Here are my current thoughts about COVID-19, hybrid meetings, and the future. Earlier this year I wrote:
Unfortunately, it currently looks like one potential short-term improvement outcome, containment, will not be successful. In the long term, however, the current turmoil caused by the spread of COVID-19 is likely to subside. The development and introduction of an effective and affordable vaccine may bring the virus under control. Or, enough people may get COVID-19 and develop an immune response, leading to herd immunity.
Eventually, the coronavirus is most likely to either burn out or return seasonally, like influenza.
I am not focusing on hybrid meetings at the moment. Why? Because I see little if any, benefit of holding in-person meetings at this time. When we can have in-person meetings safely without masks or 6′ social distancing, I expect to be designing for two basic kinds of hybrid meetings.
Traditional in-person plus online stream plus online meeting concierges that mediate the in-person portion with those online. (Emilie Barta has a decade of experience mediating such meeting formats.)
Hub-and-spoke style meetings (long championed by Maarten Vanneste), with facilitated in-person pods that are internet-connected, usually to a central in-person meeting. Once again, include one or more online meeting concierges to facilitate what happens between pods and the central in-person meeting.
COVID-19 has temporarily suppressed the market for hybrid meetings, but I believe their future is bright!
Not long ago I wrote about the end of decent-paid jobs and the need for basic income. A startling recent advance in machine learning has only heightened my concerns about the future of work. Last month, Google’s subsidiary, DeepMind, published a paper on AlphaZero, an artificial intelligence (AI) the company designed to play games. The AI started with only game rules. Here’s what happened next:
“At first it made random moves. Then it started learning through self-play. Over the course of nine hours, the chess version of the program played forty-four million games against itself on a massive cluster of specialized Google hardware. After two hours, it began performing better than human players; after four, it was beating the best chess engine in the world.” —James Somers, New Yorker, How the Artificial-Intelligence Program AlphaZero Mastered Its Games
From “knowing” nothing about the game, in four hours the program became the strongest chess player in the world. AlphaZero also taught itself to become the world’s best Go and shogi player in a few hours.
As a schoolboy, I played competitive chess for a few years. Although I haven’t played chess seriously since then, I still have a feeling for the game.
I was shocked watching AlphaZero’s tenth game with Stockfish, the strongest open-source chess engine in the world.
I’d describe AlphaZero’s play as completely solid, interspersed with incredible flashes of brilliance. Great human chess players have an uncanny ability to view a position and quickly select a few plausible moves for deeper study out of the many possible legal moves. The best grandmasters occasionally discover a brilliant and unexpected move in a game. AlphaZero found several during this game.
Having seen this game, I’d describe AlphaZero as the most creative, brilliant, and strongest chess player the world has ever seen.
From a novice to best in the world in four hours, is a level of performance that no human can match.
Now think about what would happen if this kind of performance could be achieved in human work environments such as:
medical scan diagnosis;
legal document creation;
engineering design; and
stock market trading.
These are only harder problems than playing a game because:
the problem space is larger; and
the data needed for learning can’t be self-generated by the AI itself and must be supplied by humans.
But these are not insuperable obstacles. If overcome, many high-paid jobs for medical practitioners, lawyers, accountants, and financial analysts would disappear.
So what is the future of work? Are we moving towards a world where the only available work is in low-paid “human service” areas where people are still cheaper than machines? Perhaps.
Until the arrival of robots capable of doing just about everything humans do. What work for humans remains then?
Here’s some reassuring news for event professionals from WillRobotsTakeMyJob.com. Our “Automated Risk Level” is “Totally Safe”. And the industry is projected to grow over time. Even so, there are some ominous clouds on the horizon, and one usually needs to take predictions about the future with a large pinch of salt.
I have other concerns. In the future, I think we’ll see more meetings move online. That will have an impact on the hospitality industry (no room nights, no F&B, and no travel) and, perhaps, reduce the number of event production staff.
