We all need a break sometimes. Since November 2009, I’ve been writing weekly about meeting design, facilitation, and all kinds of other things that have sparked my interest, and I’m taking a break for a couple of weeks. Don’t worry; I’m hanging out here right now.
I’ll be back!
Have a great day!
-Adrian-
I recently came across the poem Sacred Ground, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She reminded me that everywhere is holy.
It’s easy for me to see aspects of my life as mundane. When I do, I gloss over the present moment, and the personal stories that surround it. Rosemerry prompts me not to:
‘And if, as I now know, the closet
is sacred and the bare room
is sacred and the sidewalk
and classroom and the ER
are sacred, then I trip
into the teaching
that everywhere is sacred—
not only the church, but
the alley. Not only the mosque,
but the bench…’
—The beginning of the poem Sacred Ground by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Reading the poem, I was reminded that approaching mindfulness as the cultivation of embodied awareness includes “having my heart be where my feet are.”
At times, this feels so dificult. I distract myself from being present. I fret over why things are the way they are instead of accepting or changing them. And I get lost in the mundane.
The poem’s end offers a redemptive practice…
‘…Every step, a step
from holy to holy
to holy.’
Thank you, Narayan Helen Liebenson, for introducing me to Rosemerry’s poem.
Image attribution: Timothy Neesam (GumshoePhotos) under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license
Aside from my first book, I haven’t written much about the effects of attendee status — attendees’ “relative rank in a hierarchy of prestige” — at events. It’s time to revisit this important topic because you can improve your meetings by making attendee status a real-time construct.
Traditional, broadcast-style events assign attendee status in advance. A person’s status is determined before the event by whether they’re speaking and the context. For example, keynoting is of higher status than leading a breakout session. The program committee bestows status on certain attendees. Their status is publicly proclaimed on the pre-conference program, giving attendees no say in the decision.
At peer conferences (and some traditional events), attendee status is dynamic, shifting from moment to moment. Here’s how pre-determined and real-time attendee status compare:
Notice that events designed to support flexible, real-time attendee status:
With careful design, even traditional events can minimize assumptions about attendee status.
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In 2023, I published a widely-read post about dealing with (metaphorical) assholes, potholes, and black holes. The advice I gave was about how to best handle personal interactions with assholes. Currently, however, the world has many assholes in positions of power, where they can and are doing tremendous damage to society.
Dealing with powerful assholes (PAs) who are affecting many lives through societal manipulations requires some different approaches.
First, though, here’s a reminder of how to deal with assholes in your personal life:
“The best way to deal with assholes is to avoid them whenever possible. If you can’t, then don’t confront them; they love that. Instead, ignore them. If you have to interact with one, set boundaries on the time you’ll be with them and what you will tolerate. This can be tough, so remember that their assholeness is their problem, not yours.
Remember that assholes are not happy people. Though it’s hard to do, if you can feel compassion for an asshole you’re with, it will help you deal with their behavior better. And it may (don’t count on it) help them be slightly less asshole-like with you.”
—Adrian Segar, Assholes, potholes, and black holes, May, 2023
When dealing with PAs, most of the above advice is still relevant.
Ignoring PAs is important when they are trying to get reactions from those they are trying to vilify or rile up. Assholes are cruel, sick people who enjoy seeing others suffer. By not responding emotionally when they spout theatrical nonsense or lies, you avoid buying into their attempts to make you suffer. Yes, this can be hard to do. Reminding yourself that their assholeness is their problem, not yours, can help.
Since his inauguration, the 47th U.S. President [47] — a quintessential PA — has been issuing a torrent of Executive Orders (EOs) that are an archetypal embodiment of PA cruelty. Under such a constant bombardment, it’s hard to remember that many of his EOs are meaningless or illegal. Each EO is designed to elicit a nasty emotional effect on those who are disgusted with this man, but much of what he says has little or no connection with what he does. I am not minimizing the very real damage 47 is inflicting on individuals, the United States, and the world. Rather, I’m saying that we need to tune out the performative cruel statements of PAs and focus on combatting and resisting the very real destruction they cause (see below).
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The corporate-owned platforms we rely on for professional and personal communities are increasingly failing to meet our needs. Major social media networks have become saturated with advertisements, data mining, and algorithmic controls that hinder authentic engagement. This shift poses significant threats to the integrity and autonomy of our online interactions. We need alternative platforms for communities and events.
Professional, cultural, and social online communities are at risk. Xitter is in the final stages of enshittification. Facebook is inundated with advertisements and extensive data mining practices. LinkedIn groups’ algorithms bury most comments and reduce the visibility of posts with links. While private groups on major platforms remain functional, opaque and ever-changing algorithms control what users see, and the future viability of these groups is uncertain.
In addition, all corporate platforms are vulnerable to changes imposed by the owners, who can sell them at any time to new proprietors with different visions for operation or monetization, potentially further compromising the user experience.
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Event planners often overlook the importance of attendee conversations. Why does this happen?
For a clue, read this AT&T advertisement promoting telephones in the 1900’s!
Here’s Kevin Kelly’s analysis of what AT&T totally missed about how telephones could be used.
“Advertisements at the beginning of the last century tried to sell hesitant consumers, the newfangled telephone by stressing ways it could send messages, such as invitations, store orders, or confirmation of their safe arrival. The advertisers pitched the telephone as if it were a more convenient telegraph. None of them suggested having a conversation.“
—Kevin Kelly, “What Technology Wants” (p. 245)
Early telephone ads marketed it as a better telegraph. They focused on the value of sending messages rather than fostering conversation.
