General Sessions...
Bastian’s Blog
February 23, 2007
General Sessions, Major Events, Private Parties and Corporal Punishment
I think we can all agree that getting people together is, in principle, a good thing. People need people, and as Ms. Streisand continues to remind us on her seemingly never-ending farewell tours, “People who need people / are the luckiest people in the world.”
A group of people sitting down -- in one room, everyone facing the same direction -- is a powerful way to communicate. It also acts as a stunning visual metaphor for the desired outcome of the meeting: Unity and a shared vision.
It’s our job to get the most out of the time our audiences spend in that room, to ensure that the annual sales meeting doesn’t turn into a catered version of the Bataan Death March.
That means paying attention to the obvious things (“Hey, we’ve got a four hour meeting with no breaks. Maybe that’s not a good idea.”) as well as to the more subtle elements (“Are we using music throughout the meeting to change the mood? Are we varying the look of the set via lighting? Are we creating a logical and emotional flow to the event that will capture the audience’s attention and sweep them along?”).
Producing events is about creating experiences. And the fact is, your audience is going to have an experience whether you create it or not.
The successful meetings are the ones where every element of that experience is planned ahead of time and nothing is left to chance.
A recent example: In our hectic world today, getting people to focus on the task at hand is tough, particularly when they don’t have enough hands to handle all the tasks. When people attend a meeting out of town, work doesn’t stop back at home. The widgets still need to get produced, sold and distributed.
So, when one of our clients gathered two hundred of their top sales people in one room, they recognized that the world was not going to stop turning during their general and breakout sessions. But they also realized that the audience needed to focus -- they needed to pay attention and absorb the information.
In short, they needed to get off their cell phones / Blackberries / lap tops, face front and listen up.
So the meeting planners struck a deal with the audience: They provided frequent, scheduled breaks throughout the day, designed specifically to give the audience members enough time to call clients, answer e-mails and generally keep their businesses running.
In return, audience members were charged with giving their complete attention during the meeting. Anyone caught not paying attention (i.e., sneaking a peek at their Blackberry, ducking into the hall to use their cell phone, surfing the Net on their lap top) was fined a dollar for each offense. And, to help promote networking, anyone caught not wearing their nametag was fined five dollars.
In keeping with this event’s general “sports” theme, the fines were issued by a floating corps of whistle-blowing referees, who threw a flag down in front of offenders and collected the fines on the spot.
The result: More focus on the information being presented, happier audience members (who actually had time during the day to conduct business), and a nice chunk of change for a local charity.
That’s what you call a win-win-win.
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