"I realized this morning that your event content is the only event-related 'stuff' I still read. I think that's because it's not about events, but about the coming together of people to exchange ideas and learn from one another and that's valuable information for anyone." — Traci Browne
My book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love has now been available for over five years in both paperback and ebook versions and is still selling well. I thought it might be of interest to share how the proportion of paperback versus ebook sales has changed over time. The following figures include both indirect (mainly Amazon) and direct (my web store) sales.
As you can see from the above graph, paperbacks were, on average, 82%, of sales when the book was published in 2009. Although there’s significant variation from month to month, due mainly to bulk sales of one format or the other, the five-year trendline shows that by March 2015, the most recent month for which I have full indirect sales figures, paperback book sales dropped to just over 60% of all sales.
The paperback costs $27.95 (Amazon) or $26.00 (from me directly), and the ebook format costs $11.00 (only from me). I haven’t changed any prices over the years, though Amazon plays tricks with the paperback pricing from time to time. These pricing levels provide me with approximately the same income per copy for direct sales, regardless of the format.
One factor that affects the quantity of new paperback sales is that, these days, there are usually a few used copies of the paperback available on Amazon for a few dollars under the new price. Sales of used copies reduce new copy sales. On the other hand, I expect some copies of the ebook get shared too.
An additional trend I am noting for my website sales is that combination sales (both ebook and paperback versions of the same book) have been increasing over the last year. I offer a discount when people buy both formats simultaneously. Consider this if you are selling your books yourself.
Conclusions
People still like paperbacks! Even though the ebook is 40% of the price of the paperback, I’m still selling more paperbacks than ebooks.
The ebook format is becoming more popular over time.If, and that’s a big if, the trend continues, both formats will become equally popular sometime in 2017. Interestingly, my new book The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action which has only been available for three months has sold about equal numbers of each format to date.
Don’t read too much into my experience.Conferences That Work is non-fiction, priced higher than most ebooks, and is only available as an ebook directly from me, so there’s no comparable Amazon sales channel. Your mileage may vary.
Are you an author with book format sales history of your own? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below!
The creative folks at Kinetech Arts in San Francisco published this delightful illustration of body voting, inspired by a short presentation I gave at their weekly media lab on August 4, 2015.
One-dimensional human spectrograms like these are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many great variants—including two-dimensional and state-change versions—that you can use to quickly and enjoyably explore all kinds of useful information about a group. Read Chapter 33 of my book The Power of Participation for the complete what, why, when, and how of this powerful public voting participative technique.
I’m still using the iPhone 5S, iPad 3, and the Tumi Alpha “everything bag” I gushed over in my 2013 app update, though I’m coveting an iPhone 6S, a newer iPad, and, maybe, an Apple Watch.
Rather than listing additions and removals from my two previous posts, I’m presenting a complete alphabetized current list, including updated descriptions that incorporate any notable new features I use. An [!] next to an app indicates it’s stood the test of time, while an [N] means it’s a new addition since my 2013 update.
Ready? Here are my favorite iPhone iPad apps for event planners.
Birdbrain, [!] $2.99
If you are active on Twitter (and I’d argue that most event planners should be) Birdbrain is a fantastic way to manage your Twitter network. The app provides an excellent overview and management of your followers and those you follow. Birdbrain handles multiple accounts, makes it easy to investigate anyone on Twitter, allows you to track unfollows as they occur, list people you’re following who don’t follow you, display mentions and retweets, and provides informative statistics showing changes in your Twitter stats over time. The only feature I’d like to see added is the ability to show inactive accounts you’re following. Recommended!
Dropbox, [!] free for 2 GB, Dropbox Pro $9.99/month or $99/year
I’ve been using Dropbox for years on my office Macs, iPad, and iPhone.
Dropbox keeps your files safe, synced, and easy to share between multiple computers and devices. All contents of the Dropbox folder on all linked devices (Macintosh, Linux, Windows, IOS, Android; even Blackberry and Kindle Fire!) running Dropbox are automatically synced when new files or changes are detected. You don’t have to be continually online; all changes sync once your computer has an Internet connection again. You can create shared folders, allowing several people to collaborate on a set of files.
