On Friday 20 April in Frankfurt, the meetings industry took a small step toward changing the way meeting content is created and delivered. This first ever Meeting Content Conference, sponsored by IMEX and OptionFinder Europe was called a ‘groundbreaking and historic’ conference by some senior industry people.

Ib Ravn said: " The conference was a first: Put on by one of the most serious meeting outfits in Europe, to address a topic that will be of primary concern in tomorrow's meeting industry: How can we professionalize the structure and processes of meetings to make them effective forums for knowledge sharing, learning and concrete results?"

"I'm not surprised it went so well - someone seriously addressing content at last!" - Damian Hutt, Compelling Conferences

"I could not stay till the end but i found it very thought provoking and will certainly be recommending it for next year" – Mark Charles Felstead, Axica

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Online Brainstorming Before The Conference

Ten days before the actual conference, twenty participants joined an online discussion on the subject of how to develop successful conferences in terms of participant learning, networking and motivation. Using online discussion technology provided by Synthetron, the participants made their suggestions online, rated the suggestions by others, and by a process of suggestions, questions, comments and rankings arrived at a number of conclusions widely supported by the group, the so-called synthetrons. 71% of the conference participants who took part in the exercise found it 'very useful'. View Report

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Give the Audience a Voice! Harvesting wisdon during the conference

During the conference, Ray Elmitt, Executive Chairman of Crystal Interactive, helped the group mine its own knowledge and give itself a voice. Participants were issued with small laptop computers which were used to put questions to speakers and for brainstorming and structuring of ideas between participants. Voting handsets from OptionFinder Europe added to the interactivity between the speakers and their audience. During interactive sessions, the participants themselves answered questions on a range of topics from making a good conference to designing better speaker instructions. One of the clear outcomes of these sessions was that we need to do a much better job of educating and coaching our speakers in order to make them effective educational facilitators.

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ROI survey after the conference

The first Meeting Content Conference has been evaluated by the European Event ROI Institute. Elling Hamso - member of the Advisory Board of the Meeting Support Institute - investigated attendee satisfaction and intended actions (Level 1 of the 5 ROI measuring levels) and learning (Level 2). A further evaluation is planned in August where participants will be asked to report on how the conference has actually had an impact on their work behaviour (Level 3).

The participants were overall very satisfied, 94% said the conference was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

Here are some participants’ comments:

- I would like to certify my 80 account managers as meeting architects.

- Thank you for an inspiring day in Frankfurt!

- Very inspiring for me and certainly left me hungry for more!!

- Thank you for a most stimulating time!

Read more

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The different sessions in short

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The Meeting Content Matrix

Meeting Support Institute founder, Maarten Vanneste of Abbit Meeting Support presented the basic meeting support, or meeting content model. In one dimension, meetings are concerned with networking, learning and motivation, in the second dimension these outcomes may be influenced before, during and after the meeting, and in the third dimension technical, technological and creative tools may be applied to the task of improving meeting ROI. Download the Matrix

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The Meeting Architect?

The meeting planning profession has traditionally had its main focus on hospitality and logistics rather than the content or message of the meeting. Maarten Vanneste raised the question whether it is appropriate to develop the meeting planning profession to also embrace the planning of meeting content, how the meeting format is adapted to the message and the networking and motivation needs of the meeting. Meeting content and meeting logistics planning are two very different areas of expertise, and Vanneste suggested that we might introduce a new profession called a meeting architect, outlining the many parallels between the architect designing a house and the design of a meeting.

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Stimulate Learning at Meetings

In an innovative and interactive session, Associate Professor, Dr. Ib Ravn of Learning Lab, the Danish University of Education, taught the crowd how to create conferences where participants learn from each other as well as the speakers. His concept of 'Human Co-Flourishing' where conference participants want to contribute and share knowledge with each other, was contrasted by the 'Empty Container' model where participants are empty knowledge containers to be filled by the wisdom of the speakers. The Learning Conference has five elements, said Ravn, concise presentation, active interpretation, self-formulation, knowledge sharing and competent facilitation, basing his model on several years of research into the learning effectiveness of conferences. Each participant received a copy of Ravn's recent book; 'Learning Meetings and Conferences in Practice'.

