There’s a tension between improv and planning at events. It began with a tap on the shoulder… …as I stood in the lunch line on the last day of the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN) 2015 World Conference. Turning around, I saw Paul Z Jackson, President of […]
Two years have passed since I last updated my list of favorite iPad/iPhone apps for event planners. While I’m still a big fan of five of the original apps I chose just two weeks after receiving my original iPad back […]
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 […]
Some of the book reviews of my three books. Conferences That Work book reviews “Fantastic!…One of the first books that really talks about design aspects in a whole new way.” —Janet Sperstad, CMP, Program Director, Meeting and Event Management, Madison […]
The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action About the Author Acknowledgments Foreword How to use this book Part 1: Eliminate Attendees at Your Meetings Get on your feet! A dilemma: Hear or do? […]
Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love About the Author Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Part I: Reengineering the Conference What is a Conference? How we got here Face-to-face versus online Able Masters Education as gardening Conference process = Elementary school […]
Traditional conferences are dying like music albums. Remember the Compact Disc [CD]? Or, if you’re old enough, like me, the long-playing record [LP], aka “vinyl” records? For many years, the music industry primarily sold “popular” (i.e., short form) music as […]
Staff picks A traditional conference is like a pharmacy. Content is prescribed, and you pick it up in a session. Hopefully, it will fix what ails you. Have you met anyone interesting in a pharmacy? Did you create one of […]
When facilitating, I often use sticky notes as a flexible tool that allows movement from individual work => small group work => a visual summary for an entire group. 3M has just released a useful free tool for iDevices running IOS […]
My MBTI score doesn’t tell the whole story. I’ve spent the last 10 days living alone in the woods. (No, not what you might be thinking: my home is surrounded by fall foliage, and my marriage is fine.) Quite a […]