Anyway, I hope this prediction’s right. We’ll see!
Can conference organizers get evaluative feedback on the long-term outcomes of their events? Check out The Reminder and find out!
Last week, I pointed out that short-term evaluations routinely solicited at events are unreliable. If we want to honestly learn whether our conferences create long-lasting change, we need evaluation methods to apply after an appropriate length of time (three months? six months? a year?—you choose!) rather than within a few hours or days of the meeting taking place.
Here’s one way I’ve devised to obtain long-term feedback. It’s based on an old technique, “A Letter To Myself” (ALTM, aka “A Letter To My Future Self”) which you may have experienced at meetings over the years.
I call it The Reminder.
In the standard ALTM version, described in Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love, the organizers set aside around 30 minutes just before the end of the event, supply each participant with notepaper and an envelope, and ask them to reflect on the changes they would like to make in their lives as a result of the event over the next [3 months/6 months/year/appropriate period]. People then write letters to themselves about their changes. They put the letters into the supplied envelopes, seal and self-address them and hand them in. After the announced period, the meeting organizers mail the letters.
ALTM works because the recipients find value in being reminded of their resolutions after time has passed. They can note what they have accomplished, what is yet to be done, and what they may have forgotten but still have the energy to pursue.
When I run a Personal Introspective at the end of a peer conference, I often add the ALTM exercise to provide a personal “tickler” reminder of the changes participants decide to make.
The Reminder
To modify ALTM to incorporate long-term feedback, add the following to the envelope supplied to each participant:
A stamped envelope addressed to the conference organizers.
Before the end of the ALTM session, briefly go through the feedback form with the group. Explain that completing the form on receipt and promptly mailing it back will provide the conference organizers valuable information about the long-term effectiveness of the conference, and this will help make the event even better next time.
It’s harder to implement long-term evaluations of our events because participants have less motivation to provide the information we need. The Reminder combines the effect of receiving the participant-created letter with a quick request for feedback. You can increase motivation by adding an incentive for returning the feedback form, like a small prize or a chance to win a raffle from those who return the form. In this case, name/contact information should be added to the form.
What do you think? Can The Reminder be a useful tool for evaluating your events? If you use it, share how it worked in the comments below.
“On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about a thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love story…”
From my earliest days as a reader, I have loved science fiction. I think this is because good science fiction is the literature of ideas, as Pamela Sargent described it. It’s a fascinating place where the consequences of making different assumptions about the world can be explored and expanded on in myriad ways creatively tied to our human experience.
One evening in 1966, Frederik Pohl wrote Day Million: a classic science fiction short story that starts with the sentence above, and paints—in two thousand words—an ordinary yet unbelievable day in the future.
The story ends with one of the most perfect final paragraphs I’ve ever read:
“Balls, you say, it looks crazy to me. And you—with your aftershave lotion and your little red car, pushing papers across a desk all day and chasing tail all night—tell me, just how the hell do you think you would look to Tiglath-Pileser, say, or Attila the Hun?”
Pohl demonstrates in Day Million how our very notion of “normal” can morph over time into something almost unrecognizable. What’s noteworthy is that it’s not the technology of the future that seems foreign, but its inhabitants’ attitudes about their routine lives.
And this brings us, finally, to meetings. Like the readers of Pohl’s story, we stay stuck in our beliefs about what should happen in a “normal” meeting. We cannot imagine how they could be different, in the same way as an Elizabethan merchant would be dumbfounded by the idea of buying almost anything we wanted from a box in our room and having it delivered over thousands of miles in a couple of days. When we look at the past we have no problem seeing how our perspective has changed dramatically. We frequently wonder why no one then thought to do what seems obvious today.
And yet we can barely start to conceive how our future will be different.
But it will be different.
That’s worth remembering when someone in the meetings profession proposes something crazy. Multi-day meetings with no preplanned agenda. People constructing during the event sessions that work for them. Conference sessions designed so that attendees interact with each other.
