels. The service, which
is a marked departure from
the noon checkout of most
hotels, is currently available
at the brand’s two properties in
Dubai. Guests opting for suite or club
accommodations can enjoy the privilege
of a 24-hour stay without incurring late
checkout charges—even if they check in
after midnight.
mpiweb.org
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4/23/09 4:18:11 PM
HOT BUZZ
Butch Spyridon
President
Nashville CVB
Thoughts+Leaders
How does your CVB
attract talented
employees?
Melvin Tennant
The most important element in
our ability to attract talented
employees is our reputation within the community and the industry. The Nashville CVB benefits
from a reputation for providing a
challenging, yet creative office
environment that provides incentive for employees to develop new ways of doing business.
Our strong drive for success is well known throughout the
industry, which also helps us attract top talent.
Another critical part of our human resource recruiting
and retention efforts is that we offer our employees the
opportunity for advancement and to broaden their skill sets.
Our employees really are the keys to our success, so we try
to make sure they feel fulfilled in their careers. Finally, we
engage the entire staff in our long-range planning so that
everyone has ownership.
President and CEO
Meet Minneapolis
One of the prime goals of Meet Minneapolis
is to create and maintain strong partnerships with local organizations. With these
bonds, our name is recognized around the
greater Minneapolis area, and through
grassroots communication, we attract
many strong candidates to come work for
us. Our name is visible through campaigns such as Meet in Minneapolis
and through the daily work we do
with our partners in attracting
meetings to our destination. Our
daily civic engagement locally
and statewide has increased
our publicity and reputation as
an organization as well.
On a human resource level,
Meet Minneapolis’ administration and executive
teams work relentlessly to create succinct, yet detailed job
postings.
Maura Gast
Executive Director
Irving CVB
We attract talented people because we hire talented people and we give them
the room, the resources and the responsibility to do their jobs. We invest a lot in
training and professional development—which can occasionally lead to someone
being “stolen” away, but I consider that high praise. The DMO world requires a
unique combination of skills—the dynamics of a sales and marketing
organization combined with the member-orientation of a trade association, layered
with altruism and civic responsibility.
Beyond the technical skills that a position calls for, we look for candidates who
see a bigger picture. We look for people with a “servant’s heart” and a solid work
ethic. We want people who respect and learn from failure, but don’t fear it.
To paraphrase Peter Schultz, the former CEO of Porsche, we want “cathedral
builders” not rock-breakers.
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05.09
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4/23/09 4:30:28 PM
A Different Spin on Meetings
Every day, staff members
at Disney create an agenda. They plan enrichment
programs, engage their
audience and provide
unique training experiences. And Disney is the
first to admit that attendees at its events are
sometimes animals. Literally.
Disney has applied the
same philosophy it uses
to produce meetings for
businesses to its work in
animal studies and scientific research. The results are compelling and
have surprising application for the meeting industry and the broader
area of CSR.
Scientists are beginning to understand the
importance of enrichment
programs to the health
and well being of animals, but at the Disney
Animal Kingdom, a husbandry team has been
practicing animal enrichment for more than a
decade.
An animal’s psychological welfare is influenced
by whether it can perform highly motivated
behavior, respond to
environmental conditions
using its evolutionary
adaptations, develop and
use its cognitive abilities
and effectively cope with
challenges in its environment. And Disney has
embraced the needs of
its 7,000 residents at
the Animal Kingdom as
well as encouraged similar programs for zoos
and aquariums worldwide.
Of course, there is
always a way for human
groups to get involved.
Disney offers open-air
Kilimanjaro Safaris with
resident experts followed
by behind-the-scenes
looks at the Animal Kingdom theme park—with a
revealing glimpse of how
wildlife specialists manage the unique challenges
of animal care.
And the Animal Kingdom is just one of Disney’s socially responsible
programs, according to
Ann Williams, CMP, director of catering and
convention services for
Walt Disney World Resort. The resort offers a
complete green meetings
agenda with waste recycling, unused food donations, onsite composting
and non-perishable beverage service.
Other green offerings
include commemorative
water bottles, thermal
lunch bags and environmental business programs. Catering services
has reduced the number
of food ingredients from
30,000 to 1,000 with
the help of a group of
dieticians, chefs and
nutritionists.
Native Rhythms
Team-building troupe Drum Café has
introduced the gumboot dance to its
touring repertoire. The dance originates
from the gold mines of South Africa,
where miners from different regions
found a common language using their
boots as drums in a series of complex
rhythms. The dances created bonds that
cut through language, age and tribal
barriers. Today’s dance is about triumph,
courage and overcoming difficulties.
Drum Café debuted the dance at a
Homewood Suites event designed by
meeting management company Behind
the Scenes. Donning rubber boots, Alain
Eagles taught 100 of Homewood Suites’
top leaders the gumboot dance, which
they later performed in front of 700
team members. Drum Café officials say
the program teaches courage and energy in the face of real-world challenges.
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4/23/09 1:17:52 PM
HOT BUZZ
TOP TEN MEETING TRENDS
1MEETINGS
BUSINESS OF
3MONTHS.
WAIT SIX
IS BUSINESS. The business of
meetings is straight-up ROI.
There’s not a lot of room for
leisure and extracurricular
play in the current meeting
environment where every
dollar is measured for its
contribution to the success
of the overall conference.
Meetings have never been
more serious, focused or
strategic.
2BEINGIT’SGREEN.
NOT EASY
Or at
least it’s not easy being
green in a challenged economy. It isn’t that planners no
longer care about the green
status of a property, it’s
just that they are a whole
lot more focused on securing that property at the
best possible price.
The first half of
2009 is proving to be a
challenge. Pushback on
pricing is universal, and
meeting lengths are being
shaved by a day, on average. Things are looking up
for the second half of 2009,
though, and 2010 is on
target and looking healthy.
4VALUE.
PACKED WITH
The demise of the
complete meeting package
is greatly exaggerated. For
the most part, demand
remains strong, and the
value of the package is
recognized. But companies
expect packages to be
loaded with value and addon benefits along with
growing demand for double
occupancy.
5
7
not DOA this year as has
been the case in other soft
economies, and demand is
projected to increase in
2010. Planners are negotiating hard on price, and
fewer sessions are being
scheduled this year over
last, but companies continue to see value in team-enrichment benefits.
the industry is consolidating. Planning is increasingly
seen as a part-time function, with responsibilities
loaded on already-overwhelmed administrative
personnel and department
heads as third-party planners regain popularity.
TEAM BUILDING
I PLAN, THEREAS KING. Team building is FORE I AM. Once again
6TEESTEAFORFOR20.TWO,
Tight
budgets and serious meeting environments are taking
their toll on extracurricular
activities. There’s no problem getting a spa or tee
time this year, but it will be
on the attendee’s dime, and
it better not be scheduled
during a conference session.
8
9ING.THE SILVER LIN-
Some market segments are seeing growth in
demand including government, military and defense
meetings, as well as education, state association and
religious gatherings. The
medical, biotech and pharmaceutical segments remain strong, as well.
10
THREE SQUARES
A DAY. Gone are the
SERIOUS
ABOUT LEARNING.
welcome receptions, theme
dinners and special luncheons. Meal requests are
limited to three meals a
day, and that’s it. Companies are even asking that
refreshment breaks be
scaled back to downplay
perceptions of extravagance.
Productive meeting environments have never been
more important. In a business environment where
every dollar is meaningful
and expected to yield measurable ROI, dedicated
meeting environments such
as conference centers
deliver and planners are
turning to them.
—Benchmark Hospitality
International
Up In the Air
The Hotelicopter Co. has
introduced the world’s
first flying hotel. With 18
luxuriously appointed cabins,
guests can experience the
adrenaline rush of taking
off and flying in the largest
helicopter ever produced, while
also enjoying the convenience
and amenities of a five-star
hotel.
The Hotelicopter offers
the meticulous attention
to detail that one would
expect from a hotel in the
sky—from 600-thread-count
Egyptian cotton sheets to oak
accents, cabin service with
complimentary champagne
and heated toilet seats. The
interior of The Hotelicopter
36
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was designed by Yotel, the
brainchild of U.K. entrepreneur
Simon Woodroffe responsible
for the luxury hotels inside
terminal buildings at the
Heathrow and Gatwick airports
in London and the Schiphol
Airport in Amsterdam.
After take-off, guests are
free to explore the luxury
amenities beyond their guest
cabins, including a business
center, a concierge, a fitness
center, a Jacuzzi, a dry sauna,
a spa/salon, live music,
a blackjack table (above
international waters), an art
gallery, wine tastings, a yoga
studio, a hydrogarden and a
Japanese garden with koi.
05.09
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4/23/09 1:19:00 PM
Private Training
Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori plans to launch Italy’s
first privately owned high-speed train in 2011. The
company will start with 25 trains servicing intercity
routes throughout the country. French company
SNCF may be the project’s first partner, opening the
door for even greater alliances throughout Europe.
According to news reports, 98 percent of train materials will be made from recycled products, and the
engines will use 15 percent less energy than normal
passenger trains.
A Fond Farewell
Minnesota’s oldest continuously operated hotel has shut its
doors, according to local newspaper the Post-Bulletin. Famous for providing temporary feline companions to lonely
guests, the Historic Anderson House in Wabasha was also
known for its Dutch meals and the friendly demeanor of its
staff. The hotel was built in 1856.
Waste Not, Want Not
San Francisco has earned the title of America’s Least
Wasteful City, according to a new study by Nalgene,
a reusable water bottle manufacturer. The Least
Wasteful City Study ranked 23 habits of urban Americans, from recycling to using public transportation to
shutting off the lights when leaving the room. Other
cities at the top of the list included New York (No. 2),
Portland (No. 3) and Seattle (No. 4).
Cost of Business
The average price of hotel guest rooms around the world
fell by 12 percent last year, according to the latest Hotels.
com Hotel Price Index. Hotel prices in December 2008
were more than one-tenth lower than they were the year
before, and room rates were just 1 percent above their
levels in January 2004, when the Hotel Price Index was
first launched.
Local Commitment
Palace Resorts maintains its commitment to the
community and nature through its foundation, which
promotes sustainable life for local residents and the
native environment. The brand recycles more than
124 tons of paper and plastic a year, ensures the
reuse of all discarded hotel furniture, monitors boiler
and furnace emissions, preserves a protected beach
in Cancún for more than 800 endangered turtles and
provides treatment for locals with life-threatening illnesses and psychological disorders.
Job Race
The class of 2009 will face the most competitive job
market in years, as companies continue to proceed
with caution amid economic uncertainty. Forty-three
percent of employers plan to hire recent college graduates in 2009, down from 56 percent in 2008 and 79
percent in 2007, according to a report by Career
Builder.com.
mpiweb.org
p032-037 Hot Buzz 0509 14-07-42.indd 37
37
4/23/09 4:24:00 PM
ART
of Travel
Enjoy Crystal
Connection
On the Road
Finally! A U.S. Internet service designed
for the car! Autonet
Mobile offers a Wi-Fi
hot spot that allows
anyone in the car
to connect to the
Internet. Go online,
instant message,
connect with friends
on social networks,
e-mail or just surf
the Web—just not
while you’re driving.
(Autonetmobile.com,
US$29-$59 a month)
38
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Cool One Sip
at a Time With
Specialty Mug
Freshly brewed, but
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control of your life
(and your drink) with
the BRUGO, which
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drinking temperature.
You only cool one
sip at a time, so the
remaining beverage
stays hot. Just tip the
liquid into the mug’s
temperature control
chamber, then sip.
(Brugomug.co.uk,
£14.99)
25 Survival
Items in a
Sardine Can!
Be ready for the
worst with help from
this airtight, waterproof, crushproof
sardine can of 25
items you need to
survive. Fish with the
hook and line, find
your way home with
the compass, boil
water in the can for
your tea and use the
first aid supplies to
survive the wilderness. (Whistle
creek.com,
US$14)
05.09
p038 Art of Travel 0509.indd 38
4/23/09 7:51:12 AM
0509_039.indd 39
4/22/09 11:05:07 AM
Your Community
Gulf Meetings and
Events Conference
Gulf Gold
The future of the Middle East
meeting industry came under
scrutiny this spring at the Arabian
Gulf’s largest gathering of industry
professionals—MPI’s Gulf Meetings
and Events Conference and Reed
Travel Exhibitions’ Gulf Incentive,
Business Travel and Meetings
Exhibition (See Page 33).
MPI’s conference marked the
launch of Gulf Meetings Industry
Week in Abu Dhabi, as the destination looks to build its position as a
world-class global meetings hub. As
one of the world’s fastest-growing
economies, businesses recognize
that the region provides a unique
and emerging marketplace for
meetings and events.
MPI welcomed 190 attendees
from 20 countries for a series of
diverse and thought-provoking educational sessions that explored key
strategies for sustaining the Middle
East’s emerging meetings segment
in the face of global challenges.
The opening session saw an expert
panel discuss the impact of the global
recession on the Middle East.
To download content from the Gulf
Meetings and Events Conference or
to watch video from the opening session, visit www.mpiweb.org/gmec.
Welcome, Jeff Busch
MPI has added Jeff Busch to its executive
team as vice president of strategic
communications, responsible for the
organization’s global
marketing, public
relations and
communication efforts.
Busch most recently
worked as vice president
of marketing,
communications
and broad-
CHAPTER SPOTLIGHT
Learning in Action
Briana R. Einarsen had never planned a meeting before when she was handed the reins to a
lunch program this spring. Luckily, she had help
from 25 of her peers.
In April, Einarsen joined two dozen other
students in planning a monthly program for the
MPI Arizona Sunbelt Chapter, which has long
been known for its support of a vibrant and
growing student community, fueled by two active and local universities and the efforts of the
late Jim Fausel Sr. Einarsen claims the behindthe-scenes experience proved deeply valuable.
“At school, they teach you out of books and
lecture about the industry,” she said. “I had no
idea how much detail is involved in every part of
40
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casting for the Hunt Sports Group. Here’s
what you need to know about MPI’s new
communicator.
Favorite Food: my mom’s blackberry cobbler à la mode
Pet Peeve: people who really believe in “do
as I say, not as I do”
First Concert: …it’s a bit embarrassing…
KC and the Sunshine Band
Weird Fact: growing up, I could hit a tennis
ball equally well right- and left-handed, thus
never having to hit a backhanded shot
the planning process. I learned exactly what to
do to make sure things happen correctly and
on time.”
The students came from the Arizona State
University classes of Christina E. Tzavellas,
CMP, and Deborah S. Gardner, CMP. Gardner’s
class acted as program chair, while Tzavellas’
students functioned as property chair. The
event served as a learning experience for the
students, attracted several new members to
the organization and even landed new opportunities for some participants. Aaron Hempsey
says he attracted an internship with a sports
and entertainment firm during the event.
But the students weren’t the only ones learning. They shared an unusual perspective with
seasoned chapter members, playing host to a
panel on generational differences and sharing
what Gen Y thinks about the future of meetings
Host Sponsor
Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority
Silver Level Sponsors
InterContinental Hotels Group
Shangri-La Hotel, Qaryat Al
Beri, Abu Dhabi
Bronze Level Sponsors
Cat Publications
Dubai Convention Bureau
Emirates Palace
GIBTM
Hail Oracle Events
IMEX
Net Conference & Conventions
Qatar MICE Development
Institute
Contributing Level Sponsors
Berlin Convention Office
Berlin Tourismus Marketing
GmbH
Embrace Arabia
Pacific Asia Travel Association
Parthen the meeting service
company
Showcare Event Management Inc.
Speakers with Content
Official Airline
Etihad Airways
Media Partner
meetme
Got a Minute?
Get automatic notifications
of relevant job opportunities
and take advantage of an
anonymous resumé system
on MPI’s new Career Connections site. Employers have
full administrative control
over their job postings. Visit
www.mpiweb.org, go to
Resources and click on
Career Connections.
and events. The program featured moderator
Kirstin Carey of Orange Tree Business Growth
Consulting and a panel of two industry professionals and two Arizona college students.
