Growing up, I was immersed in an environment that worshipped feats of mind, to the almost total exclusion of the body. Apart from compulsory school sports on Thursday after school, I spent 5½ days each week studying, studying, studying. Perhaps […]
I am resigned to the fact that OpenAI‘s Large Language Model ChatGPT has scraped every blog post I’ve written here (over 750 posts in the last 13 years—around half a million words) so it can parrot my thoughts about meeting design, […]
A June 2023 conference gave me a perfect opportunity to use one of my facilitation tools: Reminders, Sparks, Questions, Puzzles (RSQP). RSQP can be thought of as a highly interactive debrief after an information dump. It’s an efficient way to […]
Here are my suggestions on how to handle three kinds of metaphorical holes. Assholes We’ll begin with assholes. They are people (usually men in my experience) who reliably exhibit mean, uncaring, selfish, disrespectful, and contemptible behaviors. Most of the time, […]
Hey everyone, especially educators who teach courses on meetings and hospitality. My ebooks are now available on VitalSource, the largest global supplier of digital course materials to higher education! I’m confident that this new channel will be a valuable addition to your […]
I’m a big fan of the core facilitation technique pair share. After pairing up participants and providing a short time for thinking about a topic or question, each pair member takes a minute or so, in turn, to share their thoughts with […]
Since 2004, social listening—the practice of monitoring and analyzing online conversations and social media mentions related to brands, products, services, events, or industries—has evolved significantly and grown in popularity. Initially confined to sentiment analysis, social listening tools can now identify trends, […]
Reading two recent MeetingsNet articles about the value of trade show appointments reminds me of a story attributed to the wry 13th-century Sufi philosopher Nasreddin. Two men who were quarreling came to Nasreddin and asked him to adjudicate their argument. The first man presented […]
After a school board informational meeting the other day, I chatted with the moderator, Steve John. We discussed several aspects of the meeting, including the difficulty of working with both sides of an issue. It’s rare for groups larger than […]
On March 11, 2022, I watched the last episode of Season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. As Midge Maisel walked alone in the snow outside Carnegie Hall and the credits scrolled, some amazing music began to play with the […]