The free service gives you 2GB of space on Dropbox’s servers, which was plenty for me for many years (and Dropbox offers ways to increase the free limit) but last year I took the plunge and upgraded to Dropbox Pro (see below). A nice feature is that the server stores the last 30 days of versions of your files, so you can revert to an older version if needed. If you want more storage, you can upgrade to Dropbox Pro for $9.99/month or $99/year. This paid upgrade includes 1TB of storage plus unlimited older versions of your files, remote wipe, read-only shared folders, and password-protected shared links. It’s worth every penny to me.
The Dropbox app allows you to access your Dropbox files on your iPhone or iPad. Image, music, movie, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, HTML, and many file formats can be displayed by the app. Unlike the desktop versions of Dropbox, files are not stored automatically on a mobile device but are uploaded on request by marking them as Favorites.
Dropbox also includes a web interface for your files, so you can access them (and older versions) from any Internet-connected computer.
While I was writing my books, I stored all my important files on Dropbox. It gave me great peace of mind to know that up-to-date versions of my book’s many files were being automatically saved remotely and on all my office computers.
Evernote, [!] free, Plus $24.99/year, Premium $49.99/year
Evernote is my go-to application for capturing information I want to be able to find in the future. I use it mainly for web pages, but it will file text notes, pdfs, spreadsheets, photos, voice memos, and screenshots too. Evernote clients are available for most mobile and desktop operating systems. Everything captured is made searchable—you can add your own tags if you like—and can be stored in specific categories (“notebooks”) if desired. The iPad version takes full advantage of the large screen. Your notes are stored on Evernote’s servers and locally and are synced to your mobile device and to Mac OS X and Windows computers running an Evernote client.
Evernote supplies web clipping functionality for all major desktop and mobile browsers, so, with a few clicks, it’s easy to safely capture that article you think could be really useful one day.
You can upload up to 60MB per month (with a maximum single note size of 25MB) using the free Evernote service, and this has always been adequate for me. The Plus version raises the upload maximum to 1GB/month with a maximum single note size of 50MB, the Premium service to 10GB/month with a maximum single note size of 200MB. Plus and Premium include some additional benefits, none of which have tempted me to pay for them. Yet.
GateGuru, [!] free
GateGuru is an airport information app that was purchased by TripAdvisor in June 2013. While it attempts to replicate some of Tripit‘s functionality, I use it to scope out the places to eat (aka amenities) at airports. The traveler’s reviews, while sometimes spotty, usually allow you to pick out the best place to satisfy your current gustatory desires, and I’ve occasionally found a real gem tucked away on Concourse C that I’d otherwise have missed.
GoodReader, [!] $4.99
GoodReader is an inexpensive app that allows you to transfer files to your mobile device, by Wifi or from an Internet cloud server, and reliably view them. Like the Dropbox viewer, it supports a huge range of file formats. Unlike other mobile file readers, GoodReader has no problem rapidly opening, displaying, and responsively scrolling through the 350-page ebook version of Conferences That Work and other large files I’ve thrown at it.
GoodReader syncs beautifully with Dropbox, allowing me to work on files on any computing device and then upload them to a GoodReader folder for convenient viewing. When I’m facilitating or presenting at an event, I’ll typically use GoodReader to display all relevant files in a multi-tabbed app window, allowing me to refer to them quickly when needed.
Google Voice, [!] free app, most but not all services are free
Google Voice has been around for years and has a bazillion options, many of which I don’t really understand. But that’s OK, because I find it very useful for three things: a) transferring calls made to my cell to my office phone when I’m at home where my cell phone doesn’t work (ah, the joys of living in rural Vermont), b) replacing my cell phone provider’s voice mail and sending me an email and a noble attempt at transcription when I don’t answer my mobile, and c) texting. Now let’s be clear: I hate texting and refuse to pay the inflated rates that carriers charge for it on my cell phone, but sometimes it’s the only way to communicate with some people. Google Voice to the rescue! I can text for free from my free Google Voice number, which works with strangers as long as I let them know in the message that it’s me, Adrian Segar, texting them.
Incidentally, though I haven’t yet used this feature, calls made using Google Voice from outside the U.S. to U.S. numbers cost just 1¢/minute; a pretty good rate!
Messages, [N] free
This is a no-brainer, especially if you’re a cheapskate like me that won’t pay more for texting. If someone has an iDevice, I can message them without paying for texts. Unlike texting, you get to discover whether your message/photo/movie was actually delivered or not. (If Messages could tell me the recipient saw my message, that would be even better, but I guess we’ll have to wait until brain monitor functionality is built into IOS 42.) Works well for me. I’ve heard there can be glitches if you abandon your iDevice and go over to The Dark Android Side, but you’d never do that would you? Would you?