Jennifer Castro, the chapter’s vice president of education, says she was thoroughly
impressed by the efforts of her young planners,
particularly Einarsen, who acted as a liaison between the chapter leadership and the student
groups.
“I will recommend that we continue offering
students the opportunity to learn through experience at the chapter level,” Castro said. “These
students took that extra step to prove that they
are serious about succeeding in this industry,
and we were there to provide them with that
opportunity.”
05.09
p040-042 Community Foundation 0509.indd 40
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0509_041.indd 41
4/14/09 12:25:22 PM
Making a Difference
Your Money Matters
As the global economy began faltering,
Stephen Revetria, vice president and general
manager at AT&T Park in San Francisco,
realized it was time to make a stand.
Acknowledging the difference that each
individual donation makes to the success
of the MPI Foundation, Revetria committed
to an ambitious matching fund campaign—
because helping the MPI Foundation was
about more than just showing support for an
organization, it was about contributing to the
success of millions of meeting professionals
worldwide.
“AT&T Park wanted to invest in the future
of the meeting and event industry,” Revetria
said. “With help from all MPI members, we
hope to encourage the best and brightest
individuals to join our industry, which has
provided so much for all of us.”
Indeed, if all 24,000 MPI members gave
just US$25 to the MPI Foundation, the
meetings community would benefit from
$600,000 in new education, research and
scholarship opportunities. Add in the matching grants pledged by AT&T Park and the Venetian/Palazzo Resort Hotel Casinos in Las
Vegas, and the contribution to the industry
amounts to more than $1 million in funding
for essential industry programs—including
the much-needed, 18-month report on the
value of meetings across the U.S.
“If our members only knew the extent to
which their donations can help the industry,
we would have 100 percent participation,”
said Katie Callahan-Giobbi, executive vice
president of the MPI Foundation and chief
business architect. “Every day, the MPI Foundation is at work investing in the futures of
our community and our industry. Our mission
is to advance high-impact programs that support our community and elevate our industry
locally, regionally and internationally.”
Did You Know?
The MPI Foundation has seen 100 percent giving this year by its trustees and
staff members, demonstrating a powerful
industry message that—in addition to giving through their organizations—they all
support the work of the foundation personally. It’s a poignant way to celebrate
the MPI Foundation’s silver anniversary
of serving the industry through scholarships, grants and research.
To contribute to the
MPI Foundation, visit
www.mpifoundation.org.
FOCUS ON FOUNDATION
March 2009 Contributors
The MPI Foundation thanks the following organizations and individuals for their generous support.
U.S. CORPORATE
Platinum Donors
AT&T Park
Carlson Hotels
Dallas CVB
Detroit Metro CVB
Fairmont Hotels
Hilton Hotels
Hyatt Hotels
IHG
Las Vegas CVA
Loews Hotels
Marriott Hotels & Resorts
Omni Hotels
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
The Venetian
Wyndham Hotels
Bronze Donors
Associated Luxury Hotels
Benchmark Hospitality
Destination Hotels & Resorts
Dolce
Experient
Gaylord Opryland
Global Events Partners
Hard Rock International
HelmsBriscoe
PC Nametag
Philadelphia CVB
SearchWide
Seattle CVB
Walt Disney World Resorts
Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin
Wynn
Gold Donors
American Express
AV Concepts
Bloomington CVB
Maritz
MGM Mirage
ProActive
Small Business Donors
4th Wall Events
Attendee Management Inc.
Best Meetings
Concepts Worldwide
Creative Meetings and Events
Dianne B. Devitt
InnFluent, LLC
Kinsley & Associates
The Laureli Group
Meetingjobs
Meeting Revolution
Meeting Site Resource
One Smooth Stone
OnTrack Communications
Song Division
Spets
SYNAXIS Meetings & Events Inc.
Silver Donors
Aimbridge Hospitality
Anaheim CVB
Aramark
Atlanta CVB
The Broadmoor
Fort Worth CVB
The Greenbrier
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
hinton + grusich
LA Inc.
LXR
Meet Minneapolis
Millennium Hotels
Park Place Entertainment
Pier 94
PRA
PSAV
Puerto Rico CVB
St. Louis CVB
Weil & Associates
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Special Donors
BBJ Linen
Blumberg Marketing
Boca Resorts
Katie Callahan-Giobbi
CVent
David DuBois, CMP, CAE
Folio Fine Wine Partners
David Gabri
Jonathan T. Howe, Esq.
George P. Johnson
Carol Krugman, CMP, CMM
Little Rock CVB
Kevin Olsen
Pasadena CVB
Production Plus Inc.
SAS Institute
Ken Sanders
Dave Scypinski
Mark Sirangelo
Visit Raleigh
Friends of MPI
7th Wave Communication
Balance Design
Michael Beardsley
Mitchell Beer, CMM
Jennifer Brown, CMP
Tim Brown
Ivan Carlson
Vito Curalli
Marianne Demko Lange, CMP, CMM
Gaylord Palms
Gaylord Texan
William Gilchrist
Richard Harper, CMP
Hattiel Hill, CMM
Hattie Hill Enterprises
Interactive Visuals
Dave Johnson
Beverly W. Kinkade, CMP, CHME
Leadership Synergies
Tony Lorenz, CMM
Larry Luteran
Margaret Moynihan, CMP
National Speakers Bureau
Joe Nishi
Didier Scaillet
Linda Swago
Melvin Tennant, CAE
C. James Trombino, CAE
Helen Van Dongen, CMP, CMM
Jerry Wayne
CANADA CORPORATE
Platinum Donor
Fairmont Hotels and Resorts
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Gold Donor
Caesars Windsor
Convention Centres of Canada
Delta Hotels
PSAV
Silver Donor
AV- Canada
AVW-Telav
Calgary Telus Convention Centre
Cascadia Motivation
Coast Hotels & Resorts
Evolution
Hilton Canada
IHG
Marriott Hotels & Resorts
Canada
Ottawa Tourisim
Stronco
Tourism Calgary
Tourism Toronto
Tourisme Quebec
VIA Rail Canada
Bronze Donor
The Conference Publishers
D.E. Systems Ltd.
Destination Halifax
Direct Energy Centre
IncentiveWorks
Tourisme Montreal
Tourism British Columbia
Tourism Vancouver
Special Donor
Accucom Corporate Communications Inc.
ADMAR Promotions
Calgary Exhibition & Stampede
Cantrav dmc
Centre Mont-Royal
Destination Winnipeg
Exposoft Solutions Inc.
Fletcher Wright Associates Inc.
Gelber Conference Centre
Groupe Germain Hotels
The Great West Life Co.
Investors Group Financial
Services
Mendelssohn Livingston
Naylor Publishers Inc.
The Planner
Gold Key Donors
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
Malaga CVB
The Rezidor Hotel Group
Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre
VisitDenmark
Japan
Kansas City
Kentucky Bluegrass
Indiana
Manitoba
Minnesota
New Jersey
Northern California
Ohio
Oklahoma
Orange County
Oregon
Ottawa
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia Area
Potomac
Rocky Mountain
Southern California
St. Louis Area
Tennessee
Texas Hill Country
Toronto
Virginia
Washington State
WestField
Silver Partner Donors
ExpoForce
RefTech
INDIVIDUAL DONORS
Diamond
Rita Violette
Bronze Friend Donors
Amsterdam RAI
Hotels van Oranje
Ince&Tive
Visit London
Four Star
Anna Lee Chabot
EUROPE CORPORATE
Heritage Club
EIBTM
IMEX
Diamond Club
MCI
Platinum Key Donors
BTC International
EIBTM/RTE
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
CHAPTER DONORS
Arizona Sunbelt
Atlantic Canada
British Columbia
Carolinas
Chicago Area
Georgia
Greater Edmonton
Greater New York
Gulf States
Heartland
Houston Area
Three Star
David Kliman
Mark Sagar
Raffaella Tasca
Rick Weaver
Fellow
Barbara Balaguras
Carole Blumberg
David Fischette
Paul Fogarty, CMP
Jennifer Ruthig
05.09
p040-042 Community Foundation 0509.indd 42
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0509_043.indd 43
4/10/09 8:55:05 AM
WHO:
Connections
Steve Bloss, Worldwide Travel & Cruise
Associates Inc.
Supplier + Nonprofit
A planner with a large U.S. insurance company signed contracts for a Caribbean business
cruise last January, but just three
weeks before the March 19 departure, her company needed to
cancel the event.
With the crumbling global economy as a
backdrop, agents at the company needed to
be at home selling. So the management team
replaced the cruise with regional office visits
where senior leaders conducted workshops
and imparted strategic business plans. It wasn’t
ideal, and the company’s original investment in
the cruise was lost.
“Our senior leaders wanted to find a way
for someone to use the ship—and that idea
really resonated with me,” said the company’s
senior director of meeting and event management (who requested to remain anonymous).
She immediately contacted Steve Bloss of
Worldwide Travel & Cruise Associates Inc.,
who had helped organize the original event.
The two had only a weekend to find a new
group and program for the now-empty Silver
Cloud.
Bloss had an idea of how to reshape the
cruise, but he didn’t have any idea as to whom
he should offer it. A friend in Puerto Rico had
the answer. Bloss called longtime colleague
Nestor “Pancho” Rivera of Pinnacle Events,
part of a network of connections that would
eventually present more than US$150,000 and
a free cruise to the American Cancer Society.
Rivera was on a business trip in Barcelona
when he received Bloss’ call late on a Friday,
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Nestor Rivera,
Pinnacle Events
EVENT:
American Cancer Society
Charity Cruise
Puerto Rico, departure
March 19-23
but he quickly placed several midnight calls
to colleagues across the pond. He asked Jose
Quinones of Avon Puerto Rico for advice on
an appropriate charity (American Cancer). He
called John Bowen of Suzuki del Caribe and
Mario Davila of Toyota de Puerto Rico, both
of whom had recently put incentive plans on
hold; would they be interested in participating
in the cruise? He asked his graphic artist Felix
Agosto to create a promo over the weekend.
On Saturday, Rivera left a message for his
colleague Zaily Rodriguez of Modern Travel—
she would be his point person at the American
Cancer Society gala, but she was in Argentina
at the time (she checked in with an affirmative
on Monday morning). By Tuesday, Suzuki and
Toyota were in.
The end scheme was brilliant: Sell off the
Silver Cloud’s empty rooms to the two car
companies and attendees at the American Cancer Society gala (amongst others)—and let the
nonprofit keep all the proceeds.
“It’s amazing in our industry how people
can network and make something happen,”
Bloss said, reflecting on that frenzied weekend of work. “We all came together over one
weekend and made something truly magical
happen.”
Coordinating the effort wasn’t as easy
05.09
p044-045 Connections 0509.indd 44
4/24/09 10:44:08 AM
“It’s amazing in our industry
how people can network and
make something happen. We
all came together over one
weekend and made something
truly magical happen.”
as it sounds. Lawyers for both the insurance
company and the American Cancer Society
worked at an astounding pace to ensure the
transfer of all liabilities and contracts. The
former donated the rights to its cruise marketing materials. Bloss worked with Silversea to
change the itinerary to fit the new group. The
cruise line changed departure from Barbados
to Puerto Rico due to airlift issues, and some of
the cruise’s original destinations were changed
to better fit the plans of the American Cancer
Society group.
Meanwhile, cruise bidders were preparing
to sail in less than two weeks.
Rivera credits a vibrant industry network
with the success of the charity event, which
not only raised money for the American Cancer Society, but also guaranteed work for the
ship’s captain and crew as well as vendors, restaurateurs and suppliers in Saint Barthélemy,
Antiqua and Virgin Gorda.
“The industry is getting beaten up so badly
in the press, but there are great companies
out there doing great things,” Bloss said. “We
could have scrapped the whole thing and
watched millions go down the toilet, and the
odds were certainly against us. But a lot of
people worked really hard to make this happen, and we took 300 people to local economies throughout the Caribbean that really
needed support, and we raised $150,000 for a
great charity.”
—JESSIE STATES
mpiweb.org
p044-045 Connections 0509.indd 45
45
4/17/09 3:56:20 PM
IRRELEVANT
Cur
Current
Moisture: 0%
Moisture
Know when your plant ne
needs water—
before it dies! New technology from
Botanicalls allows household flora to
tell you when it’s thirsty via social
networking site Twitter.com. Plants
send status updates right to your
mobile, and thank you when the job
is done. Now that’s some useful science. (Botanicalls.com, US$99.99)
46
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05.09
p046 Irrelevant 0509.indd 46
4/24/09 9:39:55 AM
0509_047.indd 47
4/13/09 11:07:26 AM
Rohit
Talwar
Global View
Abu Dhabi
Leads the
Charge
IN THE MIDST OF A GLOBAL ECONOMIC
DOWNTURN, United Arab Emirates capital
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05.09
p048 Global View 0509.indd 48
BIO
Abu Dhabi is actually bucking the trend
and taking massive strategic steps to grow
its meetings sector. At the city’s Gulf Incentive and Business Travel Market on March
31, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority
announced an ambitious strategic initiative designed to stimulate the growth of the
meetings sector.
The Advantage Abu Dhabi initiative
will catalyze and seed innovative and viable
business events that are aligned to the government’s 2030 Economic Vision. Based
on a venture capital model, the initiative
will support the MICE segment in growing
its contribution to Abu Dhabi’s long-term
economic, social, human resource and infrastructure development goals. The program
will also lead-arrange financial and/or nonfinancial resources to enable meeting planners
and exhibition and conference organizers to
develop new business events in Abu Dhabi
The move could not come at a better
time for the area. The Middle East region
is strategically well positioned to capitalize
on the growing economic strength of Asia,
where countries such as China and India are
already pulling out of the downturn. The
Middle East will be a critical focus for business events for companies and organizations
in Asia—particularly in India where security
concerns are forcing firms to think carefully
about where to locate key events without
massively extending travel times for participants. Global events traditionally based in
Europe and the U.S. will increasingly move
to the Middle East because of its central
position on the map. Almost two-thirds of
the world’s population is within eight hours
flying time from the Middle East, which
makes it great for international events.
Abu Dhabi also has the facilities
required to deliver quality meetings—a
world-class exhibition center and a growing
base of quality hotels. In addition, attracting
world-class training providers in the sector
will help Abu Dhabi build up hospitality
education as an offering for others in the
region. An estimated 4 million new jobs
could be created in the travel and tourism
sectors across the region by 2020.
The creation of new jobs will also act as
an important contributor to the development and diversification of Abu Dhabi’s
economy. Developing the meetings sector
will bring large numbers of business people
to the Emirate and generate return interest,
which, in turn, will provide a well-structured
and thought-through role model for how to
put the right infrastructure in place to grow
an economically important industry. This is
one of the clearest and most comprehensive
plans I have seen anywhere in the world
for developing a strategic meetings sector.
ROHIT TALWAR is a global futurist and CEO of Fast Future, which
specializes in researching, consulting and speaking on the future of
the meeting industry. His book, Designing Your Future, was published
in August.
4/14/09 8:39:25 AM
0509_049.indd 49
4/22/09 5:12:28 PM
Tony
Carey
Across the Bow
Bathroom
Phantoms of
Delight
“It was a phantom of delight
When first it gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament”
I LIKE TO THINK THAT IF THE POET
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH had been a
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05.09
p050-051 Across The Bow 0509.indd 50
BIO
meeting planner and less preoccupied with
daffodils, skylarks and Westminster Bridge
he probably would have written that
charming verse about hotel bathrooms.
After many years in this industry and
many hours admiring bathrooms on every
continent, I have come to the conclusion
that the perfect hotel bathroom is a phantom concept. These lovely apparitions of
gleaming porcelain and marble, into which
I am too often squeezed with 15 other site
inspectors, are but a moment’s ornament.
