Three ways to create truly surprising meetings

Three ways to create truly surprising meetings

CoffeeGate

Two hundred people arrived for the opening breakfast at a 2015 Canadian conference to discover There Was No Coffee. The young first-time volunteer staff had forgotten to brew it.

Three days later, people were still grumbling about CoffeeGate. I bet that even today if you asked attendees what they remembered about the event, most would immediately recall the There Was No Coffee moment. A memorable moment, yes, but not a good one.

Experienced meeting planners know that every meeting has its share of unexpected surprises. While some thrive on the adrenaline rush of dealing with them, most of us work to minimize surprises by anticipating potential problems and developing appropriate just-in-case responses.

Minimizing surprises like CoffeeGate is the default behavior for meeting planners. We do not want poorly planned and/or executed events, because the inevitable result will be unhappy attendees and chaos of one kind or another.

Surprising Meetings

But not all meeting surprises are bad. Because meeting professionals want to minimize the likelihood of unexpected surprises during the execution of the events, there’s a tendency to unconsciously minimize planned surprises for the attendees. And that’s unfortunate — because planned surprises are one of the most wonderful ways we can improve attendees’ experience of the event!

Special events professionals know this. They do their best to make events surprisingly spectacular, typically focusing on food & beverage, decor, entertainment, and, occasionally, format.

In the realm of conferences and professional meetings, however, it’s easy to forget the value of surprising attendees. We’ve all been to meetings that followed the dreary welcome-presentations-meals-socials-closing remarks routine. Every minute is scheduled in advance, and attendees are told in advance everything that’s going to happen.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

To improve the attendee experience, we need to not only minimize unexpected surprises but also incorporate planned surprises into our events. And we don’t have to limit ourselves to the standard “surprising” elements that typical special events include. Here are three ways to create truly surprising meetings.

Keep the conference program secret

Each February I fly to Europe to attend the annual Meeting Design Practicum: an intense, immersive, invitation-only conference for thirty creative meeting designers.

The genius of this conference is that only one person, my friend and colleague Eric de Groot, knows everything that will happen during our 48 hours together. First, Eric and his MindMeeting crew come up with a metaphor for the conference. Then they solicit individual attendees to design and facilitate (typically experimental) sessions that collectively reflect and explore the chosen frame. Participants know what they will contribute, but nothing else about the program.

For example, in 2017 we convened at a Barcelona food market. We had no idea that within a few minutes we would be partnered up and choosing exotic food items on display for our new friend to taste, let alone being whisked away in a coach an hour later to Lloret de Mar for the remainder of the conference—with the rest of the program still a mystery. As you might expect, the continuous unfolding of the entire event added greatly to participants’ enjoyment and engagement.

You probably won’t want to do this for a conventional content-focused event. But meetings where the session designs use active, interactive learning can be made far more engaging if individual presenters are prepared for their sessions but only the event organizers know everything that will occur.

Be open to surprising possibilities that appear during the event

I’ve been taking yoga classes for decades with the genial Scott Willis. Our 75-minute yoga flow is pretty standard from week to week (and for me, on balance, that’s a good thing). But yesterday, I climbed the stairs to Scott’s yoga studio and found a jar of mayonnaise on the floor. I won’t recount in detail what happened next. Suffice it to say there was general merriment for a few minutes while the origins and convoluted journey of the jar were explored and explained. A little bit of spontaneous color never hurts even a mostly predictable event. In case you were wondering, I got to bring home the jar.

Another example of being open to novel possibilities is my story of the man who brought bagpipes to my event.

[Added June 18, 2018] Traci Browne (see comments) kindly reminded me of our pleasure when we stumbled across an unexpected axe-throwing competition during a 2012 conference.

Hold sessions in metaphorical venues

Finally, we can create a genuinely surprising session by seeing what the event environment evokes. At the 2017 Meeting Design Practicum mentioned above, Manu Prina noticed a children’s playground outside our hotel, so she developed a 4-corner game played (literally!) in the sandbox! her starting point was a child’s game, with movement, simple rules, and moments of playful competition. She used it to brainstorm ideas about a problem the group was working on. The archetypal space and our memories of play as children combined to create a joyful and totally novel experience for us to work together. That’s creativity!

Make your meetings surprising — in a good way!

I hope these examples stimulate your thinking about ways to improve your event design. Besides these approaches being intuitively appealing, we also know that novel surprises stimulate learning because we are wired to notice novelty. Creating formats that surprise attendees, and in the process help them learn more effectively, is harder than, say, selecting linens. But well worth the effort!

The tension between improv and planning at events

tension between improv and planning: photograph of Adrian Segar facilitating the closing session at AIN 2015. Photo courtesy of Alex Tran
Facilitating the closing session at AIN 2015

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 AIN. “There’s a conversation going on upstairs that I think you’d be interested in,” he said.

It seemed an innocent statement at the time.

I was about to discover the depth of Paul’s craftiness.

After filling my plate with Quebecois goodies, I climbed the stairs to find Diego IbáñezGina Trimarco CligrowPatrick Short, and Betse Green lunching together. I told them that Paul had invited me to join the “conversation”, whereupon Patrick explained that the group was planning the hour-long conference closing ceremony, which began at 2 p.m. Paul joined us and, looking at me, said that the closing ceremony typically included some kind of public evaluation of the conference. I looked at my watch and gulped. We had 40 minutes!

Typically, when designing process for a session with 200 participants, I like to have some time—perhaps a day or two—to think about the best ways to achieve the desired outcomes with the available resources.

This occasion was not typical.

I was not feeling the nervous excitement I usually experience in situations like this.

I was feeling fear.

But…I was with a group of great improvisers

People who had spent decades practicing and living improv. Perhaps we could work together and create something good enough, perhaps even great, in 40 minutes?