OpenTable, [!] free
OpenTable allows you to make free reservations at ~32,000 restaurants in the United States, Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the UK. No more phone calls to a restaurant only to get an answering machine, having to leave a message, and wondering whether you’ll get the reservation you wanted or not. The app works quickly and many reservations give you OpenTable points which can eventually (you’d have to use it a lot) be redeemed for a discount off your meal.
Post-it® Plus, [N] free
I’ve written in detail about this little gem here. Suffice it to say that if you do any kind of group work with sticky notes, this is a great tool for capturing, organizing, and sharing multitudes of these colorful little rectangles. Since I wrote the linked review, 3M has continued to add new features: you can now edit notes and add additional digital notes to existing boards.
Register, [!, formerly Square] app free, card transaction fees extra
Square’s Register app provides a neat inexpensive way to easily accept card payments. You can create lists of the items or services you sell. It took me just a few minutes to set up Register for selling my first book three ways—paperback, ebook, or combo—at a presentation or trade show. When you sign up for the service, Square sends you a free swipe card reader that plugs into your iPad or iPhone. They have a free contactless (NFC) and chip card reader shipping soon, in time for the new EMV chip credit card merchant obligations that will be in force in the U.S. later this year. You can also process cash sales and send receipts to a buyer’s email address. Square provides a complete downloadable record of all your sales.
Square charges reasonable card fees: 2.75% for a swiped card and 3.5% + $0.15 for a keyed-in card. These are the only charges for the service; there’s no monthly fee or minimum and no contract or merchant account is required. This is a great app for selling promotional items at events.
Simplenote, [!] free
I rarely need elaborately formatted documents. What I do need is a simple text editor that imports ASCII, RTF or HTML files, backs up my writing safely, and synchronizes it across my mobile and office computers.
That’s exactly what Simplenote, combined with copies of Notational Velocity (free, open source) on my office computers do. Anything I write in Simplenote on my iPad (I rarely use it on my iPhone, though it works there) gets saved and backed up to the Internet cloud (on a free account at Simplenote). When I open Notational Velocity on an office computer, my notes there are synchronized. Similarly, any notes updated on my office machines are synchronized to the iPad when I open Simplenote. All communications are encrypted.
Both Simplenote and Notational Velocity offer blazing-fast search and support thousands of notes.
While Simplenote now sports a Mac desktop version, I prefer to stick with Notational Velocity there because the former doesn’t support styled text (bold, italic, etc.)
For just pure writing, safely backed up and synchronized, you can’t beat the combination of these two free apps!
Swarm [formerly Foursquare], [! & N] free
Foursquare, started as a game (be the mayor of places, win badges, and have more points than your friends) and a way to see where your friends are and what they’re doing. I live mostly in a rural area and, while I have occasionally discovered and met up with friends I didn’t know were near me, my main use of this service is to store a searchable history of where I’ve been. When did I drop off that luggage to be repaired? What was the name of that great place I ate dinner with Susie in Atlanta? When exactly was I in Anguilla in 2009? Foursquare’s history of my check-ins is often useful in unexpected ways.
In 2014, Foursquare tried to reposition their app by splitting it into two: Foursquare, a Yelp look-alike competitor, and Swarm, which would remain the “check-in” app. The move did not go well, especially after Foursquare removed the mayor feature in Swarm which took out some of the fun of checking-in. The company’s missteps cost it popularity—a lot less people seem to be checking in recently. Recently, they added back mayorships. Yes, I admit it, it’s fun to triumphantly win back the mayorship of my favorite local restaurant once in a while, but the history feature is the main reason I use Swarm these days.
Waze, [!] free
Waze is my favorite traffic and navigation app of the many that I’ve tried (though some Uber drivers have told me that Google Maps now has more helpful junction navigation in big cities). Unlike traditional GPS units with traffic updates that are often found to be woefully out of date, Waze uses information from its own users to detect traffic snarls and reroutes you on the fly when necessary to avoid that accident that happened up ahead five minutes ago or the rush hour traffic jam building up on the interstate you normally drive on to get home. Its estimates of arrival time, even on long trips, are astonishingly accurate. Owned by Google, my only concern is that the company will start using my location in nefarious ways. If I start seeing too many annoying ads promoting the tattoo parlor I’m passing by I’ll reconsider. Until then, this is an amazing app that has saved me hours of driving and frustration, and shown me countless new neighborhoods as I bypass traffic where other drivers sit fuming.