The reality is starkly different. (No, I
don’t expect reality on a site inspection,
but you know what I mean.) Hotel bathrooms have been designed by people who
have never spent a night in a hotel or, possibly, by an architecturally trained octopus.
They shine and entice but are frequently
about as practical as an igloo in the desert.
Hotels furnish their bathrooms with
every gadget and gizmo, fixture and fitting of any use to anyone (and several for
which there is no known use at all). But
they are usually in the wrong place.
Doors open in disconcerting directions,
all available shelf space is taken up by
helpful notices and the display of complimentary potions and lotions, oils and
unguents. (I counted 21 items in a Boca
Raton, Fla., bathroom last year.)
The magnifying mirror is frequently
located marginally beyond arm’s length
from the basin and the shaver point. It
is also cleverly angled to keep your face
always in shadow.
Showers can be particularly user
unfriendly. When is there going to be a
standard international system of controls
so that plumbing illiterates like me don’t
have to devote 20 minutes to pushing, pulling, turning, twisting, testing, swearing and
in all probability taking a shower before
taking a shower? And that first douche of
water is still freezing cold.
Hotels either provide more bath taps
than are necessary or too few.
Having stepped into the bath, turned
on the shower and then gotten out again to
go and find the soap (which, of course, is
back at the basin), the shower curtain has
lost its meaning. And please would someone invent non-slip soap and not wrap it in
tear resistant paper?
As an aside, I recently stayed in a fourstar hotel in Italy where the shower curtain
was made of toweling—about as practical
as a woollen toothbrush.
Turning to the gleaming porcelain
TONY CAREY, CMP, CMM, is an award-winning writer and past member
of MPI’s International Board of Directors. He can be reached at
tonycarey@psilink.co.je.
4/14/09 8:47:23 AM
fixtures, why should reaching for the daintily pointed toilet paper involve a level-four
yoga position and knocking the handset off
the telephone?
In terms of customer pampering, hotels
have got one thing absolutely right: I
approve of bathroom lighting that gives
you a flattering hint of a tan. Less clever
are the mirrors, which suddenly introduce
you to parts of your body that you can’t
normally see.
For an industry that spends billions
wrapping us up in the cozy bathrobe of
comfort, hotels are missing one last trick.
Their bathroom scales are accurate.
If ever there was a case for a little
mechanical white lie, this is it. When I’m
on holiday or a business trip, it is inevitable
that I shall put on weight; I just don’t want
to be reminded. All hotel scales should read
three pounds under actual. Now that’s
what I call real hospitality.
Hotel bathrooms
have been designed
by people who
have never spent
a night in a hotel
or, possibly, by
an architecturally
trained octopus.
Agree? Disagree?
Share your thoughts with
other readers at
www.mpioneplus.org.
mpiweb.org
p050-051 Across The Bow 0509.indd 51
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4/14/09 8:47:31 AM
Jon
Bradshaw
Open-Source Everything
Planners are
From Mars,
Delegates are
From Venus
JOHN GRAY’S POPULAR BOOK MEN
ARE FROM MARS, WOMAN ARE FROM
VENUS WAS LAUDED AS ESSENTIAL
READING HERE IN ENGLAND A DECADE
AGO. It explored the different ways men
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p052-053 Open-Source 0509.indd 52
BIO
and women behave, in a light-hearted
attempt to help both sexes understand the
differing world in which each lives. The fact
that the majority of divorce lawyers (including mine!) drive Aston Martins here leads
me to question whether its mission was
entirely successful. In any case—whatever
your view on its contents—the book raises
a point that justifies further examination in
the experiential world of meetings.
Gray’s book focuses on the differences
between men and women, but I challenge
you to examine how every human you interact with lives in a world of differing experiences. These experiences lead to varied
thoughts and feelings and ultimately affect
the behavior of each and every one of us.
While science can’t prove that our senses
give us each the same experience—can you
be sure the color red you see is the same
red that I see?—it’s how we feel about our
experiences that I want you to consider.
Such feelings rely on powerful filters based
on our values and beliefs. These filters
develop over time and are influenced by
the social programing we are exposed to
through our parents, schooling and culture.
Developing this understanding could ensure
that the next event is your best yet.
As a meeting professional, I suspect
you have a clear view of what constitutes
a “successful” meeting, but it is in fact the
delegates’ viewpoint that is important here,
and if their criteria and yours are poles
apart, you have a problem. While it may
have been the anthem to your first wedding
dance, not everyone will share your enthusiasm in hearing Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell
at the opening session or that, due to the
recent weight loss you experienced on an
organic-only diet, they will greet the carrot
and celery sticks you offer in the breakout
session with as much enthusiasm as you
may have hoped.
Consider the criteria for humor: While
recently presenting at MPI’s Gulf Meetings
and Events Conference in Abu Dhabi on
this very subject, I told the funniest joke in
the world—hilarious, side-splitting, selfdepreciating English humor. Or was it?
The deadly silence that greeted the punch
line, coupled with the blank, puzzled eyes
of those in the audience, led me to consider
that they weren’t sharing my criteria for
humor at that precise moment, thus proving
the main point of the session.
Our criteria for what constitutes a successful meeting as well as hundreds of other
experiences such as a “good” joke, “appropriate” behavior and even “attractive”
JON BRADSHAW presents and trains internationally on a variety of subjects in the field of human performance, specializing in emotional state
management in the corporate and sporting fields. He can be contacted
via www.equinoxmotivation.com.
4/21/09 4:55:40 PM
Meeting people in their worlds is the first step
to building rapport—the main ingredient in the
recipe for building successful relationships—no
matter which planet they live on.
looks is of course entirely subjective and
based largely on social programing.
Having outlined the benefits of being
sympathetic to others’ ideals, I should point
out that catering to them all is unrealistic.
As a speaker, it is crucial that I, too, am
aware of different values within an audience. I apply a very simple rule that has
uses in numerous situations. Privately, I
expect 20 percent of an audience to think
I’m awesome, 60 percent to think I am
pretty good and the final 20 percent to
think I am poor. I wonder if you could find
this a useful equation both in your professional and personal life. Twenty percent of
your delegates/staff/customers live on the
same planet as you and connect with you
entirely, 60 percent visit occasionally and
want to build working relationships with
you and 20 percent have never even entered
your galaxy, and no matter what you do,
will never empathize with you. Understanding that some people are simply different
has helped me to reduce my therapy sessions
to just three a week and, in an industry that
revolves around human interaction, appreciate how a colleague’s understanding of a
term such as “ASAP” can differ from mine.
In your world, suppliers’ late deliveries
are unacceptable and scream of a lack of
customer service, but in their worlds perhaps
it doesn’t; they chose to get the order right
rather than rush out a potentially errorstrewn delivery. Forget who was right; the
disparity causes misunderstanding, which
results in delays, stress and a breakdown in
what had been a good working relationship.
Perhaps a more pragmatic approach would
have lowered the tension as well as your
blood pressure.
Meeting people in their worlds is the first
step to building rapport—the main ingredient in the recipe for building successful
relationships—no matter which planet they
live on.
mpiweb.org
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Tim
Sanders
Transform the World
The Dark Side
of E-mail!
WHEN TIMES GET TOUGH, THINGS
BREAK DOWN OVER E-MAIL. This is a
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BIO
21st-century phenomenon facilitated by
mobile e-mail devices and a lack of training
on how and when to use them.
A few years ago, I participated in a
massive study on how e-mail is used and
what impacts it has on productivity in the
workplace. The study suggested that e-mail
is one of the biggest causes of job stress and
relationship difficulties at work, second only
to organizational change. The study also
revealed that when an organization is under
emotional or financial pressure, negative
e-mail tendencies rise—along with the raw
volume of e-mail sent.
When I reviewed all the data, about a
dozen rules for better e-mail living jumped
out. Over the last few years, I’ve shared
these rules with companies and associations,
helping them improve their internal communications and reduce risk.
For meeting professionals, I’ve culled
out three relevant rules that can help you
preserve your relationships and protect your
readership, which is an important asset at
work, just like it is for any magazine or
newspaper. If people stop reading your
e-mails, you cannot get anything done.
People that send too many irrelevant e-mails
become “deletable” and lose their readership
and influence as a result.
Rule One: No Bad News Over E-mail
E-mail is good for saying “yes,” “maybe”
or exchanging harmless information and
data (e.g., the meeting is at 3 p.m. or the
requested report is attached). You should
never deny a request, issue a criticism or
open up an emotionally charged issue over
e-mail. E-mail is the weakest of all mediums
when it comes to conveying your intentions.
For decades, the University of California’s Dr. Albert Mehrabian studied how
people decode other people’s intentions,
especially when they’re receiving mixed signals. He found that 55 percent of intentions
are derived visually, mostly in face and body
language; 38 percent are derived via tone of
voice; and only 7 percent are gleaned from
words (on paper or on screen).
The next time you’ve got some potentially disturbing information to transmit,
pick up the phone or deliver it face-to-face.
The tone of your voice will communicate
“I’m your coach, not a dictator.” Your facial
expressions and body language can convey
“I’m your partner, not just a vendor.”
Rule Two: Stamp Out Reply All
In the study, the “reply all” button was
only used appropriately 12 percent of the
time. The rest of its usage was mindless,
unnecessary and downright irritating.
Does the following story sound
familiar? An admin sends an e-mail
to you and 30 of your co-workers
about a proposed meeting next Friday at 11 a.m. Someone replies to
all that 10:30 a.m. would work better for him. Someone else counters
that 11 a.m. is the only time she can
TIM SANDERS, a top-rated speaker on the lecture circuit, is the
author of Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to
Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference (Doubleday, September 2008).
Check out his Web site at www.timsanders.com.
4/17/09 12:20:22 PM
make it. Soon, a cross-post erupts, and by
the end of the day you have a dozen RE:
RE: RE: The Meeting e-mails cluttering your
BlackBerry.
It’s a waste of time, and it can also hurt
your readership by making you part of “the
noise.” Be judicious when using this feature.
If you feel like you need to respond to several people, hit reply all, then take the time
to delete all the names of people that don’t
need to be copied.
You can also encourage the rest of your
co-workers to cut back on this. When I
worked at Yahoo!, I added this simple
request to my e-mail signature: “Please help
me in my campaign to stamp out useless
reply-to-alls!” The idea caught on at the
company as other executives added this
request to their e-mail signatures as well.
Eventually, reply alls dropped significantly,
making lives better.
Rule Three: Break the Thread With
a Phone Call
When you were growing up, you probably played the game Rumor (also known as
Telephone). Here’s how it works: I tell you
something, you tell it to someone else and
five people later it’s completely twisted into
a different idea altogether.
Welcome to your e-mail life, where conversations are endless and eventually confusing. A thread is an exchange of e-mails on
a single subject line: You send me a note,
I reply, you reply and now it’s a threaded
conversation. At some point, we forget how
it started as we seldom scroll down to the
bottom of a message before replying.
In the study, a communications break-
down is likely to occur if the thread gets
too long. A simple solution is to adopt the
following habit: When the thread contains
a total of six or more messages, pick up
the phone to talk about it live. The same
research indicates that one phone call of less
than 10 minutes has three times more effectiveness in resolving an issue than an e-mail
that you take an hour to write.
E-mail is one of the biggest causes
of job stress and relationship
difficulties at work, second only
to organizational change.
Here is a bonus idea, closely related
to this concept: the two-minute rule. You
should call an upset internal or external client within two minutes of the time he or she
e-mailed you. Maybe it’s a customer who’s
disappointed in your management of their
expectations. Maybe it’s an employee that’s
undergoing tremendous fear. Freak ‘em out.
Call ‘em. There is nothing more startling
than hitting the send button on an e-mail
and having the phone ring a minute later
with someone at the company saying, “I’m
really bummed out that you’re upset about
this. Can we talk?” Psychologically, it produces what brand marketers call “surprise
and delight.” So try it the next time you get
a nasty-gram and hear the person on the
other end gasp in surprise.
Have you witnessed
something that will
transform the world?
Tell us about it at
www.mpiweb.org.
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No
Hiccups
Even during the economic
downturn, the new Phoenix
Convention Center is outperforming
its original attendance projections.
BY ROWLAND STITELER
MOST ORGANIZERS DREAM OF PLANNING EVENTS IN BRAND NEW CONVENTION CENTERS, especially if there’s a new,
1,000-room hotel a block away.
There is a qualifier: No planner would
necessarily want to hold the first event in that
new facility, as was the case with the American
Meteorological Society, which held its annual
convention in the new, 635,000-square-foot
North Building of the Phoenix Convention
Center.
“In our business, you really don’t like
uncertainty,” said Marjorie Huntington,
meetings and exhibits manager for the society. “On my first site visit, the convention
center was just a big hole in the ground with
some concrete and rebar in it. I met with the
construction site manager, and he got out
blueprints for me to look at. I really had to
use my imagination to envision just how
everything would come together to make our
event a success.”
Claudia Gorski, director of meetings for the
society, says the convention center in Phoenix
had been booked for the January 2009 event
some five years out, before she or Huntington
were even on the organization’s staff.
“Without question, the concept of a new
convention center with lots of attractive elements in the area around it, like a new hotel,
is certainly appealing, but we had more than
a little nervousness as our convention date
approached,” Gorski said.
One hundred days out—virtually no time
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+
What’s New
in Greater
Phoenix and
Arizona
The Arizona Biltmore
Resort & Spa (Phoenix)
celebrated its 80th anniversary in April with the
opening of a new, threestory wing that adds 120
guest rooms.
The Westin Kierland
Resort & Spa (Scottsdale) recently unveiled
two new outdoor function
spaces: The Vista Morada
and Drinkwater’s Park,
which collectively add
8,000 square feet to the
resort’s existing 175,000
square feet of indoor and
outdoor meeting space.
Talking Stick Resort
will open in early 2010 in
Scottsdale. The resort will
offer 497 guest rooms,
50,000 square feet of
meeting space, a spa and
240,000 square feet of
gaming space.
for a 3,000-attendee event that’s been on the
books for five years or so—the convention
center was not yet open. The hotel was not
yet open, and a light rail system linking the
convention center with the airport was not yet
running. There were plenty of reasons for Gorski and Huntington to stay awake at night.
Ultimately, of course, the event proved a
success.
“Our attendee surveys after the convention
showed our delegates were happy with the convention center, they were happy with Phoenix
as a destination and our society president was
thrilled with the outcome,” Gorski said.
What transformed the event from a mountain of uncertainties into an unequivocal
success was a lot of above-and-beyond-thecall-of-duty efforts on the part of the Greater
Phoenix CVB staff.
Huntington says that during the year leading up to the center opening, she did so many
Transportation Tip
+
The new Phoenix METRO light-rail
transportation system, which serves a
20-mile route that goes not only to Sky
Harbor International Airport but links the
city with neighbors Tempe and Scottsdale,
has become the most economical way to
get around the area. Fares are US$1.25
for a one-way trip and $2.50 for an all-day,
unlimited ridership pass.
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+
Fun Fact
The 900,000-square-foot (2.7 million gross square
feet) Phoenix Convention Center complex follows a
green operational plan, which includes recycling and use
of locally grown foods in the kitchen. There is even a
photovoltaic electrical generation system (solar panels)
on the roof of the West Building in the three-building
complex, which has been up and running for a couple of
years. The West Building has the U.S. Green Building
Council LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design) Silver rating.
site visits that she had no more budget for a
return trip. Yet, on Huntington’s last visit in
2008, the elevators were still not working in
the new building, and she had to use the fire
exists and emergency stairwells to go between
floors.
“I was not comfortable with that, and I
still was not sure how traffic flow between
the various parts of the building would
work and how and where people would get
together for networking—there were still too
many uncertainties,” she said.
But 30 days from the convention date,
the CVB flew Huntington to Phoenix at its
expense and put her up in the then newly
opened Sheraton Phoenix Downtown (a
block from the convention center), and her
worries faded. Everything that was supposed
to be working was working just as she had
been told it would.