Although the report (to which I contributed in a minor way) concentrates on the German meetings industry, remember that Germany leads Europe as a meetings and convention destination, and is in second place worldwide after the USA as a destination for all meetings and conventions.
The global meetings megatrends report includes three future scenarios constructed around the themes of Architecture, Knowledge Transfer, and Technology, a summary of eighteen study future outcomes, and a description of the methodology used.
Thank you everyone who participated in last week’s two #eventprofs chats about …the future of #eventprofs chats. Here are links to the survey results and the Tuesday transcript. I’ve had a chance to think about the discussion, and, as the de facto #eventprofs community manager (other drivers welcome), here’s what I plan to do in the future:
Organize one chat per week
Although we have had two weekly time slots for #eventprofs chats for some time (Tue 9-10pm and Thu 12-1pm EST), in practice we have been averaging just over one chat per week (58 in 2011). There was clear agreement that we should change how often we meet to once a week. I’m still open to anyone suggesting an additional short-notice chat on a hot topic, but I won’t be scheduling more than one chat a week.
Rotate the day and time we hold the chat
It was clear from the discussions that about half those who responded preferred daytime chats and half preferred evening chats. Rather than disenfranchise half our audience permanently, we’re going to rotate our chat times weekly between our existing Tue 9-10pm and Thu 12-1pm EST times. I’m not going to to be a robot about this; we may chat two Tuesdays or Thursdays in a row. But over the year, we’ll hold about the same number of chats on each day. Follow @epchat to be informed about upcoming chats.
Chat hashtag
We will keep using the #eventprofs hashtag for the chat. Yes, it contains a lot more, sometimes irritating, announcements (aka spam) than the good old days, but that’s the price of fame. The same would eventually happen for any new hashtag we adopted. Event professionals new to Twitter often discover our chats via the #eventprofs hashtag. Besides, do you really want to have to remember to check one more hashtag?
Chat topics
We have had a neat tool for suggesting and voting on #eventprofs chat topics for some time, but it has not been used much, though I publicize it regularly on Twitter. I did not receive any ideas on ways to increase suggestions for chat topics, though several new topics were suggested (thank you Michelle & Marvin!) which I’ve added to our tool. People liked the idea of having more guest speakers on the chat and I will try to solicit more of them. And I would really appreciate suggestions/introductions from the #eventprofs community (that means YOU); contact me, it only takes a moment!
OK, so how can I help?
Follow @epchat to be informed about upcoming chats.
Take just a couple of minutes to suggest and vote on #eventprofs chat topics. If there’s a topic you want to talk about, suggest it! Is there’s a guest you want? Suggest them, together with the topic! If everyone added at least one topic just once a year and did comparison voting on five pairs of suggestions, we’d have a great pool of suggestions.
If you are interested in moderating or being a guest on an #eventprofs chat, just let me know! Include your name, suggested topic, and the day you’d like to be on.
I would love to move our #eventprofs site from the creaky (but free) pbworks wiki to something more streamlined (a free WordPress site would probably work). But I don’t have the time to do this myself right now. If you would be prepared to help with this project, I promise to have your likeness, links, and a generous profusion of thanks prominently displayed on the resulting gloriously updated version. Contact me!
In the end, as always, the health of the #eventprofs community is up to you. My continuing goal is to support making the #eventprofs chats maximally useful to the greatest number of event professionals, within the constraints of volunteer time and energy. Comments and helpful suggestions are, as always, welcome.
There are three things conference attendees really want to know about each other.
Connections with people are formed by our experience with them over time. (Yes, Buddhists and Taoists, the present moment is our only reality, but we still experience it through the filters of the history and desires in our brains.) Besides learning about people we’re with through our direct experience, we discover more by listening to their descriptions of their past and present experiences and their hopes for the future.