Wunderground, [N] free
Goodbye Weatherbug Elite, Yahoo Weather (still think of you fondly, loved your simplicity), and all the other weather apps I’ve dated the last few years. I’m going steady with Wunderground now. Darling W (yes, we’re on first initial terms), your gorgeous graph interface makes it easy to get a quick big picture of the next ten days, your hour by hour forecasts are so handy for deciding whether to move the social indoors, and your weather map predictions load so fast. I’d be a fool to look at anyone else. Sure, W, I admit to a fickle past with weather apps, but now I’m seriously thinking about settling down for good. With you, always by my side…So, what’s it going to be like in Maine next week?
So event professionals, what have I missed? Do you have other favorite iPhone/iPad apps for event planners I haven’t mentioned here? Let the world know in the comments!
In 2007 my father was slowly and painfully dying from the side effects of Parkinson’s disease. I am sharing here an astonishing newspaper article—written by columnist and registered nurse Richard Davis—on my dad’s and family’s experience. The article was widely distributed around the world and I still occasionally receive requests for a copy, so I am reposting it here.
BRATTLEBORO- Newspaper obituaries provide a few glimpses into the lives of people. They serve to provide friends and relatives with news of a death and the details of plans for funerals and memorial services. Rarely, if ever, do obituaries describe the way a person died. Perhaps it is too morbid for most people to contemplate, but how we die is just as important as how we live.
“Joshua Mark Segar, 84, died peacefully at his home on Tuesday, December 11, 2007. Mr. Segar (a.k.a. Josh, Joshie, Jeff, Joe or Mark) was born in London, England on Dec. 21, 1922. At the age of 13, in order to help support his family, he was forced to leave school and was apprenticed as a barber.
During World War II he served in the Rifle Brigade for five years without a break, fighting in North Africa, Italy and Germany. On his return to London, he was able to open his first barber shop. On weekends he played drums in a dance band and as a session musician for Stephane Grappelli, among others.
In 1948 he married Lilly Solley, the love of his life. Segar became a successful small business man, eventually owning a chain of hairdressing salons and a flourishing electric shaver supply and repair business.
He was the president of the British National Hairdressing Federation and the Hairdressing Council for many years. He loved opera, traveled extensively and was a lifelong learner of art and art history. He was kind, thoughtful, humorous, hard working, loving and generous, a devoted husband and loving father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
In 2004 he moved from England to Brattleboro in order to be closer to his children. During three years of declining health, he showed great fortitude along with his ever-present wit.”
Reading Segar’s obituary, we can get a sense of what kind of life he led. But in order to understand this complex man it is just as important to understand how he died. That part of his life began with the onset of symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.
Parkinson’s Disease is a progressive degenerative neurological condition that results in a wide variety of symptoms that can vary in severity among individuals. It is not considered a life-threatening disease in the strictest sense. Segar coped with the disease for a few years, but in 2007 the symptoms became severe and the quality of his life was deteriorating.
His wife of 55 years had been dead for two years and he told his family that he always thought he would die before his wife. Segar enjoyed a loving relationship with his family in the U.S. His 56-year-old son Adrian and his family in the Brattleboro area and his 47-year-old daughter Alison and her family in Burlington stayed close to their father.
His greatest pleasure came from his family and perhaps that is why Thanksgiving marked a turning point for him. According to Adrian, “We spent this Thanksgiving at our home—my wife, my dad, my older daughter, and her family. Thanksgiving is our favorite family holiday, but this Thanksgiving was different. Now Dad could barely swallow, he was in serious pain much of the time and was worried about his incontinence. His fear of choking was too much for him to enjoy eating his food, cut up as it was into tiny, almost indistinguishable bits, and his other Parkinson’s symptoms overwhelmed his ability to delight in his two adorable great-granddaughters. After five hours, miserable, he asked me to drive him back to his apartment.”
“The next morning he called me. In a trembling voice, he told me that ‘he didn’t want to continue like this’, and that he wanted to stop eating and drinking.”