When the event began, attendees found
they could easily walk to the new Sheraton,
which had been up and running for almost
three months by then, and those staying in
hotels that were further away found they
could either ride shuttles set up for the convention or hop on the new Phoenix lightrail system, which runs 20 hours a day and
arrives at every stop on its 20-mile route
every 10 minutes.
Easy access to the hotels helped abate
what could have been another problem—
the society was not the only “first” convention in the center that week. Also booked
was another big association convention, the
Professional Photographers of America, with
5,000 attendees—giving Phoenix a total of
8,000 convention attendees in town, both
using the same (albeit massively expanded)
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+
What’s New
in Greater
Phoenix and
Arizona
(Continued)
After three years of
property renovations that
updated both public and
private spaces, Pointe
Hilton Tapatio Cliffs
Resort (Phoenix) opened
the doors to its Highland
Center in mid-December.
Featuring high ceilings, a
spacious outdoor plaza
and enhanced technology,
the Highland Center offers
greater options for meetings, trade shows and
social events.
The Wingate by Wyndham Hotel Oro Valley
opened earlier this year
north of Tucson. Designed
for business and leisure
travelers, the Wingate
Oro Valley offers 104
guest rooms, meeting
rooms, a private boardroom and business and
fitness centers. Other
guest amenities include a
two-story breakfast area
overlooking an outdoor
pool patio with hot tub and
free high-speed wireless
Internet access.
downtown Phoenix convention center.
Yet planners of both events praised the
way the convention center opening came off.
“When I booked this facility, all I had seen
were artist renderings and floor plans,” said
Lenore Taffel, director of events and education for the photographers’ association. “I
have to admit I was a little nervous that our
meeting start date was only a week after the
scheduled completion of the building. But I
am very impressed with the hard work the
team at the CVB and the convention center
did to ensure everything would run smoothly,
and I’m even more impressed with the final
building product.”
The double convention situation came
into play again with the third and fourth
events in the center, when an 8,000-attendee
Mary Kay Cosmetics show closed out on the
day the 5,000-attendee National Cattlemen’s
Beef Association began its annual convention
in late January.
Debbie Kaylor, executive director of
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conventions and meetings for the beef association, says that not only did the logistics
work well, the allure of Phoenix as a destination actually built attendance, even in
a month when America woke up to realize
that it was in recession.
“Given the economy, we felt very fortunate that our attendance actually grew from
last year’s convention and also grew from
the last time we were in Phoenix,” said Kaylor, whose association is on a five-year rotation with Phoenix as a destination. “There
is a real renaissance going on in downtown
Phoenix with new restaurants and new
hotel accommodations. We were telling our
attendees, ‘Even if you have been to Phoenix
before, you really haven’t been to Phoenix.’
And clearly, they agreed with us, because the
feedback from our attendees was that they
love the new convention center and the new
Phoenix experience.”
Kaylor says her group, which is made
up of ranchers who are largely the heads
of family-owned businesses, was attracted
in part because of the range of economical
accommodations available and also because
the new light-rail system meant they could
do without rental cars.
“This is an event where attendees are
paying for this out of their own pockets—
they treat this like a family vacation in some
ways—and the economics of meeting in
Phoenix and their ability to have a good time
there made sense to them,” she said.
Kevin Kamenzind, senior vice president
of the Greater Phoenix CVB, attributes the
success of these early conventions to a lot of
upfront planning efforts by both the CVB
and convention center staffs.
“We have been working with a meeting planner advisory board for quite a few
years now, and if they told us anything about
opening a new convention center that takes
you into the top tier, it was, ‘You better be
ready to perform on opening day; you can’t
afford any hiccups on your debut in the big
leagues.’”
Consequently, every type of contingency
was addressed and the logistics rehearsed and
re-rehearsed by the staff before opening day.
“Having tripled the size of our convention
center over the past five years, we now realize we are playing on the big stage and we
knew we could not afford to have anything
but a home run when we first stepped up to
the plate,” Kamenzind said.
So far, even in the worst national economic times since the 1930s, the new center is out-performing its original attendance
projections—which were drawn up years
ago, when construction on the center began,
long before the current recession loomed on
the horizon.
“We are actually having a banner year for
conventions. Our pro forma for 2009 was
about 180,000 attendees coming to Phoenix
to use our convention center, but with the
business on the books right now, we are looking at about 243,000 attendees,” Kamenzind
said. “This new center, along with the new
light-rail system and the new Sheraton hotel,
is our own local economic stimulus package.”
ROWLAND STITELER is a veteran meeting industry journalist.
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VIRGINIA BEACH CVB
+
What’s New
in Virginia
Beach
Joining Forces
It was a tall order, but the Virginia Beach CVB was up to the
task of playing host to three concurrent events at the
Virginia Beach Convention Center.
BY KIMBERLY KING
VIRGINIA BEACH MAY BE IN THE GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS FOR THE LONGEST PLEASURE BEACH IN THE WORLD,
considered Virginia Beach as a location
for the 2008 U.S. Coast Guard Innovation
Expo. What was surprising was the successful coordination of not one, but two
additional simultaneous NDIA conferences. Under the roof of a state-of-the-art
convention center and the auspices of the
supportive Virginia Beach CVB and NDIA
planners, this 1,900-attendee Coast Guard
event was smooth sailing all the way.
but this booming industry of sun and sand
is closely seconded by a strong military presence. Home to several U.S. military bases
including the Naval Air Station Oceana—
the largest employer in the city—Virginia
Beach is the center of the Navy Exchange
Service Command and U.S. Coast Guard
units in the Tidewater area.
It was no surprise then that the National The More the Merrier
Defense Industrial Association (NDIA),
Established in 1997, the NDIA promotes
the leading U.S. defense industry entity, U.S. national security. Bruce Roulstone,
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The Virginia Beach CVB
was awarded accreditation from the Destination
Marketing Accreditation Program (DMAP)
last year. DMAP is an
international accreditation
program developed by
Washington, D.C.-based
Destination Marketing
Association International.
In earning the DMAP
accreditation, destination
marketing organizations
communicate to their
communities, buyers and
potential visitors that
their organizations have
attained a significant measure of excellence.
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NDIA director of operations, says the association’s primary goal is to provide a legal
and ethical forum for the exchange of information between industry and government
on national security issues. Roulstone says
his team first considered Virginia Beach for
NDIA conferences because of its facilities,
the proximity to Coast Guard headquarters
in Washington, D.C., and the presence of
Coast Guard units in the area.
But initially, Virginia Beach was considered for a different NDIA conference.
“Meeting planners from NDIA were on
their way to a site visit in Virginia Beach
when the U.S. Coast Guard contacted us
about finding a location to host three events
together—the U.S. Coast Guard Innovation
Expo, the Senior Leadership Conference
and the Civil Rights Conference,” said Al
Hutchinson, Virginia Beach CVB vice president of convention sales and marketing.
It was a tall order, but the CVB was up
for the task.
The NDIA team was only three hours
away when a call came in about the possibility of hosting all three events at the Virginia Beach Convention Center.
“They wanted to know if the convention
center could handle the extensive information technology requirements,” Hutchinson
said. “The CVB team had all their answers
and more by the time NDIA arrived in
Virginia Beach. The planners were incredibly impressed, having expected it to take
a couple of days to acquire the information
needed.”
Timing was the essence in another matter
as well.
“Virginia Beach’s value season fit
well with the economic reasons that the
U.S. Coast Guard was bringing all three
+
NDIA (2)
Fun Facts
Virginia became the 10th U.S. state on
June 25, 1788.
The world record for the longest gum
wrapper chain belongs to a man from
Virginia Beach. Gary Duschle’s creation
stretched 8.13 miles, nearly one-quarter
of the 38-mile shoreline along Virginia
Beach.
The dogwood is Virginia’s state tree and
flower.
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+
Transportation Tips
the opportunity to network with peers and
associates they had not seen in a long time,”
The Norfolk International Airport
Hutchinson said. “With several Coast Guard
primarily serves Virginia Beach. Seven
stations throughout the region, many attendairlines provide nonstop service to 25
destinations.
ees had once been stationed in the area.”
When sessions concluded for the day,
Amtrak serves Virginia Beach through the
guests continued networking at their hotels
Newport News Station, via connecting
and took advantage of Virginia Beach’s dinbuses.
ing and nightlife options. And at the event’s
conclusion, the CVB established a multiTransportation within the city, as well as
year booking with the NDIA for future
with the other six cities of Hampton Roads,
conferences.
is served by a regional bus service, Hamp“The U.S. Coast Guard liked the facilities,
ton Roads Transit.
and instead of moving the expo around we
decided to try Virginia Beach for two years in
meetings together at one location, allowing a row,” Roulstone said. “The success of 2008
for affordable and available hotel rooms,” indicates that this is a very good decision.”
Customer service was the selling point in
Hutchinson said.
booking the multiyear contract with NDIA,
Taking Action
“Our first decision was to contract the
convention center and put together a package of hotels that would satisfy our room
block requirement,” Roulstone said.
The U.S. Coast Guard was used to
meetings of this size being housed in one
to two hotels maximum, Hutchinson says.
In Virginia Beach, 12 separate hotels were
utilized.
Passkey-enabled housing allowed attendees to book their accommodations from
NDIA’s convention Web site. And once the
accommodations were situated, the CVB
went to work on satisfying the extensive
technology requirements necessary for the
conferences.
With the meeting accommodations
and space requirements in place, the U.S.
Coast Guard began focusing on the conference’s agenda and overall format. The
commandant, vice commandant and other
senior leaders prepared presentations for
the thousands of Coast Guard members in
attendance.
The events consisted of general sessions
and exhibits over a period of three days.
Breakfasts, lunches and two receptions were
provided. In between sessions, attendees
perused the exhibit hall and interacted with
exhibitors ranging from large defense contractors to small U.S. Coast Guard units.
“Many attendees commented on how
merging the three events provided them with
Hutchinson says. And both the NDIA and
the CVB agree that communication was key
to their success.
“There were so many moving parts to
this convention, it was imperative that a trust
level was established between CVB staff and
meeting planners.” Hutchinson said.
Playing host to an event this size at the
same location two years in a row eases the
planning of the next event, Roulstone says.
“We look forward to an even bigger and
better expo next year,” he said.
KIMBERLY KING is a New York-based freelance writer.
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AMERICAN RENTAL ASSOCIATION (3)
+
A Fortuitous
Thaw
Atlanta turned out to be just the medicine needed for a
convention’s ailing attendance.
BY ROWLAND STITELER
IT WAS THE AFTERNOON OF MARCH
1, AND PLANNER ALLISON BOX
FOUND HERSELF AND HER EVENT
LOOKING INTO THE TEETH OF A
BLIZZARD—both literally and figuratively.
“It wasn’t an actual blizzard, of course,”
said Box, vice president of association services for the American Rental Association
(ARA). “But it was, in fact, what appeared to
be pretty healthy snowfall coming, and I was
worried about the impact it would have on
our event. After all, how often are you going
to get snow in Atlanta in March? I was thinking, ‘This is about the last thing we need right
now.’”
The event was the annual ARA convention, which typically attracts 10,000 attendees
(not bad for an association with about 4,500
members) and more than 300,000 square
feet of exhibitor booths. That’s enough to
rank the show 61st on Trade Show Week’s
Top 200 list. And Box was worried that the
sudden and unseasonal Georgia snowstorm
would have a chilling effect on attendance at
the ARA’s biggest annual event.
Then, of course, there was the bigger
storm into which both Box and her fellow
ARA staff had been looking at for months—
the frozen U.S. economy.
“In the months just before the convention, we could see the effect of the economy,”
she said. “Bookings were down, and we felt
we needed some kind of a lift to improve
attendance.”
As it turned out, Box says, Atlanta was
just the medicine her ailing convention
attendance needed, in terms of the location
and facilities—and the people who manage
them.
“I will say that going into this event, I
took a certain amount of comfort in the
fact that it was going to be in Atlanta this
What’s New
in Atlanta
A recent wave of downtown Atlanta hotel development is continuing. A
new boutique property,
the Hotel Indigo Atlanta
Downtown, is scheduled
to open in the historic
former Carnegie Building
in August. The 414-room
Loews Atlanta Midtown-Mile is set to open
in April 2010, and the
$285 million, 198-room
Mandarin Oriental
Atlanta will open in
2011, as will the Hard
Rock Hotel Atlanta (also
located downtown).
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+
Fun Fact
The historic Fox Theater in downtown
Atlanta is home of the world’s secondlargest theater pipe organ, custombuilt for the venue in 1929. The organ
has 3,622 pipes, spread out over five
chambers, ranging in size from that of a
ballpoint pen to 32 feet tall and big enough
around for an adult to stand in.
+
Transportation Tip
The Metropolitan Area Rapid Transit
Authority (MARTA) train is the fastest, cheapest way to get from Atlanta’s
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
to downtown Atlanta. The cost: US$1.75
plus 50 cents to buy a fare card, on which
you can also load enough credit to pay the
$1.75 for the return trip, making the total
cost for the round trip $4. The train makes
the route faster than a cab or a limo, and
you get on the train indoors at the airport terminal and off the train indoors at
Peachtree Center Station.
year, because it’s been a good destination for
us,” she said. “In fact, it’s one of my favorite
places to work. The Georgia World Congress
Center is really a great facility, both in terms
of its exhibit space and its meeting facilities,
and the people who run the place do a really
good job of explaining how to use the facilities for their optimum potential.”
Box started getting a little bit of a warm
feeling the afternoon the snow rolled in—the
day before the convention—when she met
with her convention services rep at the center
and found that the rep was already “all over
the situation.”
“I did not have to bring up my concerns
about the snow with our convention center
rep,” she said. “She was already making
arrangements for the approaches to the loading area to be salted down so that the trucks
could get in to load the exhibits, and she was
making arrangements for the sidewalks to be
cleared when the attendees got there the next
morning.”
As it turned out, the sunshine came out
for the convention when the event’s first day
rolled around. That was in part because of
a clear and sudden change in the Monday
weather, which melted Sunday’s snow away.
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But in a big-picture sense, it was because of
the help she got from the Atlanta CVB in the
weeks leading up to the event.
The CVB staff put together an extensive
telephone marketing campaign to potential
convention attendees, in this case focusing
on the geographic region, the U.S. southeast,
to build a drive-in constituency for the convention.
“That freed us up to focus on the other
parts of the country,” Box said. “Our staff
and some of our board members started
reaching out by phone to ARA members who
had attended last year’s convention but had
not yet signed up for the 2009 show.”
Bob Schuler, vice president of sales and
convention services for the Atlanta CVB,
says the marketing effort by the CVB staff
on behalf of the ARA convention involved
reaching beyond the association’s membership list.
“We call not only the members of the association involved, but also businesses within
the industry the association is involved with,
so we might not only just get more attendees and exhibitors headed their way, but
potentially even attract new membership,”
he said.
Schuler says the CVB also gave the ARA
some Web-based marketing help.
“We create micro-sites for conventions
and trade shows,” he said. “We create a link
on the group’s own site that allows you to go
seamlessly to the site we create. It gives you
the ability to book the event, book lodging,
get a full rundown of all the pertinent information you will need to know to attend, even
a what’s happening in town that is customized for your event.”
Schuler says the CVB recently debuted the
addition of video content, made for specific
events, on the micro-sites it can create for
events.
“We were happy with the outcome, especially in this economic environment,” said
Box, who added that the trade show had
335,000 square feet of exhibits this year.
On the peak night of the four-day event,
attendees used approximately 2,600 guest
rooms in the block.
“We had a shuttle bus connecting all the
hotels with the convention center, but in
many cases the attendees could simply walk,”
she said.
Schuler says that with major hotel openings in downtown Atlanta in the past couple
of years, the convention center now has eight
1,000-room hotels within walking distance,
giving the center one of the biggest room
inventories within walking distance of any
U.S. city. And because of the variety of price
points in the downtown hotel inventory, it’s
an extremely good place for attendees on a
tight budget.