I have a simple tool for public evaluations, plus/delta, that I’ve used many times. But how could we optimize it for 200 improvisers?

My memory of the rest of the lunch is hazy. (I was definitely outside my comfort zone.) I think that Patrick made the great suggestion that the evaluations be presented as short improvs. Others chimed in. Together, we fine-tuned the process.

Rushing to the barn where the session would be held, we discovered that the local conference organizers were also working on their plan for the closing ceremony. They had already decided to hold it outdoors—it was a beautiful day—and had lit a bonfire. A few-minute conversation determined that we would hold our evaluation in a circle around the fire, and then they would close the conference in their own way.

We started bringing out chairs from the barn. I found three scribes to capture in writing the conference insights that were about to be shared. We arranged enough chairs and set up an electronic organ for Patrick to accompany the improvs, and it was time to start.

There was no more time to plan. Diego and Gina introduced themselves and me, and I was on.

The conference evaluation

Positive experiences

Talking as loudly as I could (there was no sound equipment and I don’t have a strong voice) I explained that we were going to do a rapid public evaluation of the entire conference and gave them an overview of the process. Then I asked everyone to form small groups of 5 or 6 people, and gave them seven minutes to:

  • Share their positive experiences of the conference in their group; and then
  • Create a short improv piece about the changes they would like to see in the conference to make it better.

There had been some logistical challenges during the conference—e.g. no coffee was available at breakfast on the first day…oops!—and I knew from past experience that participants tend to concentrate on such issues during the change portion of the evaluation. So I made a point to direct the groups to focus on non-logistical/obvious conference improvements while they were working on their short improvs.

Once the group work was done, everyone returned to the circle and individuals began sharing their positive experiences of the conference. I had never done this kind of sharing in a circle before, so I improvised the idea of walking slowly around the circle with my arm pointing to each person in turn. As my attention swept around the circle, people put their hands up if they wanted to say something, and I stopped for them to share. After I had gone around the circle once, I announced I would make two more circuits for sharing positive experiences. This worked well—different people spoke during each rotation and everyone had three opportunities to share or pass.

What would you change?

Next, we switched to the change portion of the evaluation. One group volunteered to start, and we began to experience a wide variety of creative group improvs that conveyed the changes the members suggested. (Coffee delivery improvements, were, still amusingly incorporated.)

Normally, I am very aware of time issues when facilitating events. The closing session had to end on time, as one bus was leaving immediately to allow some attendees to catch flights back in Montreal. On this occasion, concentrating on the improvised flow, I was doing a poor job of managing the remaining time. Thankfully Gina noticed this, stepped up, and ingeniously coaxed the remaining groups to spend less time on their improvs. I doubt that anyone even noticed she had taken over on the fly. She supported me and made me look good—thank you, Gina!

After the improvs had all been presented and enjoyed, the local hosts took over and ran a brief and moving closing, tying together the Nature theme of the conference with our experiences over the previous three days. The contributions of many people were thanked and recognized in humorous, yet heart-felt fashion.

As the session ended, one last facilitation task remained for me. I found the three scribes and took safe possession of their valuable notes. Later, back at my Vermont home, I photographed the notes and emailed them to Paul so he would have a permanent record available to use for improving future AIN World conferences.

What did I/can we learn from this experience?

We are all improvisers. Every time you have a conversation with someone, for example, you invariably do not know what they are about to say, and you improvise your response. Competent facilitators, leading group conversation and/or process, are improvisers. Despite having a plan for achieving desired group outcomes, they adapt what they do in response to the group experience.

Fifteen years ago I would have quickly turned down the opportunity Paul offered. I saw myself as a process designer and planner, and my fear of “failing” to be highly competent when asked to improvise large group process overrode any perceived benefits. Today, I am more comfortable taking the risk of being less than perfect, of being average, as improvisers like to say. So one thing I learned on that sunny afternoon was that I am willing to step more out of my comfort zone and into the place where magic happens when responding in the moment.

I also learned about the value of trusting support. I would have turned down Paul’s offer if I had had to create the session by myself. Being surrounded by folks trained in improvisation is probably the best support structure you can have! We are all working to make each other look good, because we know that the best things happen when we work supporting each other.

Does improv trump planning?

Does this whole experience mean that improv trumps planning when creating and facilitating group process?

No! My experience with plus/delta as an evaluation technique was gained from ten years of experience involving plenty of planned experiments. This experience made it easy to integrate the core plus/delta process into the unique circumstances of the AIN 2015 conference closing session. As far as I know, no one else present had the expertise to create this form of evaluation. My years of planning plus/delta allowed the group to benefit from an effective process tool.

In addition, my very last act for the session—collecting the scribes’ notes in the hurly-burly of mass crowd goodbyes, and making sure the AIN organizers received them—was reflex planning. Improvisors, improvising in the moment, might overlook this move. (We saw it happen; remember the absent coffee?) As meeting professionals know, a planning mindset is essential to reap the full benefits of creative process at events.

The tension between improv and planning at events

Why did I write this behind-the-scenes look at 100 minutes of terror and wonder at the close of AIN 2015? Because I think it illustrates that there is a natural tension between improv and planning at events. The tension appears because, at first sight, they are mutually exclusive ways of thinking about what “should” happen when people meet to learn and connect. The mythical planner’s goal is to make sure that everything goes according to plan. The mythical improvisor’s goal (well, one of them) is a reality where nothing goes according to plan.

You can’t get much more tension than the difference between nothing and everything.

Yet this very tension provides the energy that we feel at the best events and experiences of our lives. From moment to moment, there is a play between improv and planning. It is the Taoist experience, the energy that arises from the tension of opposites.

And it is a tension to embrace, not fear. That is our challenge.

Photo courtesy of Alex Tran