Long ago we had meetings around a campfire. A small group of people in a circle, listening to stories, debating, conversing, learning from each other.
Much later, in more recent ages, only the rich and powerful could talk to larger groups, armies and other audiences.
And even more recently, thanks to sound equipment, we all can afford to address a public, larger than the campfire crowd.

Today I saw a man cry.
He lost 80% of his 2009 business because of perception based postponing. He had to let go more than half his team… Clients that worked with him for a decade or so just dropped him and his entire team like a useless piece of debris.
His 20 year passion died with the brutality and senselessness of the cancelations.

Freud has lost some of his influence in the psychiatrist’s office. Psychoanalysis, the technique of probing long and deep into the mind of a patient is no longer used in up to date practice. It used to be the system of interpretation and therapeutic treatment of psychological disorders. These days new techniques have replaced the old one. Patients now hear they have to stop complaining and start running, or do other physical activities. They are told to leave the past behind and to get going with their lives.

The Paragon Partnership is a group of travel management organisations including NBTA and many other international and regional organisations. The Paragon Partnership held it’s first European conference in Paris this summer and I had the privilege to speak there with Dr. Elling Hamso in a combined closing general session. He introduced ROI, I presented meeting Architecture and Elling closed off with some purchasing models. I was nervous, thinking that travel people have less of an interest in Meetings.

After a nice dinner in London last week, I’m not sure about the business model many restaurants have.

The meal was perfect and most ingredients were present to have a great dinner, but the one or two thing I feel should change to increase the dinner’s effectiveness.

The three right ingredients were a conversation topic, a light meal and a private space.

In the US, Suggestion is made to offer Socially Responsible (CSR) projects as incentives to sales teams instead of Incentive trips to exotic places, because these kind of incentive trips are putting the whole meetings industry under pressure. Serious Legal restrictions are imposed on Bail-out money receiving companies and some other organisations impose similar restrictions voluntary, for perception’s sake. When a 55.000 participant conference in Las Vegas is cancelled, it really badly hurts our industry and the local economy. And we currently talk about hundreds or thousands of meetings and conferences being cancelled in the US ...

An alternative incentive is a good idea, but so are “alternative” meetings, with a new paradigm. Meetings with more learning and networking elements like we are dissecting and testing today at Meet Different.

We say networking or networking events when we talk about putting people in a room with drinks and music. Yet what happens at such occasions is that most people will find their fiends and enjoy the evening together.  People have the totally acceptable and natural tendency to stay on well-known/safe territory and the amount of networking can be expected to be low.

"Networking is far too important to leave it to receptions and lunches." says Ib Ravn.

And right he is!

Networking is Important. It may even be the final buoy, saving meetings from going under all together, especially in an already challenging economy,

Learning (watching presentations) you can do on-line, but meeting new people, works really only face to face. The power of random; encounters is really unique to meetings: innovations are the sparks that sometimes fly around when one bumps into a stranger at a meeting.

The opening show contained some real loud audience reactions, clapping and screaming: The threats to this industry in the US are real as 55.000 participant conferences are canceled and large companies say “we know this is about perception, we do realize that meetings are business critical, but we cancel all 150 meetings anyway!” After the opening session, several people approached me and said; “Meeting Architecture!” “Strategically ‘anchoring’ meetings to corporation’s strategy is the way to stop these kinds of crisis scenarios for the future and Meeting Architecture will make that happen.”

A few great dinners and meetings took place and more people joined.

We started off with a MA2020 meeting on Sunday morning.

Since 2003 I’m campaigning for freedom of trade and fair competition in our industry.
Some magazines have published editorials, articles and even dedicated covers to the practice that is threatening our industry: the tying of exclusive suppliers by venues. In other words: You want to have your conference here? You will work with who we say!

Let’s not be naïve: the practice is still amongst us. It is barely discussed in the meetings industry: is it taboo?