Ultimately, Box says, the ARA’s Atlanta
convention ended up being a bonding and
renewal experience for its attendees.
“It was really useful for our members—
who largely come from family-owned businesses that have been in our industry for a
long time—to get together to compare notes
with each other on how they are coping with
this economy going forward,” Box said.
ROWLAND STITELER is a freelance writer
based in Crystal Beach, Fla.
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Intellectual
Guidance
BY ART KLEINER
B
ack in 1989, when Peter Senge was
an MIT lecturer with a lengthy book
in progress on a then-obscure subject called organizational learning, he
invited me to his home to look at the
outline. His editor had suggested he
seek advice on reworking the manuscript. When I arrived, Peter took me
to a long wall in his living room where
we clustered hundreds of Post-it notes
based on ideas in his book. When we
were done, there were five basic clusters on the wall, relating to five main
themes of an executive education
course he had designed: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models,
shared vision and team learning.
Identifying the traits of an
EFFECTIVE THOUGHT LEADER
and ideas ripe for crystallization.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Why,” he said, looking them over,
“They’re ongoing bodies of study and
practice. They’re disciplines.”
That was the moment I learned
about thought leadership. Peter had
been teaching and helping to develop
these five subjects for more than a
dozen years, but only then did a frame
emerge that allowed other people to
make sense of that body of work. Since
then, Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, has gone on to be a bestseller
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and is the first of several books that
he has written or co-written. But it
was all made possible by that moment
when the idea crystallized. And the
same is true for every other management writer or “business pundit” I’ve
known.
If you’re struggling to get your
voice into the marketplace of ideas,
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BY ART KLEINER
your presence relies not just on having a big idea, but having it suddenly
show up as sharp, focused and relevant
to people around you. And if you’re
charged with promoting people with
big ideas, it will make a difference to
understand why some ideas succeed in
the marketplace and others, seemingly
just as worthy, never really take hold.
These days, when there is so much
competition in every business arena,
the need to distinguish oneself as a
thought leader is stronger than ever.
“I get queries all the time from
students who want to build a career
as a thought leader, or from managers who see this as a way to transition to a better, more prominent,
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higher-paying role,” said Sally Helgesen, a
speaker and author of The Female Advantage and The Web of Inclusion.
Of course, “thinking better,” in itself,
won’t get anyone an audience. But there
are ways to build the skill of thought
leadership and even institutionalize it in
an organization. And those who are prepared to follow that course may find that
the practice of thought leadership can help
clarify and solidify all forms of business
practice, even those forms closest to the
bottom line.
The first use of the term “thought
leader” is credited, as it happens, with the
magazine I edit, strategy+business. Editing the magazine for the past few years
has sharpened my own connoisseurship of
business punditry; it’s given me a feel for
why some ideas take off and others fade.
And some of the thought leaders I know
from around the world seem to agree that
there appear to be five basic qualities at
play in the ideas that stick.
IF YOU’RE CHARGED
WITH PROMOTING
PEOPLE WITH BIG
IDEAS, IT WILL MAKE
A DIFFERENCE TO
UNDERSTAND WHY
SOME IDEAS SUCCEED
Timely Originality
SOME PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE THE KNACK FOR
PUTTING FORTH THE RIGHT IDEA AT THE RIGHT TIME.
S
Stephen Covey introduced “the seven habits of highly effective people” just as companies began to employ knowledge workers en masse and hold them accountable for
results. The “free agent nation” concept resonated brilliantly in the dotcom era, when
it was easy to build a career as an independent contractor. That was supplanted by
the “war for talent” in later years, when
large financial institutions needed to recruit
those free agents (and justify their immense
salaries).
Now, in the extremely tight economy
of 2009, the ideas of Sylvia Ann Hewlett,
economist and founding president of the
Center for Work-Life Policy, about alternative career paths are gaining currency—
they suggest that high-performing people
can be attracted by flexibility and community engagement instead of by more money.
Authors C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart put
forth their concept of “the fortune at the
bottom of the pyramid” seemingly at just
the right moment, when emerging markets
were appearing in China and India, with
hundreds of millions of underserved people
ready to enter the middle class.
It might seem like these authors have
impeccable timing, able to foresee, like
chess players, what will occur two or three
moves ahead. But in reality, the key attribute
is staying power. Prahalad and Hart first
posted their idea online in 1998, when no
journal or publisher would accept it.
“It was easy to dismiss the idea; the new
middle class in China and India was only
a weak signal,” Prahalad recalled. “But we
said, ‘How can you be a global company
and not serve 80 percent of humanity?’”
Prahalad’s book, The Fortune at the
Bottom of the Pyramid, didn’t see print
until 2004, at which point the world was
fully ready for it.
I’ve seen the value of staying with an
idea myself. In 1996, I published a book
called The Age of Heretics, a history of the
countercultural movement within large corporations. It was critically acclaimed, but it
didn’t really attract a following. One possible reason was that the “heretical” ideas
I wrote about, such as group dynamics,
diversity, corporate environmentalism and
high-performance teams, were out of fashion in an era of budding “masters of the
universe.” I recently revised the book, and I
can now point to ways in which these ideas
are newly influential. Business leaders are
looking for ways to revamp and rebuild,
more solidly and with more engagement by
people, and the “heretics” of 1996 are now
more aligned with the mainstream.
IN THE MARKETPLACE
AND OTHERS, SEEMINGLY JUST AS WORTHY, NEVER REALLY
TAKE HOLD.
Explanatory Power
A POWERFUL IDEA REVEALS THE HIDDEN PATTERNS
THAT CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HAS NOT YET FULLY
EXPLAINED.
B
Booz & Co. partner Karim Sabbagh (with
his colleagues Joe Saddi and Richard Shediac) saw one such pattern in the Middle
East not long ago. To an outsider, the region
had a series of qualities that didn’t seem to
fit together: the visible political tensions
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existed just a few hundred miles from the
boom towns of the United Arab Emirates,
with man-made islands, research and technology centers sprouting up overnight and
some of the fastest economic growth on the
planet. Sabbagh and his colleagues gathered
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IN THE CURRENT ECONOMY, IDEAS ABOUT ALTERNATIVE CAREER
PATHS ARE GAINING CURRENCY.
their observations, and in a series of meetings in late 2007 and 2008 boiled them
down to one key concept, which they called
the “paradoxes of the Middle East decision
maker.” A new generation of political leaders had emerged, determined to build a new
kind of economy that would neither squander the income from oil (as the region had
often done in the past) or follow the secular
example of the West. They would find their
own paths, traditional but modern, rapid
but constrained and newly open to the outside world in some ways (while continuing
to be closed in others). A series of articles
and speeches have followed, which helped
many outsiders understand, for the first
time, that the mysterious path of growth in
the Middle East in recent years has not been
mysterious after all, if one only knew how
to interpret it.
Explanatory power starts with simplicity.
“When we start to research a topic, my
colleagues are likely to show up with a list
of 40 bullet points,” Sabbagh said. “But it’s
unlikely that our audience will want to think
about that many things. I generally ask them
to think again, until we can come up with
the one, two or three ideas that lead to an ‘ah
ha’ that nobody has seen yet, because there
hasn’t been a need to do so until now.”
Coming up with ideas of such simplicity
can be extremely difficult, but they are best
when they appear to have been developed
easily.
“You agonize and finally you get it on
paper and people say, ‘But it’s so obvious,’”
Prahalad said. “When I was younger, that
used to irritate me. Now I think it’s the highest compliment you can get.”
There are many methods of finding deep
explanations for everyday phenomena. The
system dynamics of Jay Forrester, the scenario planning approach pioneered by Pierre
Wack and Ted Newland at the Royal Dutch/
Shell Group (and more recently by Peter
Schwartz and Napier Collyns at Global Business Network), the “wargaming” simulation
techniques developed for the U.S. military
by Mark Herman and others at Booz Allen
Hamilton, the “design thinking” approach
championed by breakthrough innovation
houses such as IDEO and many other methods have all been used to help articulate the
factors and forces beneath the surface. But
the most important single methodology is
the willingness to look freshly at real-world
problems and seek analogies and explanations that others haven’t found.
Edward Tse, the head of Booz & Company’s offices in Greater China, used that form
of analogy to explain how Chinese companies were increasingly investing in the rest
of Asia and in Africa. They weren’t doing
it through acquisitions or opening branch
offices; rather, they were seeking alliances
with existing companies there, much as
global companies were encouraged to form
alliances in China itself.
“We borrowed [political scientist] Joseph
Nye’s idea of ‘soft power,’” Tse said. “It is
very well-accepted now by Chinese executives as the framework for what they do.”
Similarly, Sally Helgesen often applies
concepts from one field to another; she says
that by doing so, she is simply following
in the footsteps of business thought leader
pioneers.
“I can be working with an institute for
girls’ education in Melbourne, Australia,”
she said, “and the next week I can be working with a police group that’s going through a
re-org. And then I’ll meet with some CEOs in
Omaha, Neb. I can see what the similarities
are and where their common challenges are.
And I think that’s very helpful information to
give people; it broadens their context. That’s
what thought leaders have always done.”
Pragmatic Value
IDEAS THAT DON’T GET USED HAVE NO IMPACT. AND IDEAS THAT CAN BE PUT
INTO PRACTICE CAN HAVE TREMENDOUS IMPACT.
O
One great example is Keith Ferrazzi’s maxim
for business success: “Never eat lunch
alone.” It can change someone’s work prospects immediately. Lean production, similarly, is a wide-ranging conceptual body of
work, but it takes hold in many companies
because of the “low-hanging fruit:” the ability to put it into practice and realize gains
almost immediately.
The trick, of course, is to get people to follow through. One master at this is Marshall
Goldsmith, the pre-eminent executive coach
and author of several best-selling books,
including What Got You Here Won’t Get
You There and Succession: Are You Ready?
Goldsmith is known for focusing relentlessly
on the pragmatic value of his lectures and his
books.
“My focus is on whether this adds real
value, as opposed to a thinly disguised effort
to prove how smart I am,” he said.
He compares his work to diet books; they
sell extraordinarily well in the U.S., while
Americans get fatter and fatter. Helping
people understand an idea won’t have much
impact, he says, unless they can (and do) put
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YOUTH
CONNECT
Understanding
the desires and
needs of younger
audiences, clients
and co-workers is
essential to tapping
their value.
B Y J A S O N R YA N D O R S E Y
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Generation Y,
my own generation,
is increasingly attending global meetings
and events. Along
with the ever-present
iPhone, new definition
of “business casual”
and Super Bowl-commercial attention span,
we bring an entirely
different view of what
we want from meetings. Just ask, we’ll tell
you. Or just follow our
Twitter feed during
your meeting. We
usually start typing
one-handed under
the table whenever
PowerPoint starts up.
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Meeting
professionals
who
embrace Gen Y’s preferences and priorities (which can be done for very little or
no money) will find us to be immensely
loyal, enthusiastic and engaged meeting
participants. In fact, Gen Y’s entrance into
the workplace is a tremendous growth
opportunity for everyone in the global
meeting and event industry. Consider the
following.
• Gen Y is event-driven. We plan our
work schedules around non-work events
(like live music and free food) rather than
planning events around our work. Our
favorite holiday is our birthday, which
we celebrate for a month. (P.S.: Mine is in
May.)
• Gen Y is drawn to participate in groups
where we feel included and valued, but are
able to maintain our individualism. It’s
why we have hundreds of friends on Facebook but like our page to look different.
• Gen Y wants to be part of the solution. We need to see ongoing progress and
tangible outcomes, and we loathe wasting
time—to us that’s worse than watching
YouTube videos on a dial-up connection.
Wel….come…to…the…mee…………….
ting….
These and other meeting-centric characteristics are multiplied by Gen Y’s sheer
size.
My research into generations and how
to bridge them for maximum performance
shows that Gen Y was born between
the late 1970s and mid-1990s. Our first
generational defining moment was the
Challenger explosion (I watched it in my
elementary school’s cafeteria), followed
by the fall of the Berlin Wall (we heard
it fell but didn’t know where Berlin was)
and the Gulf War (which we watched on
CNN over dinner). Our capstone event
was Sept. 11, 2001.
Using the 1977-to-1995 birth-year
range, Gen Y is 80 million strong in the
U.S. and is the fastest-growing demographic in the workplace. The year 2010
will mark a particularly powerful milestone, as Gen Y becomes the entire 18-to32 young professional demographic.
Meeting professionals are taking notice
of the impending generational shift. At
the 120 events I keynoted last year, Gen
Y was only a fraction of the audience yet
its inclusion was a hot topic among the
events’ organizers. And every meeting professional I worked with had a story about
Gen Y. Here is one of my favorites.
The CEO was giving his annual presentation to about 200 employees. In the
middle of the talk a cell phone rang in the
back of the room. We looked around anxiously trying to see who would leave their
phone on during the meeting. Then someone answered the phone and started talking. It was a Gen Yer who then walked out
of the room to continue the conversation.
His boss later confronted him to ask what
could possibly be so important that he
would answer his phone during the meeting. He said he had to—it was his mom.
Before you think I’m simply giving
my generation a hard time for always wanting to stay connected, I know that the vast
majority of my peers would absolutely not
answer that phone call—instead we’d text
our mom to find out what she wanted.
My research reveals at least three key
reasons Gen Y views and participates
in meetings differently than previous
generations.
1) Gen Y is entering the workforce
on average one to five years later than
other generations. The reason is simple.
Our Boomer parents wanted to make life
easier for us than it was for them. Seven
college majors and one study abroad class
later, we have less real-world experience
to guide our actions than previous generations. Many twentysomethings I interview
confess they have never been taught how
to conduct themselves during a formal
meeting or in a professional environment.
Effective meeting participation and group
communication are learned skills, and
many in Gen Y have simply not learned
them yet.
2) Gen Y has a different set of workplace and real-world priorities than previous generations. We are the only generation
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in the workplace that has no expectation
of lifetime employment. In fact, I’ve found
that Gen Y thinks long-term employment
is 13 months—and that includes vacation
time. We also prioritize lifestyle and relationships above work. We will move to a
new city and then look for a job. Thank
goodness for Couchsurfing.com.
3) Gen Y expects to be engaged and
entertained before, during and after a meeting. We have come of age with handheld
technology and 24/7 media that enables us
to stay constantly connected, involved and
skip the commercials. We expect the same
at meetings large and small. Where a planning committee sees protocol we see TiVo.
While
these three broader characteristics might seem a disadvantage to the
meeting industry, and potentially Gen Y
career prospects, each of them can be an
asset if meeting professionals take them
into consideration. Of course, it’s important to consider Gen Y in the context of
the other generations sitting in the audience. You can quickly recognize other
generations—they take notes in cursive.
As your clientele begins to reflect upon
Gen Y’s emergence, meeting professionals
will have a growing challenge: balancing
the generation’s views about meetings with
the preferences of the other three generations likely to be in the audience. More
often than not, a meeting tends to reflect
the personality of the generation in charge
rather than the generation in attendance.
If you choose to embrace Gen Y as a
strategic opportunity, and potentially a
competitive advantage for your organization, there are three strategies you can
immediately implement—each of which
can be customized to fit any meeting and
adopted for little or no money.
Attract ‘em Like Free Pizza at 2 a.m.
When it comes to Gen Y, the success of your
meeting can be heavily influenced by what
happens before your meeting ever begins.
The reason for this is that Gen Y decides
upfront if they like a meeting or not—
often before they enter the space. They
base opinions on what they’ve heard about
your meeting from colleagues, friends, past
attendees, marketing materials and online
commentary. Use this to your advantage by
enrolling us in some aspect of the meeting
before it starts. This will increase our support and enthusiasm for the meeting and
provide you with firsthand information to
shape your meeting.
