Five Meeting Design Principles: Inviting Innovation and Intellect
Catalyst Ranch… Where no chair is alike and colorful décor invites creativity and sparks innovation from attendees, speakers, and sponsors. What better place to hold EventCamp’s 2011 National Conference?
You could simply look around Catalyst Ranch and understand the importance of meeting design, or you could also listen to presenter, John Nawn share the FIVE principles to keep in mind when designing your meeting:
- Assessment and Evaluation: Set clear, measurable goals before designing the meeting. This way you’ll be able to evaluate your meeting after it’s over. It’s also important to determine your attendees needs, wants, and concerns so that your meeting design reflects these.
- Create Meaningful Engagement: Connect your attendees physically, intellectually, and emotionally. A great way to connect your attendees is by creating a community site for to get attendees interacting before, during, and after the meeting.
- Distributed Learning: Provide people with the information they need when they need it in the most convenient way. Continue the learning with facilitated discussions and break-out sessions.
- Collaboration: Tap into the collective intelligence of the group in order to better understand their needs, generate new ideas, determine the best solutions, and put those plans into action.
- Generate a Memorable Experience: Design the meeting with the attendees in mind, not the products or services being sold/offered.
Think About the Meetings You Attend
- Is the environment stale with buzzing florescent lighting and rows of chairs or does it provide a sense of creativity and learning?
- Do you connect with your audience and get them involved, or just talk to them and think of them as registered attendees?
- Do your presenters involve their audience or do they just speak at them?
- Are you getting the results you want? If not, what are you doing about it?
Think about these things when you go to a meeting as an attendee, and don’t be afraid to steal awesome ideas and take a half step out of the box.