Meeting Support Institute

The Meeting planner with a focus on the content of meetings has a challenge: the numbers are eating away the focus on content. Imagine a corporate conference of 250 participants: getting all 250 in the room on time and on budget is a lot of work. Providing the right menu including all kinds of special requests and allergies can be overwhelming. To do a good job for 20 participants and spouses is already a lot of work, I know from experience. Making that happen for 250 is close to a full time job for several weeks. These larger participant numbers take so much time and energy to plan logistically, that the content soon floats out of focus. This is normal, even natural and I guess all of us would have the same tendency. How can you work on content when 250 participants are asking you a thousand questions? 250 adult professionals all behaving like children that need to be kept by the hand for even the smallest things. Meeting planners will all testify this can be the case.
Both processes, the logistics and the content need to be prepared well in advance. Both should run in parallel, but when 250 participants want to know if they have a nice view, get the upgrade, fly direct or get a free shuttle service, you tend to leave the less urgent stuff aside. This less urgent stuff is only less urgent because a lot less people are pulling your sleeve. Logistics and content are equally urgent, but in the case of content, it is you that must do the pulling! Pull the meetings together with the right people that are all busy professionals. Pull the CEO's sleeve to make those decisions now, although the meeting is only in three months. Get the meeting owner to sit down and spend time with you to create order in his chaotic mind. But because you are spoken to, screamed at and yelled to from 250 directions, you tend to postpone your own screaming.
This is when the important work of designing the meetings content ‘drowns by numbers’ in lake logistics. The solution lies in a divide: one person takes on the logistics and another person works the content. The meeting planner organizes logistics and the meeting architect the content.
In this way, both sides of the meeting can get equal attention early in the process. Both will be talking to the meeting owner about different things at different moments, well ahead of the deadline. Both sides will move forward equally, and busy moments on one side will not be in the way of the other side.
No drowning by numbers in this scenario, unless one individual wants to do the logistics of 40 meetings of 250 participants. But that is not likely to happen, the highest number I heard of so far is 20 and that is, to my knowledge, an impressive accomplishment for one individual.

This meeting ship will not just float, it will sail full speed ahead and lead the way toward new horizons.