The two questions I’ve found most
important to ask Gen Y when planning a
meeting are: What would make the meeting valuable to you professionally and what
would make the meeting enjoyable to you
personally? Remember, Gen Y values lifestyle above career. If your event can incorporate both, you have a winning formula.
To get the most accurate responses, I recommend working with a member of Gen
Y to call or e-mail likely Gen Y attendees.
We trust our peers more than any other age
group and will provide them with the most
honest opinions.
Once you know what your Gen Y
attendees want, combine their answers
with our big-picture priorities such as:
outcome-driven actions, relevance for
C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 9 2
Defining Generations
Not every person in a generation will have all the characteristics common to their generation.
Factors such as parenting style and economics can influence people to exhibit very few of their
generation’s common traits. The following generational descriptions are not a box everyone
must fit in, but rather clues on where to start to connect with and lead people of different ages.
Generation X
Baby Boomers
Matures
Famously skeptical with an
attitude of “prove
it to me.”
Tend to be
loyal to individuals rather than
organizations.
Likely to
Google keynote
speakers after a talk to doublecheck the presented facts.
Define work
ethic in hours per
week—and the
hours must be
seen to count.
Believe the
only path to
career success
is to “pay your
dues”—and not
with a credit card.
Boomers know cool things like
state capitals and how to read a
map that doesn’t talk.
Have a strong
military connection. As my
grandfather says,
“We left a lot
of good people
behind.”
Believe in
delayed gratification. They want
to pay cash for everything and save
the leftovers.
Matures will wait in line at a
grocery store rather than use the
self-checkout lane.
(born 1965-1976)
(born 1946-1964)
(born pre-1946)
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Forget about Rolodexes and business lunches.
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Tomorrow’s
Networking
TODAY
BY VANESSA RICHARDSON
The desire to extend
professional networks is
growing as fast as unemployment figures—and
all generations in the
workforce are striving
for unique, meaningful
online and face-to-face
encounters.
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In the
Today’s
business
people, all
generations
of them,
use smart
phones and
social online
media tools
to network.
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St. Louis neighborhood of Central West End,
100 entrepreneurs gather monthly for professional networking, not just business card
Go Fish—Dinner and Discussion at a hip
vodka bar. After happy hour, a four-course
meal is served at tables for four, and after
each course, attendees move to a different
table to ensure meeting a variety of people in
true speed networking style.
After dessert comes the presentation,
either a single speaker or a panel. At the
latest event, it was a panel of three generations—a twentysomething Gen Yer, a Gen
Xer in his mid-thirties and a Boomer in his
50s—discussing why they left corporate jobs
to start their own businesses. Moderating
the panel is Dinner and Discussion Creator
David Siteman Garland, an entrepreneur
who has developed several companies and
currently hosts a local TV program The Rise
to the Top, in which he advises on how to
create successful businesses. He turned 25 in
April.
“The theme for networking today is to
get people moving,” Garland said. “There’s
an ADD mentality during these events, so the
key is to have everyone interact in the format
they like, whether mingling in a big room or
at a table for four.”
Forget about Rolodexes and business
lunches. Today’s business people, all generations of them, use smart phones and social
online media tools to network. Face-to-face
meetings are still considered the best way to
cement a relationship, but time constraints
and a tough economy don’t always make
these possible, inspiring effective networkers to use alternative ways to establish and
effectively maintain relationships. As the
Internet becomes a permanent fixture in our
lives, social-networking Web sites are no longer unconventional; Gen Xers, Tweeners and
Boomers all use tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
“Networking hasn’t changed over time,
but the tools have,” Garland said.
He considers LinkedIn, Facebook and
Twitter to be his primary marketing and
advertising methods and claims a following
of more than 300,000 people without having
spent a dime on advertising.
But while the Internet has revolutionized
how business is done, there’s still a generational gap with how well it does in creating
long-lasting relationships.
Julia Barlow Sherlock is a Boomer, but as
career services director at Central Michigan
University, she says future generations are
going to rely even more on technology for
networking.
“Whereas Boomers tapped into family
and faculty advisors during job hunts, college students now search through their avatars on Second Life and by tweeting. They’re
creating networking capabilities as soon as
they get a cell phone or computer. That’s
how they want to communicate and stay in
touch.”
The happy medium between tradition and technology is what’s necessary to
achieve, though. Richard Guha, a former
corporate executive who now runs consulting firm Max Brand Equity, says the magic is
in knowing how to blend them effectively.
“I can have 15,000 friends on LinkedIn
who I won’t know very well, then there’s my
five golfing buddies who have little reach,”
Guha said. “So I need to reach out to my
concentric circles of close friends, acquaintances and LinkedIn connections in a way
that is efficient. The goal with technology
is making it effective for your networking
needs and connections.”
VIRTUALLY SOCIAL
While LinkedIn is considered an essential site
to see and be seen on, many people consider
it more a research platform than a networking site.
For example, Ephrain Peak, a 54-yearold software engineer in Tucson, Ariz.,
says he uses LinkedIn prominently for his
job hunt, and that his methods work well
for anyone looking for leads and industry
connections.
“When I look at a connection, I see who
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20X20
Pecha Kucha
FOR THE FUTURE
Structured rapid-fire
presentations that give
each presenter the
spotlight for six minutes
and 40 seconds, the
time needed to show
20 slides for 20 seconds each, that’s the
essence of the Pecha
Kucha style. Thus far,
Pecha Kucha Night
gatherings have trended
to casual affairs in
practice and promotion.
In fact, Pecha Kucha
(from the Japanese,
roughly meaning “chit
chat”) originated with
creative professionals,
such as artists and
photographers searching for ways to share
their work with a variety
of others from ancillary
disciplines. However,
the 20x20 format is
spreading to the professional world—more
structured similar meetup strategies include
TED’s “Lighting Talk” and
O’Reilly’s “Ignite”—leading to a revolutionary
new type of networking.
The flexibility of
Pecha Kucha-style
events crosses paths
with the unconference
ideal—pending available
space, interested presenters simply sign up
to take the stage. Organized in more than 180
cities across six continents, Pecha Kucha is
open, accessible and
increasingly popular.
March saw 51 official
Pecha Kucha Night
events with more than
10,000 attendees.
Industry professionals interested in
hosting 20x20 format
events such as these
are advised to see
this evolving beast in
action—individual Pecha
Kucha presentations
can often be found
on YouTube.com and
pechakuchanight on
Twitter provides a fountain of ongoing news,
links and reviews. However, immersion is best:
Visit pecha-kucha.org
and attend a local gathering to really see how
the event plays out…
and gauge it’s suitability
for your audience.
—Michael Pinchera
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JASON HENSEL
Jonah Lehrer wants to help you make better
BY JASON HENSEL
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I
t was standing room only. No, that’s not quite true—some sat
in the aisles of the Harvard Book Store watching the event on
TVs. On that late February evening, there was the middleaged lady in a green sweater with a scarf wrapped around her
neck, an Oliver Sacks lookalike with wide eyes behind round
spectacles and, up front, a young man with a mustache who
leaned forward to listen attentively.
They were all there to hear Jonah Lehrer talk about his
new book, How We Decide, a New York Times bestseller
that explores neurological research and social psychology
studies in order to exemplify how people can become better
decision makers. Even if some readers find the book comparable to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Lehrer tightens the screws
and successfully takes the subject to a deeper level, without
pretending there are easy answers when it comes to decision
making.
Lehrer’s gift for turning hard scientific studies into entertaining and interesting stories has seen
him published widely in publications
such as the Best American Science and
Nature Writing 2007, the Boston Globe,
Nature, The New Yorker and Wired. He’s
an editor at large for Seed magazine and
contributes regularly to U.S. National
Public Radio’s science program Radio
“PROBLEMS THAT
WERE MOST LIKELY
TO BE SOLVED WERE
PROBLEMS THAT
WERE TACKLED BY
A DIVERSE GROUP
OF THINKERS.”
Lab and the Science Channel’s TV program Brink. And at
age 27, Lehrer has been hailed by the Los Angeles Times as
“an important new thinker.”
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“Metacognition—thinking about thinking—is a crucial skill,”
he says to the audience. “People need to become more sensitive
listeners.”
Being more aware of your thoughts can prepare you for knowing when to use your rational or emotional brain in decisions, and
good decision making is about taking advantage of the different
tools inside the head, Lehrer says. People make different situations
benefit from different kinds of decision making, so depending on
what the decision is about—breakfast cereal, cars or a potential
spouse—one should think in different ways.
“I think one of the things I have tried to get away from is this idea
that there is some short, secret recipe for good decision making—
that it should always be rational or always blink or always trust
your gut—that there is some universal solution we can always rely
on,” he says. “I think those are always over-simplified answers.”
THE ENGINE OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Lehrer and his wife lived in Concord, N.H., for a few years before
moving to Boston so she could work for a news service in town.
“I’m the transportable one,” Lehrer says, walking down the
street, his lean body carrying a shoulder bag heavy with several
books he’s reading. “I just go where she goes—give me a computer
and I’m good to go.”
“THE BEST WAY TO
SOLVE A PROBLEM IS
TO FOCUS ON NOT
BEING FOCUSED.”
It appears, though, that living in Boston is perfect for a writer
interested in neuroscience and biological sciences. Strolling down
Massachusetts Avenue from Harvard University to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one is surrounded by some of
the world’s finest brain study labs.
“These places have incredible traditions from William James
onwards in terms of psychology, mind science in particular, but
really just scientific research in general,” Lehrer says. “And I think
what defines Harvard and MIT, as opposed to other universities,
is that they’ve really targeted large-scale projects and funded, very
aggressively, risky research, research that is very much at the cutting edge that may or may not pan out.”
If something doesn’t pan out, though, it’s not the end of the
world. Lehrer notes that mistakes are beneficial, illuminating and
downright required in order to make better decisions.
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“I always think of the Bob Dylan line, ‘There’s no success like
failure, and failure’s no success at all,’” says Lehrer, whose love of
music favors alt-country and indie rock. “One thing I really wanted
to get into the book was this work by Carol Dweck. She’s done
well-controlled studies that show that kids who see learning, see
the mistakes as part of learning and thus want to make mistakes
and learn from their mistakes end up doing much better over a
course of a few months.”
This is where neuroscience, he says, can help clarify thoughts
about education and pedagogy in general—actually seeing how
brains learn, what happens at the level of individual brain cells and
how one can fast forward that learning process.
“I think the natural tendency for us is to minimize mistakes,”
Lehrer says. “When we get home from a long day at work, the last
thing we want to think about is all the stuff we messed up, all the
mistakes made that day. What makes self-defined experts experts is
that they think about their mistakes. Tom Brady, or any pro quarterback, spends hours watching game tape. They don’t watch game
tapes and look at all the stuff they did right that day, all the passes
they made on Sunday. They watch game tape with all the passes
they missed, all the open men they didn’t find.”
Consider Herb Stein, a soap opera director Lehrer says is
insanely obsessed with mistakes.
“He gets home from a 16-hour day, he’s been filming all day
and what does he do? He grabs a beer and puts in the rough cut of
that day’s tape, forces himself to find 30 things he did wrong, 30
mistakes, mistakes so minor no one else notices,” he says. “I was
sitting there with him—I had no idea that was a mistake, I didn’t
even notice. And he says, ‘No, I should have been six inches over to
the right,’ and as unpleasant as that is, I think it is a great way to
learn. It is an extreme version we can all learn from, that it really is
important to focus on your mistakes, dwell on them, because they
are the engine of your knowledge.”
RESTRUCTURE THE WORKPLACE
Learning from failure should be emphasized in the workplace, Lehrer says. Employers should allow people to fail, and then focus on
mistakes and what positives can be mined from them. But even that
game plan is no easy solution.
“More information doesn’t lead to better decisions,” he says.
“Sometimes you make better decisions when you deliberately
leave out information, give yourself fewer facts to work with. That
doesn’t mean we should start championing that fact. It just means
that you have to become sensitive to the boundary nature of your
brain, to the fact that you have computational limitations.”
One Web site that captivates Lehrer is InnoCentive.com, where
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JASON HENSEL (8)
“THERE IS NO SECRET
RECIPE TO HAPPINESS.
IT’S SOMETHING WE
ALL FIND ON OUR
OWN. IT’S PART OF
WHAT MAKES US SO
INTERESTING.”
companies with huge research and development budgets, such as
Kraft and General Electric, post difficult problems that they haven’t
been able to solve. A study led by Karim R. Lakhani, Ph.D., of
the Harvard Business School, and Lars Bo Jeppesen, Ph.D., of the
Copenhagen Business School, found that the site can be very effective, solving approximately 40 percent of the problems submitted.
“One of the most interesting findings is that problems that were
most likely to be solved were problems that were tackled by a
diverse group of thinkers,” Lehrer says. “For example, if you post
a microbiology problem, chances are it won’t be solved by a microbiologist. Chances are it will be solved by an organic chemist getting together with a biophysicist who came together with a systems
biologist or one of the people who work at the fringes of the field
who know a little bit about microbiology but are not card-carrying
microbiologists. They aren’t stuck in that same old paradigm.”
This suggests that there are tangible benefits when people from
different disciplines are brought together to work on a problem
outside of their traditional domains. It also demonstrates, Lehrer
says, that companies should do a better job of making this part
of their structures—bringing people with different viewpoints
together and making sure they don’t indulge in group-think, making sure they don’t settle on some easy consensus right away, but
actually encourage real discussion.
“A friend of mine that works at Pixar was telling me that there’s
one bathroom for the one big floor,” Lehrer says. “He thinks it’s
to make people all go to the same bathroom—the executives, the
animators, the writers—to encourage random interactions.”
Another related idea for a better decision-making workplace is
the view that daydreaming, or relaxing the mind, to solve a problem is preferable to focusing solely on a problem.
“It turns out the best way to get past a problem often isn’t focus,
isn’t locking in and trying to force yourself to pay attention, it’s
usually indulging in relaxation to try and tap into remote associations,” he says. “The best way to solve a problem is to focus
on not being focused.
THE IMPORTANCE OF
BRAIN STUDYING
Learning about the brain can help constrain scientific theories, Jonah Lehrer writes on his popular blog, The Frontal
Cortex (www.scienceblogs.com/cortex).
“We haven’t decoded the cortex or solved human
nature—we’re not even close—but we can begin to narrow the space of possible theories,” he wrote in a March
12 entry. “We know, for instance, that the rational agent
model of Homo Economicus isn’t particularly accurate, at
least from the perspective of the brain, and that the deliberative prefrontal cortex is often out-shouted by emotional
brain areas like the nucleus accumbens, insula, etc. This
supports, of course, lots of observational studies that demonstrate that people rarely rely on explicit calculations of
utility (or explicit calculations of anything, really) when
making decisions. The anatomical details, in other words,
can help settle the argument.”
C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 9 8
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Meetings
CHANGE THE WORLD
The 2009 World Education Congress in Salt Lake will equip meeting
professionals with the knowledge and support needed to excel in
the current global marketplace…and beyond.
T
he global meeting and event industry is
standing tall in the battle with international economic woes, government scrutiny and public misperception. At MPI’s
MeetDifferent in Atlanta, industry forces
aligned to safeguard meeting professionals
and bolster understanding of the true value
of meetings. The result of our community’s
efforts and the ongoing reality is that the
world is ready to continue meeting—and
MPI’s World Education Congress (WEC),
July 11-14 in Salt Lake, will guide industry
professionals into a successful future.
Now it’s time to take the next step in
the industry’s evolution; it’s time to be
bold, take a stand and create your own
destiny.
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An Extensive Education
To get attendees on track to make a profound change, the
WEC Opening General Session (OGS) will immediately dive
into the most essential topics affecting meetings and events,
provide valuable education for maintaining a healthy industry and celebrate professional successes. Lawyer, writer, economist and actor Ben Stein will be one of the keynote speakers
for the OGS, a natural choice given his recent pro-meeting
industry editorial in The New York Times.