This was not a quick decision on the part of Joshua Segar. He was losing the pleasure of being alive and he wanted to be able to have control over the manner and time of his death. He did some research and found a method to end his suffering that he believed would cause the least amount of pain for his family while allowing him to end his suffering in a perfectly legal way.
It’s called terminal dehydration or “patient refusal of nutrition and hydration” (PRNH) and is believed to be a commonly used method for a person to end their life. Statistics are nearly impossible to find, but there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence from healthcare professionals that terminal dehydration is relatively common.
This writer, a registered nurse, has cared for a number of people over the past 30 years who have chosen this way to end their lives. The public perception of withdrawing food and water is one of great suffering. The reality is quite different. Most people who stop eating and drinking in an effort to end their lives die peacefully and are given the time to say goodbye to friends and family.
According to Ira Byock, M.D., one of the most respected experts in hospice and palliative care, writing in a 1995 article in the “American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care”, “The general impression among hospice clinicians that starvation and dehydration do not contribute to suffering among the dying and might actually contribute to a comfortable passage from life. In contrast, the general impression among the public and non-hospice medical professionals is that starvation and dehydration are terrible ways to die.”
Byock goes on to explain, “A more extensive review of the scientific literature relevant to starvation and dehydration appears in an article by Sullivan entitled, ‘Accepting Death without Artificial Nutrition or Hydration’. Published studies of healthy volunteers report that total fasting causes hunger for less than 24 hours. Ketonemia (the burning of the body’s fat stores) occurs and is associated with the relief of hunger and an accompanying mild euphoria. When ketonemia is prevented by small feedings hunger persists, explaining the obsession with food commonly observed during semi-starvation occurring in times of famine or war. Animal studies also suggest that ketonemia may have a mild systemic analgesic effect. Experimentally induced dehydration in normal volunteers may report thirst, yet this sensation is consistently relieved by ad-lib sips of fluid in cumulative volumes insufficient to restore physiologic fluid balance. One study of healthy subjects suggests there is a decrease in the severity of experienced thirst associated with older age.”
Another critically important aspect of terminal dehydration is that it does not require professional help and it does not trigger any legal issues. As Byock explains, “Unlike physician-assisted suicide, refusing to eat or drink is a purely personal act. While it may require information, the decision obviates the need for physicians, nurses, or other agents of society to participate. After adequate discussion, and in the context of continued caring, at some point the patient’s choice becomes ‘none of our business’.”
Adrian collected his thoughts after hearing his father’s desire to end his life and wrote, “When dad told me of his desire to die by stopping eating and drinking I was shocked, but I knew I had to take him seriously and I knew right away that he must have been thinking about this for a long time. Although his Parkinson’s had caused several short-term memory issues, his ‘big picture’ thinking had always been and was still in superb shape. I told him that I took his desire very seriously, but we needed time to understand the implications, and we wanted to support him to the best of our ability, and we needed to learn what that support might entail. I asked him to wait while we did this research, and he agreed. He asked me to work as quickly as possible.”
“For the next two weeks, my wife and I worked hard. We discovered that Dad’s desire is called Voluntary Terminal Dehydration (VTD), that it is legal throughout the U.S., and, provided that the requestor is competent to freely make the decision and is not clinically depressed, VTD is medically ethical and should be supported with appropriate palliative care. We also learned that VTD, when supported with palliative care, seems to involve minimal discomfort.”
“After discussion, including a session with Dad alone, Dad’s GP, neurologist, and cardiologist all supported his decision, and his GP authorized hospice care through the Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice of Vermont and New Hampshire.”
Adrian’s sister Alison reacted differently to her father’s decision. She is a social worker and said that her father’s decision was ethically problematic for her as a daughter and a social worker.
Alison also believed that there was a high probability that her father may have been depressed and she felt he should have been treated for depression before carrying out his plan. She wrote a letter to her father asking him to try anti-depressants and to see Parkinson’s Disease experts before going through with his plans for death.
She may have never fully come to terms with the plan for terminal dehydration but she respected her father’s courage saying, “I think my dad was incredibly brave to do what he did, whether he was depressed or not.”
In response to her letter to her father, he wrote back,
“Dear Alison, Thank you for your nice letter. I do not want to take anti depressants. I want to carry on with my plan to end my life soon. I love you deeply with all my heart. Love, Dad”
Joshua Segar’s last meal was his favorite, calves liver. His own personal last supper was the last time he ate or drank and he died one week later. His family was comforted by the care they all received from the local hospice, visiting nurses, and private caregivers.
