When Your Conference Planning Process Eclipses Your Purpose July 21, 2016 by Jeff Hurt Did you ever play the board game of Chutes and Ladders? The object of the game is to get to the end of the path first. You avoid landing on a chute, which makes you slide backwards. And take advantage of the ladders which help you climb ahead. I played this game a lot with … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference planning, conference planning committee, conference planning team, conference stakeholders
In Today’s Economy, Significance Precedes Momentum October 9, 2015 by Jeff Hurt So many people ask me, “If ______________ (fill in the blank) is so important for conferences, why aren’t more conferences implementing it?” “So you wait to make changes to your event once you see other conferences are already doing it?” I respond. “You wait to copy someone else instead of being the leader?” Frequently, conference … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , change management, conference, conference organizer, conference planning team, Innovation, meeting planning best practices, meeting professional, tipping point
Getting Attendees Wrong: The Age Of Discontinuity September 28, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Some conference planning teams get their attendees wrong! So why do we get it so wrong? It has everything to do with the rapid pace of change—the age of discontinuity as Drucker called it—and our default thinking. The heart of our current organizational challenges is that we rarely diverge from our default thinking. We assume … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , Attendee Acquisition, attracting attendees, conference audiences, conference best practices, conference planning team, Qualitative measures
Silos Suffocate Your Successful Conference June 25, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Imagine an extended family of eight living under one roof together. Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, Dad and four siblings. Everyone lives in a separate room. Imagine they never speak to each other except once a week at a Sunday lunch. Each engages in their own personal activities in separate schedules. They just pass each other coming … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference planning, conference planning team, meeting planning best practices, silo mentality, Silos, vision
Feeding A Zombie Project And Getting No Results June 22, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Is your organization stuck maintaining and nurturing a zombie project? A zombie project is one that continues from year to year regardless of its effectiveness. It sucks the very life and resources from your team and organization says authors Scott Anthony, David Duncan and Pontus M.A. Siren. Often many people feel these zombie projects have … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , association best practices, conference best practices, conference evaluation, Conference Financials, conference planning team, strategic planning, strategic thinking
Your Conference Renewal Begins With Wondering April 22, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Where does true conference improvement begin? The conference revitalization process is probably very different than many of your past experiences. It’s so different that we have to view it through new lenses. By taking charge of your own understanding of conference improvement and transformation, you begin a new journey. You are exploring uncharted territory. You … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference improvement, conference organizer, conference planning, conference planning team, culture of learning, inquiry, meeting planner, meeting professional, reflection, strategy, transformation, wonderings
Rebalancing Conference Vertigo By Starting With Design-Less Strategies April 17, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Leaping to action without a solid comprehension of your conference target market and their needs causes all sorts of mayhem. Some conference organizers and their planning team members don’t even realize they are in the eye of a storm. That mayhem is their blind spot. Planning a conference without a deep understanding of what makes … [Read more…] Filed Under: Experience Design Tagged With: , conference design empathy, conference organizer, conference planning, conference planning team, constrained collaboration, culture of learning, customer empathy, empathy, learning organization, meeting planner, meeting professional, strategic empathy, strategy
Constrained Collaboration Can Derail Conference Improvement April 16, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Collaboration – it’s one of the buzzwords of business today. Collaboration is when people work together to achieve a goal. Multiple individuals from different departments work together to accomplish a task or project. Evan Rosen in his book The Culture of Collaboration says “[Collaboration is] working together to create value while sharing virtual and physical … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference organizer, conference planning, conference planning team, constrained collaboration, culture of learning, learning organization, meeting planner, meeting professional, strategy
Pivoting Away From Past Procedures To New Conference Horizon Returns April 15, 2015 by Jeff Hurt Your current conference planning and improvement procedures have its roots in industrial revolution models. We are still designing our conference in the exact same way that companies designed their manufacturing production process, to paraphrase Dave Gray author of The Connected Company. We are trying to imitate the industrial age to make our conference networking, programming … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference organizer, conference planning, conference planning team, culture of learning, learning organization, meeting planner, meeting professional, strategy
Helping Smart Planning Teams Learn So That Their Conferences Prosper April 7, 2015 by Jeff Hurt As conference organizers aspire to succeed in tougher and progressively more complex environments, they’ve got to resolve one basic and major quandary: Success today depends upon learning. We can’t continue to do what we’ve always done and expect different results. We’ve got to learn new ways “to conference,” so to speak. Success today depends upon … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference organizer, conference planning, conference planning team, culture of learning, learning organization, meeting planner, meeting professional, strategy