These themes continue throughout the conference in education sessions such as “Successful Partnerships in Uncertain
Times,” “The New Stimulus Law and the Meetings Industry,” “Building Effective Teams in Turbulent Times” and
“The Irreplaceable You.”
The WEC will offer the greatest breadth of knowledge
tracks yet for meeting professionals of every discipline to
expand skill sets and help solidify the value of the meeting
industry. Knowledge tracks will embrace topics on all skill
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and experience levels.
Following the success of the speaker series design at MeetDifferent, the WEC is delivering a pair of Power Keynote sessions.
The former director of communications for HarleyDavidson Motor Co., Ken Schmidt, worked to build the
Harley-Davidson brand back up to its previous world-class
standard and re-ignited consumer demand. Monday at 8:30
a.m./08.30, Schmidt’s Power Keynote will discuss corporate
recovery, specifically how to help businesses recover from
downturns, mismanagement or image problems.
Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton (“The Carrot Guys”),
bestselling authors of The Invisible Employee and The Carrot Principle, will speak about employee motivation development and techniques. If you’re in search of the best methods
to motivate your staff (and maybe even yourself) and incorporate appreciated employee recognition programs, follow the
carrot to their Tuesday Power Keynote at 9:50 a.m./09.50.
CSR Endeavors
The meeting and event industry includes so many businesses
and activities that meeting professionals are well positioned
to help change the world through the implementation and
dissemination of green and socially responsible business practices. To foster that development, the WEC will teach with
professional education sessions and by example with ambitious corporate social responsibility (CSR) plans.
On Saturday (8 a.m./08:00), help Salt Lake Mayor Peter
Corroon reach his One Million Trees for One Million People
goal with the Million Tree Challenge (www.milliontrees.slco.
org) project. WEC participants are encouraged to lend a hand
to the campaign that will plant 1 million trees in Salt Lake
County by 2017. This project not only gives back to the host
city by making a commitment to provide for future generations, it’s also a fun way to network with your peers in a
casual setting.
The community service project is followed by special preconference session “Sustaining Your Business through CSR,”
led by Mariela McIlwraith, CMM, director of conferences
and accommodation at the University of British Columbia.
CSR-focused professional education continues throughout
the WEC with valuable sessions dedicated to people, planet
and profit, such as “Green Meetings & Social Responsibility:
The Legal Essentials,” “How Does My Business Get Certified
Sustainable?” “Incorporating Philanthropic Elements into
Events,” “Using Technology to Green Meetings,” “Planning
Healthy Meetings for Mind and Body” and more.
On WEC registration forms, all attendees also have the
opportunity to help offset their carbon footprints through
support of the University of Utah’s Campaign for Sustainable
Energy (Windpower.utah.edu), a program that puts locally
produced renewable energy on the grid.
Networking for Tomorrow
Beyond the innate networking opportunities available during
activities such as the community service project, WEC attendees are afforded even more chances to expand their professional networks during the conference.
• Pathable, the official WEC online social networking partner, helps conference attendees communicate before, during
and after an event by establishing an interactive online community with hot topics, session wikis and more. Nearly 600
MeetDifferent 2009 attendees activated Pathable accounts,
underscoring the value of participating in this innovative
opportunity. The WEC Pathable community is already active,
so visit http://wec-2009.pathable.com and join the conversation.
• MPI will present the first RISE Award for Organizational
Achievement and recognize the MPI Community of Honorees
at 4 p.m./16.00 on Fri., July 10. Following the presentation,
mingle with friends over light hors d’oeuvres and drinks.
• MPI Foundation fundraiser Sip, Savor & Roll at Pierpont
Place on Saturday gives a relaxing opportunity to sit with and
connect to new professional acquaintances just a half block
from the convention center. Enjoy a wide array of martinis,
hors d’oeuvres, an outdoor cigar lounge and the sounds of
Rat Pack favorites or head straight to the gaming tables. It’s a
night of pure indulgence and investing in the industry’s future,
beginning at 9 p.m./21.00.
• Sunday evening, The Depot, Salt Lake’s hottest new
music and entertainment venue built right inside the landmark Union Pacific Railroad Station, is transformed into
Rendezvous. Stay connected and meet new friends on the
dance floor or at the bar while supporting the MPI Foundation and enjoying live music.
• Red Butte Garden’s outdoor amphitheater, set in the
largest botanical and ecological center in the region at the
base of the Wasatch Mountain Range, plays host to the Closing Night Reception 7:30 p.m./19.30 on Tues., July 14. Go
barefoot in the grass, dine on a gourmet picnic dinner and
relax with your colleagues under the stars amidst the 100
acres of display and natural gardens. As you cool off in the
summer mountain air, the natural outdoor sounds will turn
to the sounds of one of America’s favorite recording artists.
For the latest information about the WEC, including
an updated and expanded schedule and special guest
announcements, visit www.mpiweb.org/wec09.
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C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 7 5
it into action.
Goldsmith credits his success to his focus
on results. He asks audiences to return to the
workplace and ask for personal feedback
from co-workers, and he tracks how many
THE ACTIONABLE VALUE OF YOUR IDEAS
IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT AND OFTEN
OVERLOOKED.
people follow through. To his knowledge
(and mine), no other management thought
leader does this, although many pay close
attention to follow-up from the classes
they teach in other ways. Even if you don’t
follow through, the actionable value of your
ideas is critically important and all too often
overlooked.
A Robust Foundation
CAN YOUR IDEA BE TESTED EMPIRICALLY? CAN IT SURVIVE A CHALLENGE
OR QUESTION?
I
Its robustness probably depends on where
it came from. For Prahalad, for instance,
the strongest ideas start with an unanswered question. In the late 1980s, he
and Gary Hamel began to doubt the conventional wisdom about relative market
share—and specifically the argument that
large dominant companies had unassailable positions.
“Theory said that Honda could not
take on GM, CNN could not take on NBC
and Wal-Mart could not take on Sears. But
exactly the opposite was happening. Why
was that?” he asked.
This led to the concept of core competencies, the idea that launched both of
their reputations as management thinkers.
Substantiation of this sort doesn’t
mean relying on corporate examples or
case studies for proof. As Phil Rosenzweig
documented in his recent book The Halo
Effect, it’s extremely difficult (and perhaps
impossible) to prove that a company’s success is due to any particular factor or that
it can be replicated. Ever since Enron was
singled out as an example of stellar management in the late 1990s, the proof of an
idea has had to come from other places—
often from the logic of your explanation.
You need to show why, reasonably, it
would make sense for your idea to work,
and you need to be transparent, revealing
the sources of analysis that led to your
insights. Prahalad, for this reason, creates
a diagram of the logical underpinnings of
his idea for every book he writes and bases
his outline on that diagram.
Social network analysts, such as Karen
Stephenson, have learned to do this, and
in the process have illuminated aspects of
organizational and community life that
were impenetrable before. They enter
organizations and track the patterns of
communication—who speaks to whom,
who communicates by e-mail and whether
they talk about gossip, work procedures or
career advice. After analyzing the results
mathematically, they could show how
different types of people played different
roles in passing ideas. Writer Malcolm
Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point,
was credible, in large part, because of its
basis in this research.
A Natural Constituency
RE-ENGINEERING BECAME A POPULAR MANAGEMENT FAD BECAUSE IT SPOKE
TO THE FRUSTRATED EXECUTIVES WHO HAD INVESTED MILLIONS IN COMPUTER
SYSTEMS AND WANTED, IN EFFECT, A WAY TO PROGRAM THE WHOLE COMPANY.
O
Organizational learning resonated with
business unit leaders who knew they could
get better results if they found a way to
engage their people. And the emerging
idea of marketing ROI has a natural constituency among chief marketing officers
because it suggests that they deserve a seat
on the CEO’s strategic team.
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Every major successful idea succeeds
because it has people who promote it,
either because they believe it’s the right
thing to do or because it serves their interests (or, most likely, both). Those are the
people who fill the seats during seminars
and who carry the message back to the
office. And they may not be obvious to
the thought leaders themselves at first.
The “war for talent,” for example, was
often pitched at human resources executives. But its natural constituency was the
senior executives of companies with new
global operations. They suddenly needed
to recruit and deploy high-quality people
around the world, and they didn’t always
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know how to do it.
Marshall Goldsmith deliberately tailors
his messages to his target group, which in
his case consists of CEOs and other senior
executives.
“My clients probably have an average
IQ of 150,” Goldsmith said. “But they
have so many thousand things banging
them around the head every minute, to
get them to focus on anything is incredibly difficult. So if I come up with complex
concepts, they don’t remember it and they
don’t follow through. I have to say things
that are memorable and simple enough to
have them actually take action.”
For the same reason, Edward Tse makes
sure to publish frequently, in print and
online in both English and Chinese.
“We know that the people we want to
reach will pay more attention if they see
that others like them are paying attention
too,” he said.
While with Procter & Gamble’s Mid-
Thought Leaders Feature 0509_C.indd 91
dle East group, Karim Sabbagh says he
learned “there is no such thing as a universal insight. Every insight applies only to
its target group.” One Middle East soap
campaign, for example, resonated with
women in the region, including those who
followed traditionally strict rules about
dress and decorum. It promised that they
could “be a new you every day.”
“This was an important idea for women
emerging from a constrained society,” Sabbagh said. “They couldn’t change the way
they dressed, but they could still renew
themselves. It wouldn’t have resonated
with a European or American woman the
same way.”
Thought leaders similarly target their
messages, listening to the way they sound
through the ears of their constituents.
value, a robust foundation and a natural
constituency) will stand out. There’s no
guarantee that it will be successful, but
the most compelling and powerful ideas
seem to include these important elements.
When I work with aspiring thought leaders, those are the qualities we aim to create. That doesn’t mean we create them by
moving through the list. Most thought
leaders, like Peter Senge thoughtfully staring at the notes on the wall of his house,
develop those five attributes through intensive observation and synthesis. Then, one
day, the insight crystallizes. The phrases
emerge. And then begins the long and
enjoyable task of introducing those ideas
to the public at large and testing and refining them further.
A Crystallizing Moment
An idea with all of these attributes (timely
originality, explanatory power, pragmatic
ART KLEINER is editor-in-chief of
strategy+business.
4/23/09 2:45:15 PM
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 79
swift career advancement and interesting
people or information. Now you can craft
your meeting messaging to fit your Gen Y
attendees as snuggly as their favorite iPod
headphones. Use the following cues for
maximum impact.
SIMILAR OTHERS. Feature spokespeople
for your meeting who are in Gen Y and
look like it. We want to know that people
around our age will be in attendance and
have some level of influence.
AUTHENTIC AND UNSCRIPTED. Include
candid photos, unfiltered comments and
homemade videos of people attending your
meeting. Behind-the-scenes-style footage is
best for YouTube.
IMMEDIATELY ACTIONABLE. List highly
specific outcomes Gen Y can use within
seven days after attending the meeting.
These outcomes should align with our
professional and personal priorities. If
possible, detail the potential return on our
financial and time investments.
TRUSTED CHANNELS. Spread the word
via Facebook, blog postings, RSS feeds,
YouTube, LinkedIn, organization or industry young professional groups and by asking Gen Y to forward meeting announcements to friends or colleagues.
UNEXPECTED TEASERS. Get creative
in your messaging: “5 Reasons Your
iPhone Wants to Attend Our Meeting” or
“Bring Your Business Clothes, Flip Flops
Optional.”
LIFESTYLE ORIENTED. Promote live
entertainment, food events, onsite competitions, new technology and lifestyle
attractions within walking distance. You
might even consider an interactive map
that shows cool stuff to do within a mile
of the meeting.
THINGS TO BRING. Upfront homework
can build excitement, especially when it’s
non-traditional. For example, ask Gen Y
to bring their favorite vintage t-shirt or
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Ramen Noodles recipe.
UNOFFICIAL HANDBOOK. Ask last
year’s Gen Y attendees what they wish
they would have known before attending
the meeting that would have made it more
meaningful. Compile these responses into
an unofficial handbook. Some of my favorite responses: Get to meetings early if you
want to sit with friends, bring more business cards than you think you’ll need and
don’t assume coffee will be provided.
Engage Like Guitar Hero
Positioning your meeting in a Gen Y
friendly way will make attendees want to
become more engaged. Build on this interest by promoting ways for them to connect
with other attendees before and during the
event. You can do this through social networking sites or by offering a short online
survey that matches attendees who have
similar survey responses.
Once Gen Y is at the meeting (which
is a good sign, especially if it’s on the
weekend), design the schedule so they
interact with leadership early and often.
Consider seating VIPs at separate tables
during meals rather than in one section
or sponsoring experiential activities that
require attendees of different ages to
work together toward a common goal.
First-time Gen Y attendees do
best at meetings when given the inside
scoop ahead of time. As one Gen Yer told
me, “Nothing is more embarrassing than
wearing the first-time-attendee ribbon and
looking young. It’s like a billboard that
says, ‘Need help. Have nothing to offer
in exchange.’” Rather than a ribbon and
breakfast, consider offering a “conference
connector” to first-time Gen Y attendees.
These experienced meeting attendees meet
new attendees at the beginning of the event
and share their past experiences, sessions
not to miss, tricks of the trade and any
other insider information. They can talk
again during the meeting or to debrief at
the end. To facilitate a healthy connection
you can offer a “conference coach” in a
small group setting and provide talking
points.
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Gen Y@WEC
Jason Ryan Dorsey is presenting at MPI’s World Education Congress, July 11-14 in Salt Lake.
ably not in Gen Y, so go ahead and text a
question to 242242. I’m not kidding. Try
this one: What is Jason Ryan Dorsey’s Web
site?
Turn the Meeting Into a Movement
After speaking at 1,800 events, I choose to
see a meeting as a starting point rather than
If your meeting offers options, use creativity in titles and clearly list the actionable outcomes. Terms like “effective
communication” mean different things
to different ages. One generation might
think effective communication is presentation skills and another might think it’s
instant messaging (LOL!). Also, consider
highlighting sessions that could be particularly valuable to young professionals who want to outgrow their cubicles.
Shake up the typical meeting day.
Offer “walk and talks” or other breaks
where people can take a walk outside,
respond to voice mails or use Yelp.com to
find a place for dinner. Consider leaving
one session slot TBD and ask attendees to
vote online or by phone on the topic they
want to discuss. At the very least, set aside
20 minutes or so for attendees to upload
their photos, videos and comments to a
specific meeting Web site or social networking page. You can even have a contest
with the information they upload. One of
my recent clients held a high-end dinner
during the meeting. The attendee contest:
Photograph and upload the best picture of
yourself with a steak. Sounds ridiculous,
but attendees thought it was fun, humorous and completely unexpected. The photos also created valuable buzz and were
featured at a national meeting.
Of course, technology can help to make
your meeting more engaging for Gen Y, but
rather than setting up a webinar (which
contrary to public opinion Gen Y does not
like), designate a “meeting guru.” All you
do is provide a cell phone number to which
people can text questions about the meeting (and get responses) during the event.
It’s like ChaCha for your meeting. If you
don’t know about ChaCha you’re probmpiweb.org
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an ending. If your Gen Y attendees enjoy
your meeting, they will see it that way too.
Make the most of this by leveraging your
meeting into something more: a movement.
Now I’m not saying to start a canned food
drive, just that the time between meetings
can add tremendous value to your actual
meeting. As companies and organizations
demand a greater return on their meeting
investment, you can prove that you bring
more to the table than a one-time event.
You bring message reinforcement, participant community and ongoing momentum.
To turn your meeting into a movement,
you need your Gen Y attendees’ e-mail
addresses—ask for their top three takeaways from the meeting. You can do this
in a survey, but any e-mail correspondence
that appears generic will end up in our junk
mailbox. Instead, make the e-mail greeting
interesting or unexpected, such as “Five
Funky Photos From the Meeting. Are you
in one?” or “I know you’re busy, but it’s
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time you tell me what you really think.”
In addition to the feedback e-mail, ask
attendees during and after the meeting if
they want to form a Move Forward group.