Alison noted that when her father made his final decision, “… he became animated as if he was going on a trip. He called friends and relatives of his decision.” Joshua received necessary comfort care with low doses of morphine and ice chips to soothe his dry lips and mouth.
Byock has had many years of experience with death and dying and his perspective is particularly relevant in the Segar family’s situation. “Clinically, for a number of people at the very end of life, the decision to refuse food and fluid may not arise from depression or emotional denial as much as from a felt sense of ‘being done’. Most such persons I have encountered one way or another expressed a sense that eating or drinking were no longer relevant to their situation. They were far along in a process of withdrawal, having turned their attention inward or ‘beyond’. Even here the option of PRNH has important advantages over complying with a patient’s request to be killed, for it allows the clinician’s attention to remain focused on the relief of suffering — physical, psychosocial, and spiritual. It requires — or frees — the clinician to remain vigilant for treatable depression and to remain, in humility, open to the possibility of unexpected opportunities for the person to again discover value in the life that is waning.”
The Segar family said they never noticed that their father experienced discomfort as he died. He became weaker and after three days he drifted into his final sleep. Alison was with him when he died and she said, “It was peaceful and it was beautiful.”
From September 2002 through November 2009 I kept a journal, writing each day before going to bed. Every once in a while I’ll pick one of the five thick notebooks I filled during those seven years and read some entries at random.
Why do I do this?
I don’t revisit my journals to immerse myself in my past. Back then, I wrote to capture and reflect on my experience while it was still fresh, to explore how I responded to and felt about the day’s events. I didn’t write for posterity, and there are many raw experiences in these pages that are painful to recall.
Instead, I dip into what I wrote to compare where I was then with where I am now.
Sometimes I discover that life circumstances have changed. Perhaps certain issues that once preoccupied me no longer do. (For example, my financial situation has changed for the better.) Perhaps some issues are still part of my life, but my response to them is different (e.g., speaking in public no longer scares me as much as it once did.) And perhaps I’m aware now of issues that were absent from my journals (e.g., the implications of growing older.)
Whatever I discover, when I look back at what I used to think and do I receive important information.
Often I discover that I am continuing to change and grow in specific ways. As someone who wants to be a life-long learner, someone who doesn’t want to be “stuck”, that is good and encouraging information to have.
I also notice that certain aspects of my life haven’t changed significantly. Frequently, that’s because they are core aspects of who I am and the world I inhabit.
And sometimes, I become aware that I’m stuck in some pattern of behavior or response that I’d like to change. That’s good information too.
Look back to look forward. At the end of a peer conference, a personal introspective allows participants to explore new directions as a result of experiences during the event. On a longer timescale, old personal journals (or any records of past personal introspection) can be a great tool for learning about ourselves and mapping our future path on life’s journey.
Creative Commons image of Janus courtesy of Wikipedia
Can meeting professionals enjoy the meetings they create?
Careercast.com rates “Event Coordinator” the 8th most stressful job of 2015. While we can take this precise ranking with a large grain of salt, it’s true that meeting tight deadlines, paying careful attention to a myriad of crucial details, handling in real-time everything that doesn’t go according to plan, and—despite all this pressure—satisfying clients & attendees are tasks at which relatively few souls excel.
Even when we give up being event organizers and go as attendees to our own profession’s meetings, they’re invariably scheduled during regional off-peak seasons, when venues don’t have bigger fish to fry (or freeze). So we roast outside in the summer and shiver in the winter.
And yet many of us love this profession.
My first job in events
My first job in events was as a tech on a high-school production of Peter Shaffer‘s The Royal Hunt of the Sun. I was a lowly follow-spot operator, highlighting the focal actor of the moment on stage. This entry-level position, performed in darkness, felt exciting. It was crucial that I hit Atahualpa with the spot at the climax of the play. My work, though minor, was important—I was part of something bigger. My production tech work continued with sound work (including exploding pyrotechnics in a garbage can for an outdoor Shakespeare production) and the fireworks for an Oxford Commemoration Ball, and eventually, in my adult life, I began to organize events on topics with which I was professionally involved.