So, perhaps it’s not surprising that many conference organizers today make a similar mistake by emphasizing broadcast content over attendee interactions.
Just as advertisers missed the phone’s potential to connect people in real-time, many events fail to prioritize the natural value of attendee conversations. When organizers structure conferences as one-way content delivery sessions, they overlook the simple, high-impact power of peer-to-peer dialogue. By designing events that actively support and facilitate attendee conversations, conferences become spaces of meaningful connection, creativity, and insight that go far beyond passive listening.
Event planners must shift their mindset to seeing attendees as active participants, not just an audience. Facilitating genuine exchanges can turn an ordinary event into a transformative experience, helping people connect, share ideas, and solve problems together—things that no amount of broadcast content alone can achieve.
The social media platforms we once relied on for authentic connection are disintegrating. My ikigai—the reason I get up in the morning—is facilitating connection. But today’s major social media platforms—Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, et al.—are all owned by billionaires and tech bros who impose their political leanings on their users and/or seek to make massive fortunes from revenue streams such as ads and selling user information.
These monolithic platforms increasingly control what can be posted via opaque and ever-changing algorithms, while reducing or eliminating moderation of trolls and spammers. Bots abound, pouring AI-generated slop into users’ feeds. Though X is the most prominent example, Facebook has abandoned its fact-checking program and drastically reduced the reach of posts to followers, and platforms like LinkedIn have tuned their algorithms to reduce the reach of posts that include off-site links.
Major social media platforms are a dumpster fire, with no quick fix. Users remain on these platforms due to their network effect advantage; i.e., their value increases as more users join. For example, though I find Facebook’s ethical choices increasingly repulsive, I still use the platform sparingly because it is the only online service that some friends and family use, and a few of its local and professional groups have no significant online competition.
A corollary of the network effect is that as networks grow they become full of strangers, less coherent, and harder and more expensive to moderate effectively. Large platforms also become attractive places for those who need to feel important by having many followers and who concentrate on broadcast communication rather than two-way connection.
If you, like me, are interested in authentic connection with people in ways you determine, unfiltered by secret algorithms constantly tuned to maximize revenue or political ideologies, the future is bleak.
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Are for-profits stepping into territory traditionally held by associations? Lately, I’ve seen signs that they might be. Recently, I’ve received inquiries from suppliers of products and services wanting to hold events for the communities they serve. In fact, I’m currently designing an event for a for-profit client that directly competes with association conferences in their profession.
Suppliers have held client events for their customers for many years. However, the for-profit supplier event I’m designing includes a small tradeshow with many suppliers of interest to potential professional attendees.
I’m flattered by my client’s belief that the participant-driven and participation-rich meetings I design provide a better experience than competing traditional association events. But, as someone who values the communities that well-functioning associations offer, I can’t help but feel concerned.
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Do we really need heroes?Society often glorifies the idea of heroes—individuals who swoop in to save the day and solve seemingly insurmountable problems. We see this dynamic across history, pop culture, and even leadership in our daily lives. But what happens when this fixation on heroism blinds us to the everyday, often invisible, work that prevents those crises from arising in the first place?
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Liz Latham, co-founder of Club Ichi and a brilliant event marketer, recently shared an intriguing idea she plans to test to increase attendance at her free events.
Having registrants not show up has become a big problem for the meeting industry, especially for free events. Not long ago, registrants would reliably attend events they signed up for, barring unforeseen circumstances—a far cry from today’s reality. Price incentives for early registration worked, and predicting attendance rate and attrition was a science, not an art.
Those were the days!
Today, with the multiple impacts of easy online registration, FOMO rivalry, and more choices for events than ever, it’s far more likely that registrants don’t appear on the day.
For event conveners, this is at best dispiriting and at worst financially disastrous.
So anything we can do that might reduce the uncertainty and percentage of no-shows is worth considering.
Liz noticed a relatively new trend, that you may have experienced too. Some restaurants, fitness programs, hair salons, dentists, doctors, and other types of businesses have begun to charge a fee if a customer doesn’t show up for an appointment.
So Liz is considering taking credit-card information at registration time, and charging a “no-show fee” to the card if the registrant doesn’t attend.
Although this idea may be new to the meeting industry, the above links show that many appointment-based businesses routinely use this approach.
No-show fees aren’t needed for paid events, which can have cancellation policies that offer partial refunds, compensating, at least financially, for no-shows. Rather, Liz is thinking of testing no-show fees for the many free events she organizes, where attendance rates are often well below 50% of registrations.
Pros: From a meeting organizer’s perspective, the implementation of a no-show fee may deter folks registering who only expect to attend if nothing better shows up at the time of the meeting. This minimizes waste by better aligning logistical preparations with actual attendance. Implementing no-show fees can also benefit registrants who do show up, since the promoted event size (including, optionally, a list of registrants) is more likely to be accurate.
Cons: Requiring credit card information at registration may frustrate those confident they’ll attend and adds security and logistical challenges for organizers. In addition, the organizers will need to create a refund policy for no-shows with a defined and legitimate reason (such as a death in the family, travel disruptions, etc.), and implementing this could be cumbersome.
Do you think implementing no-show fees at free events is an idea worth exploring? Have you tried or experienced no-show fees at a meeting? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!