That’s why the first thing that happens at Conferences That Work is a roundtable, where each attendee answers the following three questions (there are no wrong answers!) to the group:
How did I get here? (past)
What do I want to have happen? (present & future)
What experience or expertise do I have that might be of interest to others? (past & future)
As people, one by one, share these three things to know, they share their past, present, and future with everyone in attendance. Each person opens a window for others to see the timeline of their life more clearly. This sharing provides the foundation for connections to deepen during the conference that follows.
What do Anguilla supermarkets have in common with the future of conferences? Read on to find out!
This is the third blog post I wrote while vacationing in Anguilla.
A little about Anguilla and its supermarkets
Anguilla is a country of 14,000 people and four supermarkets. I like Anguillan supermarkets. None of them are chains and each has its own character, which makes shopping interesting, rather than the typically predictable American experience.
Nearly everything is imported. When we first started vacationing here, food arrived by ship once a week, usually making Thursday night peak shopping time. As the days passed, popular items like milk and vegetables vanished, only to reappear shortly after the container ships steamed into the harbor at Sandy Ground. Nowadays the shelves are stocked more regularly, but you still never quite know what you may find when you venture inside one of these idiosyncratic stores.
Not all Anguilla supermarkets are the same
Each store has different strengths and weaknesses. One boasts an extensive liquor department but seems to have something against vegetables. Another targets ex-pats, with a fine display of British brand name staples and household knickknacks, while everyday staples are shortchanged. And a third provides the best assortment of local foods, but little in the way of candy for the kids.
What’s interesting is the evolution of these establishments over time. The older supermarkets used to have a monopoly on certain goods; if you wanted cream you had to go to Supermarket A, while Supermarket B was the sole supplier of Pampers. With more sources of supply, the possibilities have multiplied—and the stores have responded in very different ways.
Six years ago, Supermarket C was the most haphazardly stocked of the three we patronized. Its marketing philosophy seemed to be we’ll take anything we can get out hands on, stack it in an aisle, and see if it sells. Their stock gyrated so widely from visit to visit that we avoided shopping there unless we wanted surprises. Not surprisingly, it was rare to see more than a few cars in the parking lot. Meanwhile, Supermarkets A & B relied on their exclusive arrangements to offer, between them, a fairly comprehensive, if somewhat unreliable, selection of useful food and household products.
Fast forward to today
Supermarket C has been transformed. The premises are the same, but the shelves now include a comprehensive range of useful goods. And in addition, unlike competitors A & B, the store is open every day until late. As a result, it’s hard to find a space in the parking lot.
Meanwhile, Supermarkets A & B have rested on their laurels. We don’t have to shop in both places to get what we want anymore. C is now our go-to store. And yet, though their traffic is down, we still notice customers shopping at A & B.
These days, those of us who don’t live on a small island know that failure to keep up with competitors in a commodity-driven retail market invariably leads to swift economic extinction. In Anguilla’s laid-back environment, such change will probably occur more slowly, but eventually, unless they make significant changes, Supermarkets A & B will not survive.
The future of conferences
You’ve probably guessed how this relates to the future of conferences. Think of Supermarkets A & B as set-in-their-ways organizers of traditional conferences. Think of C as progressive event planners who realize that people prefer to attend events that give them what they want rather than going to multiple events to get a piece here and a piece there.
In Anguilla, people’s needs for supermarket goods didn’t change, but improvements in the supply of imported goods into Anguilla allowed Supermarket C to change what it offered to better match what people wanted. Likewise, people’s professional needs for relevant content, meaningful engagement, and networking haven’t changed. But we now have a host of new ways to supply content outside the traditional conference, and a host of new ways to find out what conference attendees want to do while they’re together. Ignore the future of conferences at your peril. See you in the aisles at Supermarket C!
Here are my current thoughts about COVID-19, hybrid meetings, and the future. Earlier this year I wrote:
Here’s some reassuring news for event professionals from 
Anguilla is a country of 14,000 people and four supermarkets. I like Anguillan supermarkets. None of them are chains and each has its own character, which makes shopping interesting, rather than the typically predictable American experience.