Today I consult on and write about event design. I run workshops, and frequently present at meetings industry conferences on participant-driven and participation-rich topics. But my favorite activity remains facilitating meetings, despite the high-pressure environment, starting with the pre-con arrangements and early morning rehearsals and continuing until my last moment with a microphone.
Doing what I love
I delight in the excitement of facilitating opportunities for a group of people to learn from and connect with each other in ways that provide the best possible experiences and outcomes individually and collectively. I appreciate and embrace the privilege and responsibility to devise and implement effective process for the group. And perhaps most of all, I love the promise of spontaneity. Of creating something special and unexpected, not only for the people I’m working with but also for myself. Yes, it’s scary at times; yes, I take risks and make mistakes; and, yes, I get to learn and grow while serving the needs of participants to the best of my ability.
Do meeting professionals enjoy the meetings they create?
I do.
Do you?
If so, feel free to share what you enjoy in the comments!
“You exist as a consequence of people seven generations ago who were willing to proceed as if a day would come when you and yours would be in the world and they’d be long gone, and you somehow picked up an ember of that and safeguarded it until it caught a spark. And maybe that turned into your life’s work, but you can’t claim to be the author of it. You’re on the receiving end, and your job is to have the humility of a broken-down jalopy. So you’re not going to make a lot of claims for yourself, but you can say you have a sneaking suspicion this has been around before, and you’re a part of some kind of tradition.”
On Permission
“…when I was working in palliative care…I realized that if I was going to serve these dying people well, then I couldn’t wait for anyone to ask me to do it.”
So many conferences are a collection of unrelated sessions. But the June 2015 PCMA Education Conference in Fort Lauderdale showed how a coherent set of meeting goals can be embedded in a congruent conference arc, improving learning and connection amongst attendees. Here’s how PCMA connected the dots.
Adrian at the 2015 PCMA Education Conference
PCMA Education Conference design and duties
Although PCMA asked me to be the “conference facilitator” and “connect the dots” for EduCon, most of the credit for the conference design goes to the PCMA team. Pre-conference collaboration with the team was a pleasure.
My consequent jobs over the three days of conference sessions were to:
open and close the conference;
interview John Medina on stage and at a “deep dive” breakout;
facilitate a closing public evaluation of the conference.
The conference boasted a record 675 attendees, plus several hundred following the live stream. Being up on stage so much, interviewing, and providing event continuity for as many as a thousand people was a new experience for me—definitely risky learning! Connecting the dots immediately after presentations is hard when you don’t know what presenters are going to say!
When I accepted the offer of facilitating the conference, I only had a rough outline of the presentations. I wondered about the content/learning arc of the event. To my pleasant surprise, EduCon delivered a coherent set of sessions that shared common themes around predetermined goals.
The opening
At the opening, I told a story and shared the EduCon design goals: experiential learning, risky learning experiments, and meaningful engagement. I’ll use [EL], [RL], and [ME] respectively to indicate how these three themes were woven throughout the event.
John Medina’s opening session immediately touched on some of these themes. He described how prospect-refuge theory suggests that a mixture of private and public spaces provides an optimum environment for events, balancing the needs for safety [RL], frankness, growth, and confidentiality with the openness required to spread content.
John also spoke about the importance of high Theory Of Mind—the ability to reason about the mental states of others, what some might call empathy—for creating effective work teams that have high collective intelligence. (There’s a great test of your Theory of Mind ability Reading The Mind In The Eyestake it for free here!) It turns out that women have better theory of mind than men, which is perhaps why there are so many female meeting professionals—empathy is important in our industry [ME].
Interviewing John—who must surely be the easiest person in the world to interview—was a blast! I had 15 minutes with him on stage, followed by 75 minutes in a breakout. For the breakout I simply had the audience sit in curved theater seating facing John and me plus a couple of empty chairs. Audience members with questions walked to the front of the room and talked with him. We could have easily spent another hour with John.
Crowdsourcing sessions
Read my earlier post to learn more about the session crowdsourcing experiment I facilitated the following morning, which incorporated all three goals for the event [EL] [RL] [ME]. A few of the sessions chosen:
Women’s leadership in the event industry (described to me afterward by several participants in glowing terms);
Cultural issues in international meetings (run by Eli Gorin, who seemed very pleased); and
Selling sponsorship (held in the round).