This group connects once a month—online
or by phone—and members commit to taking one action every month in alignment
with the takeaways from the meeting. The
other group members share their experiences and support each other. This can
greatly increase the impact of your meeting and build excitement for the next one.
Members of one Move Forward group I
interviewed said that the camaraderie and
accountability changed their lives. They
felt connected, inspired and didn’t want to
let each other down—despite living in different parts of the country.
To keep everyone in the loop, create a quarterly “Where are They Now?”
e-newsletter with updates, coolest project
recently undertaken and other attendee
adventures. You can include this quarterly
update in an existing e-newsletter, but
the language and design needs to fit Gen
Y. Trade in the flowery prose for bullet
points, candid pictures and action lists.
The final step to transform
your meeting into a movement is to ask
Gen Y to serve on your next event-planning
committee. Having a direct line with Gen
Y industry peers will add a new dimension
to the committee’s conversation. If you
can’t let Gen Y play a more active role in
planning your meeting, at least let us help
you to name it. You can do this via sites
such as Namethis.com.
The more input and influence Gen Y can
provide to your meeting’s decision makers,
the more your meeting will reflect the best
Gen Y has to offer. We might even start
showing up early…like 9 a.m.
JASON RYAN DORSEY is a generational
speaker and bestselling writer.
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C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 8 2
he’s connected to and what degrees of separation I am away from those people,” Peak
said.
Peak targets segments in the industry he’s
pursuing, then targets interesting companies
in those segments.
“Then I look at LinkedIn to see if I know
anyone at those companies, or if I know people who know people there,” he said.
Peak is also active in LinkedIn groups,
some of which are professional organizations
in their own rights, complete with job listings
that allow employment hunting in a less formal manner.
LinkedIn experts recommend that newcomers join LinkedIn groups focused on their
specific industries, and also ask and answer
questions on the LinkedIn Answers component to meet a wider swath of people.
Meeting professionals are also tiptoeing into Facebook as a place to get business
done—typically a more casual place.
As deputy director of the office of strategic and innovative programs at the National
Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., Rachel
Permuth-Levine creates large public health
initiatives, meaning she also runs a lot of conferences and events. She uses LinkedIn to find
health professionals to invite to events, but
now she asks her interns to create Facebook
pages to list event information and send to
their friends.
Lorne Epstein, 43, is one entrepreneur
trying to make Facebook business-friendly.
A Washington, D.C.-based job recruiter,
Epstein created a Facebook software tool
called InSide Job that aims to help people
find others who work at companies they’re
interested in. An accountant with a job interview at IBM in New York can do a search
for those terms and contact New York-based
IBM staffers who pop up to ask them questions about the company.
An important aspect to social networking
sites is the ability to actually communicate
with influential people who can boost careers.
One of Epstein’s “friends” is America Online
co-founder Ted Leonsis.
“I’ve met him although he probably
doesn’t remember me,” Epstein said. “But on
Facebook, I’ve asked him questions, and he’s
taken a look at InSide Job, so I had access to
him in a way I wouldn’t offline.”
Epstein says most friends his age are on
Facebook, and it’s not hard to find new ones
in that age range. And initial meetings very
often turn into something even more valuable—an ongoing chain of networking.
“If I meet five people in person and they
all know a sixth person, chances are that sixth
person and I will get connected on Facebook.
That doesn’t always happen offline.”
He often meets people in person that he
first met on Facebook, such as a woman he
instantly recognized at a party from her Facebook photo.
“Facebook and face-to-face are now
bleeding into each other,” he said.
Meeting
professionals are
also tiptoeing
into Facebook
as a place to get
business done—
typically a more
casual place.
F2F
While social media tools can get the word
out fast about business opportunities, most
people realize it won’t create the same type
of relationships that can only be made face
to face.
Speed networking is more common, especially among time-crunched professionals.
While some rue the lack of time to make
close connections, others say it’s worth taking what you can get.
“If you’ve found one good contact out of
12, then it was worth it,” said Molly Wendell,
CEO of Executives Network, a consulting
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firm in Phoenix.
Fewer people can afford multi-day conferences and workshops, so more networking is being done closer to home. Also,
more networking events are taking place to
specifically help job-hunters find work and
support them during their searches. Take
Pink Slip Mixers, held routinely in hotels,
bars and restaurants around California,
founded by Edwin Duterte, a 39-year-old
commercial real-estate banker in Los Angeles who got laid off in January 2008. After
sending his resumé to banks for months
with no luck, he decided to network on
a larger scale and started the mixers last
July. He offered different tables for specific
industries, but Duterte wanted to focus on
mixing traditional face-to-face techniques
and new online media. He asks attend-
“While
Gen Y knows the
social tools, its
social skills aren’t
as clean, so Boomers and Gen X
could help Gen
Y sharpen its personal networking
skills.”
ees to use Twitter feeds at the events and
shows the tweets live on a big screen for
all to see.
“I ask them to tweet out job requests for
people they just met. It helps them build a
relationship with one another because during their own search, if they find something
that doesn’t fit their criteria, they can forward the info to the person they networked
with.”
Now Duterte is trying to get corporate
sponsorships, but he intends to keep mixers
less formal than a job fair.
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“It’s about being relaxed so recruiters
see that job-seekers can be professional in a
comfortable setting,” he said.
MeetUp.com encourages face-to-face
events, organized by geography and industry. Drinks Above Tiffany’s, a Boston-based
MeetUp.com group gathering operated by
Diane Darling, author of The Networking
Survival Guide, brings people together of
all professions to practice networking. At
the event, Darling delivers a five-minute
talk—a recent one described how to use
LinkedIn for networking.
“Ultimately, people go to networking
events based on the quality of the people
they’ll meet,” she said.
Even Garland, the in-your-face Gen Y
entrepreneur, is offering cheap networking
events, taking full advantage of tools such
as Twitter.
“I just planned a tweet-up—I tweet
other entrepreneurs to meet me at a coffee shop and just hang out,” Garland said.
“People in this economy are still looking
for business opportunities—it’s just the
days of doing it at big networking galas are
over for now.”
MIXING GENERATIONS
The mood at many gatherings can be
impacted by current economic and employment fears, planners say.
“More people are just looking out for
each other, asking me before an event, ‘Who
are the recruiters? Who’s hiring?’ Helping
others with job searches sometimes takes a
back seat,” Duterte said.
Because people of all ages are looking
for work, Gen Y may feel it’s harder to
shine because of lesser job experience. As
they rise through the ranks, the youngsters
may clash with their elders when it comes
to communication.
“Boomers still want the face-to-face
because that’s what they’re used to,” said
Connie Hinton, U.S. director of Business
Networking International. “While Gen Y
has no qualms with Web sites like GoTo
Meeting.com and videoconferencing.”
For now it’s wise not to text message
a press release or event information to a
group of Boomers—many don’t use their
phones for that. Still, networking coaches
report that their social-media networking
workshops are packed with Boomers.
“When I did a recent seminar, 70 percent
of the people were over 60,” Duterte said.
“They wanted to know what Twitter was
and how to get connected via cell phone,
and many went to my next mixer.”
Duterte says Gen Yers and Boomers can
learn much from each other.
“While Gen Y knows the social tools,
its social skills aren’t as clean, so Boomers
and Gen X could help Gen Y sharpen its
personal networking skills.”
Still, organizations will have to adapt
to Gen Yers’ methods as more enter the
workforce.
“These kids will be making more influential and financial decisions, so if they
know how to find stuff on Facebook, it
makes sense to be where they are,” said
Jason Alba, 35-year-old author of I’m On
Facebook—Now What?
Lindsey Pollak, a 34-year-old Gen Y
career consultant, recommends the elder
generations take time to welcome twentysomethings into the networking ranks.
“It’s a myth that Gen Y only wants to
communicate through technology. They
appreciate the human touch but they do
need to learn how to do it,” Pollak said. “I
encourage older networkers to bring young
people as their junior partners or mentorees
to an event. Getting an invite makes them
feel appreciated.”
While everyone agrees face-to-face is
still the ultimate networking method, even
that must be changed to suit the younger
generation, says Misti Burmeister, author
of From Boomers to Bloggers: Success
Strategies across Generations.
“The standard breakout and plenary sessions are going out of style. Think of new
ways to get people of all ages interacting
and in a dialogue. You need to ask, ‘How
do I get them engaged and having fun?’
Events are not just about learning but having fun and building relationships. If you
include young and seasoned professionals
in the mix to generate ideas, the more fun
they’ll have, the more they’ll learn from
each other and the better their networking
skills will be.”
VANESSA RICHARDSON is a freelance
business and finance writer.
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C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 8 7
That’s why insights can happen when you’re
taking a warm shower or going for a long
walk. As we learn more about the brain
and how the brain actually solves problems, it should change the way we structure
our workplace environments with ways to
tweak our creativity and make us better at
solving problems.”
WE’RE SOCIAL PRIMATES
In How We Decide (published in the U.K.
as The Decisive Moment), Lehrer asks the
reader to consider a famous study by neuroscientist Joshua Greene of Harvard University. In the study, each subject was asked
several questions about a runaway trolley,
five maintenance workers and a large man.
In the first scenario, the subject is the
driver of a runaway, brakeless trolley.
Approaching a fork in the track at high
speed, the subject must decide to do nothing
(the trolley will go left and kill five maintenance workers who are repairing the track),
or steer right (and kill only one maintenance
worker). Greene found that 95 percent of
the subjects thought it was morally acceptable to steer right and only kill one worker.
However, the percentage changed with a
different scenario.
In the second version of the study, each
subject is told he or she is standing on a
bridge over the trolley track watching the
trolley race toward the five workers. Next
to the subject is a large man who is leaning over the railing. If the subject sneaks
up and pushes him over, he’ll fall into the
path of the trolley. Because he is so large,
he will stop it from killing the workers.
Even though the outcome is the same—one
person must die in order to save five men—
almost no subject agreed to push the man
onto the tracks.
“That’s a great study of how simply
the personal human interaction engages a
whole separate set of brain areas,” Lehrer
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says. “Rationally, the mathematics in the
situation are identical, and yet because you
put people in a personal situation where
they’re forced to confront the idea of other
human, fleshy beings—a body they have to
push off a bridge—you see they come to
a starkly different decision, with different
patterns of brain activation.”
Obviously in meetings, one is not contemplating pushing people off bridges, Lehrer says, “but you’re meeting people and so
you expect to see a different pattern of activation when you shake someone’s hand, see
their face, see their smile, see all their microexpressions that you’re picking up subconsciously, thinking about what they’re thinking. And that’s a very different interaction;
it’s a whole different experience.”
Lehrer is fascinated by notions in the
early to mid 1990s that the Internet would
make face-to-face meetings irrelevant. He
says that one way to measure it is in terms of
whether or not it’s worthwhile for people to
live in cities, whether or not it’s worthwhile
for companies to be located in Manhattan,
for example, whether or not city real estate
is worth the expense.
“What studies have found is that interaction is very different face-to-face,” he
says. “That’s the way we’re designed. We’re
social primates. So simply e-mailing back
and forth or talking on the phone, you don’t
get that same charge. You’re not acting on
all the different cues, the facial expression
cues, all these things that may not be rational. I think that’s why, for example, people
are still paying Manhattan rents. That’s
why cities are never going to be obsolete,
why we’re always going to want to have
these densities where people can easily come
together face-to-face not just over the phone
or e-mail or a videoconference. I think that’s
why meetings are still so crucial.”
THE POWER OF
EXPECTATIONS
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Lehrer has
always been interested in science.
“I remember reading my mom’s old
undergraduate psychology textbooks as
a kid and not understanding anything,”
he says. “But I thought it was just so fascinating that this peculiar little organ—the
brain—determined who we are.”
He moved to New York and received
undergraduate degrees in neuroscience and
English at Columbia University, spent a couple of years in London as a Rhodes Scholar
and worked in Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel’s lab for more than
four years as a technician before writing his
first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist.
“I discovered that I was a very mediocre
scientist—mediocre is really being too generous,” Lehrer says. “I was a really crappy
scientist.”
Kandel, though, remembers differently.
“Oh, that’s not true,” he said from his
office at Columbia University. “Jonah was
wonderful when he worked here. He’s
lively, culturally informed and very interested in cooking. I remember having a dinner party for the lab, and he made some
hors d’oeuvres that were a hit.”
Lehrer’s love for cooking started when
he worked as a prep cook in Los Angeles for
a couple of summers to make gas money.
Much to his surprise, he loved being in the
kitchen with all its camaraderie, and he
found it to be very meditative-—chopping
and preparing food.
“I was raised in a Jewish household, and
we never had lobster,” he said. “One day, I
had to declaw a hundred lobsters. I didn’t
know what to do, my hands were a bloody
mess, but I snuck a morsel of this warm,
barely cooked lobster, and I thought, ‘Wow,
this is the best thing ever.’”
As an undergrad in New York, he continued to work in restaurants and thought
about becoming a chef before realizing that
it was too hard for him, that even though he
loved the adrenaline rush of being slammed
in the kitchen, he didn’t have the stamina.
He still loves to cook for himself and his
wife, and his favorite meal fits his simple
personality—pasta with a good tomato
sauce and parmesan cheese.
“My favorite meals were always staff
meals in restaurants, just cooks cooking
food for themselves,” he says.
One of his favorite cooking stories was
when he worked at a now defunct restaurant called Le Cirque 2000.
“The line cook I was working with
would bring in a 20-piece box of chicken
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McNuggets and a liter of Coca-Cola every
night,” he says. “One night, he took a drink
from the liter, screwed the top back on, but
didn’t screw it on properly and then slammed
the bottle into the fridge. It exploded all over
the fridge and into the fish soup.”
The cooks panicked, because now the
soup tasted like Coca-Cola, and they didn’t
have time to make more.
“But nobody complained,” he says.
“I think people thought it was some new,
avant-garde thing. You pay US$30 for it,
you’re not going to complain—you think it’s
just the way it’s supposed to be. That taught
me a valuable lesson about the power of
expectations.”
IMAGINATION AND
PERCEPTION
We should be a bit more skeptical of reality,
according to Lehrer, because we constantly
take what we expect to see and fill it in to
meet those expectations.
The simplest way to demonstrate that by
example is our visual blind spot—the center
of our field of vision, where the optic nerve
connects to the retina, creates a blind spot
that our brains fill in automatically. Complete faces, rooms and objects are filled in
seamlessly by an act of the imagination.
Take that further, and consider that even
though vomit and parmesan cheese both
rely on the same chemical (butyric acid) for
their odor, people in the real world rarely
confuse the two.
“We take the context—we’re in a cheese
store or walking down a sidewalk at three
in the morning—and we use it to interpret
our senses,” he says. “So common sense
overrules the sparsity of what is actually
entering our head. I think it’s that element of
interpretation, that we’re always filling in,
making judgments about reality, that influences what we actually see and perceive.
This gets back to [philosopher Immanuel]
Kant who said imagination is an essential
ingredient to perception. He was right—
you can actually look at the brain and see
that process at work.”
Many people expect that making better
decisions will lead them to ultimate happiness. But even though being vigilant about
one’s thoughts can be difficult at times, it’s
what makes life enjoyable.
Too often, Lehrer says, scientists come
up with prescriptions that are too easy by
taking suggestive research and saying, “This
is the secret to happiness.”
“There is no secret recipe to happiness,”
he says. “It’s something we all find on our
own. It’s part of what makes us so interesting. If there was a secret recipe to happiness, we would have discovered it a long
time ago, and happiness would be much less
interesting. Life isn’t just about moment by
moment. It’s about intangible things such as
meaning and narrative.”
JASON HENSEL is an associate editor
for One+.
Visit our magazine blog for an exclusive
video of Jonah Lehrer explaining how to
avoid metacognition pitfalls.
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Meet Where?
S UB HEAD ?
CONTEST!
Correctly identify this venue and its location and you could win a
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