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Long Distance Facilitation

In a session, entitled "Houston, we have a problem!" Mike Van Der Vijver, a professional meeting designer at MindMeeting, delivered his creative and interactive session by telephone from an island in the sun. Supported by Crystal Interactive and Ray Elmitt facilitating the process in the meeting room, the physical distance between the speaker and his audience was of little consequence. Mike van der Vijver also included some comments on the results of the brainstorming from our delegates. You will find them when clicking on the first icon below.

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Connecting People

Networking is always an objective of participants at meetings. Johan Bax, founder of LOG ON and Sam Smith, Spotme Marketing Manager, taught the audience how to accelerate and facilitate networking at meetings. They covered a range of topics from how to properly use nametags to mobile technology to onsite communication tools.

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Let’s do the Hand Jive!

Caroline Van Niekerk is Professor in Music Education and took a scientific approach to the role of music in meetings. Experiential learning is all the hype, but the potential of music to align the minds of meeting participants is not extensively exploited. Music is a universal language of emotional expression, cognition and sequencing of memory, tribal glue and teamwork, stress release and humor, said Van Niekerk.

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Are you ready to play?

Serious Play Consultant, Mario Thelen, showed the audience how playing with Lego can release our creative potential and help communicate our feelings, so much so that Lego Serious Play is becoming a major initiative of the toy maker (www.seriousplay.com)

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Bursting the Bubble

Drs. Rodolfo Musco and Domenico Bozza shared their eminent insight into the emotional and social aspects of meeting success. The 'Social Bubble' is the mental space around an individual where the borders define the relationship with other individuals, satisfying the needs for intimacy, safety, belonging and strength. In meetings, the social bubble may be influenced, maybe turned into a 'group bubble' by language, space and movement.

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Learning Panel

Richard John guided a panel of speakers through the key question of how to turn our conferences into learning experiences. Michel Brakenhoff from Synthetron used the actual pre-conference online exercise as an example of how to develop issues and prepare participants for the live discussions at the conference. Chris Elmitt from Crystal Interactive provided a model for analysing the interactive needs of the participants depending on the business context and purpose of the event and the alignment of audience priorities. Mike Foren of WorldPresenter made the audience realise how little participants remember from typical conference presentations. The message must be iterated several times in different formats, before, during and after the conference. Conference recordings enable participants to re-visit important sessions and make them available to all those who could not attend.

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What Speakers should know about learning

Richard John, led the group through an interactive session to diagnose the problems with speakers and discuss strategies for improving those sessions. The best speakers are also good listeners and facilitators of interactions with the audience. The audience is not always important for speakers to be subject matter experts, it is more important that they are good teachers.

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Stimulate the 5 senses

Dr. Rodolfo Musco gave us an understanding of emotional learning. We can amplify the ROI of a meeting by stimulating our senses. Images, light, colours, sound, aroma ... are all important things to use before, during and after a meeting. (www.motivationandevents.com)

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Seven ways to improve a meeting

Pascal van den Noort engaged the audience in developing guidelines for good
meetings, what to do and what not to do. Many things are simple and obvious, why do we keep doing what we know we should not do and why don't we always do what we know is right?

Audience engagement is a key area of failure or success. Without engagement, there is little learning. Why do we continue to allow 'death by PowerPoint'? Why don't we ensure that the speaker knows the audience as well as he knows his subject? Why do we allow so little time for networking when this is often the most important activity?

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NLP Demystified

Neuro Linguistic Programming is about understanding and influencing our own behavior and the behavior of others, explained Marilyn Devonish of TransFormations. It helps us build rapport with others and understand how they think and what their reactions might be. People are primarily visual, auditory or kinesthetic, which relates to their preferred learning styles such as the Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist. When we communicate, only 7% of our message is carried by the words we use, 38% is how we use our voice and 55% is our body language. In order to communicate well, we must show sensory acuity, understanding what is going on inside and around ourselves, and the ability to adapt behavior accordingly in order to achieve the desired outcome.