The personal introspective
After lunch, I facilitated a personal introspective breakout session [EL] [RL] [ME], which provided participants the opportunity to think about what they had experienced so far, how their experiences might impact their lives, and what changes they might want to make as a result. Afterward, I received the same feedback independently from many people. They had gone into the session thinking they had little to say and discovered during the process that there was a lot to get excited about. I have heard this kind of feedback for many years now. Nevertheless, it’s still gratifying to hear the conversation volume rise steadily and observe the palpable reluctance of people to leave their small groups when the session is over.
I attended a few of the other breakout sessions during the conference and observed a good mixture of [EL], [RL], and [ME] in all of them. The interactivity of the sessions I witnessed was unusually high for a meeting industry conference. All the presenters I talked to had incorporated trying something new during their sessions.
The gift of failure
The second plenary speaker, Sarah Lewis, author of The Rise, spoke to several themes related to the “gift of failure”:
the “deliberate amateur” who avoids the traditional route of learning [RL];
the need for “private domains” that allow creativity to flourish [EL]; and
the “supple grit” needed to know when to keep working on an idea and when to stop before the work becomes dysfunctional persistence [EL].
A group spective
On the final day of EduCon, I ran a public evaluation of the conference—a format I call a spective—in 45 minutes using plus/delta. Having attendees publicly evaluate a conference they have just experienced was clearly an [RL] activity! I think it went well; the scribes’ Google doc summary (projected in real-time as the session took place) gives a taste…
Our fear of change
The first question Sarah was asked at the conclusion of her talk was on overcoming fear [RL], which segued nicely into the subject matter of the closing session by Mel Robbins, author of Stop Saying You’re Fine. Mel delved deep (and interactively) [ME] [EL] into our fear of change and introduced her 5-second rule—if you have a game-changer impulse, act on it within five seconds or else it dies [RL]—another formulation of improv’s “say yes”.
Mel closed with a powerful call to action, a key component of a compelling conference arc, to take ownership of our lives. After this powerful session, I made brief closing remarks, pointing out how PCMA’s conference goals had been achieved. Finally, I asked the audience to stand and applaud themselves, as the people who, collectively, through their own interactions, risk-taking, and engagement had made the achievement of those goals possible.
It felt good!
Awesome photo of me at the 2015 PCMA EduCon taken by and licensed from Jacob Slaton!
“The EduCon organizers asked me to say a little about the conference format, and I thought about when I was a teenager and loved to go to parties and dance. Then something happened, I don’t remember what it was—probably something incredibly embarrassing involving a girl I liked—and I became self-conscious and stopped dancing.
I stopped dancing for 40 years.
In 2003 I go to a workshop, and if you had told me beforehand that I would dress up in costume there and dance, solo, in front of an audience I would have a) said you were crazy and b) skipped the workshop.
I’m very glad I wasn’t warned, because at that workshop, when I experienced dancing again, I remembered that I love to dance—and I’ve been dancing ever since.
If I had been reminded at the workshop that I used to like to dance, it wouldn’t have made any difference.
All the lecturing in the world wouldn’t have shifted my belief that I really didn’t like to dance anymore.
I had to experience dancing again.
I had to get on my feet and dance!
Now, we’re not going to ask you to dress up and dance at this conference—unless you like doing that, in which case we’ve got the Fort Lauderdale Pool and Beach Party tomorrow night!
But what we are going to do at this conference is to give you plenty of opportunities for participative engagement—to experience things that we think may be useful for you in your lives and work.
In addition, this conference is full of experiments with a variety of learning environments and methods. We are proponents of risky learning—Sarah Lewis & Mel Robbins—will be exploring this in their sessions.
And, in our crowdsourcing experiment tomorrow, you’ll get to choose what you want to learn about, discuss, share, and connect about.
So our hope and desire is that, at EduCon, you will:
– engage;
– be open to your experience, with a willingness to learn from each other; and
– be a resource to your peers.”
It was my hope that sharing a revealing story in front of a thousand people at the start of this conference would model openness amongst attendees for what followed. Based on the feedback people gave me during the event and my observations of the level of interaction and intimacy there, I think I realized my hope.
My book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love has now been available for over five years in both paperback and ebook versions and is still selling well. I thought it might be of interest to share how the proportion of paperback versus ebook sales has changed over time. The following figures include both indirect (mainly Amazon) and direct (my web store) sales.
Dropbox
OpenTable
Simplenote
Waze
