Do You Plan Meetings With 500+ People? September 7, 2011 by Jeff Hurt Do you plan meetings with 500 or more people? Do you secure both professional and industry speakers for your events? If yes to both questions, would you give us about 10 minutes of your time to complete this survey? Velvet Chainsaw has partnered with Tagoras, a leading market research and learning consulting company to capture … [Read more…] Filed Under: Ramblings Tagged With: , associations, conferences, Education & Adult Learning, meeting planner, meeting planning, meeting professionals, research
Are You A Glorified Scheduler Or Strategic Meeting Professional? September 6, 2011 by Jeff Hurt As a conference organizer, are you focused on checking off your daily to do list or focused on fulfilling your participants’ needs? When you focus only on completing your task, you deliver what’s required. But not what’s expected. You follow the standard operating procedure precisely. And yet you miss the point completely. You comply with … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conferences, meeting best practices, meeting logistics, meeting planner, meeting planning best practices, meeting professional, strategy
The Six Essential Re’s Of Successful Conferences September 1, 2011 by Jeff Hurt Your conference is not as unique as you think it is! Most of them are carbon-copy, cookie-cutter replicates of each other. You may have dressed up your conference with some cosmetics to make it look different than others but it tastes, smells and feels all too familiar. It actually reminds people of a stale, untouched, … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conferences, Education & Adult Learning, meeting planner, meeting planning best practices
Three Infographics On Conference Content And Delivery August 31, 2011 by Jeff Hurt Dare to color outside the lines. Have the courage to take risks. Let go of outdated, dead sacred cows. These were just a few of the overarching themes from Experient’s e4 2011 Conference “Outside the Lines.” Bye, Bye Breakouts! Hello Innovation Labs! The Experient team always delivers a stellar conference that’s engaging. They are willing to … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education, Speaker Coaching Tagged With: , committee best practices, conference best practices, conference tips, conferences, content, content strategist, content-strategist-curator, meeting best practices, meeting planning, meeting planning best practices, Speaker Emerging Practices
Helping Conference Participants Move From Superficial Knowing To Understanding August 29, 2011 by Jeff Hurt Have you ever walked out of a conference education session and said, “Now I understand,” and then can’t remember the main point? Sure you have. You’ve been a victim of superficial knowledge. You have a false sense of security that you “got it.” Then when you try to talk about it, you can’t remember the … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education Tagged With: , adult learning strategies, conference best practices, conference education, conferences, learning, meeting planning best practices, participatory learning
Ten Learning Shifts For Conferences, Events And Associations August 25, 2011 by Jeff Hurt To paraphrase cognitive scientist and author Cathy Davidson: Our nonprofit institutions, for the most part trade and professional associations as well as professional societies, are acting as if the world has not suddenly, irrevocably, cataclysmically, epistemically changed. Learning Is Changing Learning is changing. Anyone. Any time. Anywhere. By the end of 2011, 2 billion people … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education Tagged With: , association issues and challenges, association trends, conference education, conference learning model, conferences, meeting industry trends, participatory conferences
Creating Engaging Meetings Using Visual Language August 24, 2011 by Jeff Hurt I wish meetings and conferences were more fun! Don’t you? So many of them are nothing more than a boring, complicated, over stuffed information dump. Curating that information for the one or two tidbits of relevant, applicable take aways is like mining for gold. And there is little time for real dialogue and engagement. We … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conferences, engagement, meeting best practices, presentation best practices
What Isn’t Going On In Your Conference Committee! August 22, 2011 by Jeff Hurt I understand what is going on in most annual conference committees: personal agendas, conference schedule deadlines, speaker favorites, leaders seeking control, volunteers posturing for their own ideas and power. What I struggle to comprehend is what isn’t going on. What Isn’t Happening It seems to me that annual conference committee volunteers should be serving the … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , association, association best practices, association issues and challenges, committee best practices, conference best practices, conference tips, conferences, meeting planning best practices
6 New Meeting Trends To Watch August 17, 2011 by Jeff Hurt There’s good news, and there’s bad news, on the horizon for meetings and events. Take a look at these statistics released from current research reports. 1. Meeting Spend Up; Satisfaction With That Spend Down Meeting spend was up 22% for 2010 as compared to 2009. Yet, 66% of respondents say that their number one concern … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conferences, meeting industry trends, meeting professionals, Speaker Emerging Practices
Five Steps To Become Conference Content-Strategist-Curators (Part 1) August 12, 2011 by Jeff Hurt If you are a conference organizer, imagine your job as a museum curator. Art gallery and museum curators use judgment and a distinguished sense of style to select and arrange art. They juxtapose art pieces against one another to create a narrative, evoke a response and communicate a message. Conference organizers must approach a conference’s … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference curator, conferences, content design, content strategist, content-strategist-curator, curate, curator, integrated content, meeting best practices, meeting planning best practices, meeting professional
