I am quite awesome, thankyouverymuch

I actually look forward to performance reviews. I did the youth beauty pageant circuit. And I enjoyed that quite a bit. I really enjoy being judged. I believe I hold up very well to even severe scrutiny. 

  - Angela, The Office

Great post on Harvard Business Review about eliminating the self assessment part of annual reviews.

The point of the post is that it turns the review into a negotiation, as most A-ranked employees are afraid of being Bs. Most Bs are scared they’ll get a C, and most Cs believe they are As.

I recall my husband helpfully advising me when I was trying to write my own self appraisal many years ago, “Why would you ever rate yourself a B or a C? Always put A! Even if your boss doesn’t agree with it, you have on record a positive spin on all the great things you’ve accomplished.”

As a recovering manager of a rather large team, I love the HBR suggestion to avoid asking employees to actually rate themselves, and instead ask them to send you their top 10 accomplishments for the year. This way, you as a manager can evaluate the value provided to the organization and/or the personal growth each team member achieved during the year.

Now to find some advice on writing a performance plan that is actually not a waste of time...

Is it worth the risk?

No power in the 'verse can stop me.
  - Kaylee (Firefly) 

Life is about choices. Do I want to fight my 3-year-old to get dressed faster, or do I want to play with him and have a really fun morning, but be 10 minutes late to work? Do I want to take that new job, or stay comfortably where I am? Do I want to be a keynote speaker at a conference, or say no and attend like my peers?

This Harvard Business Review blog post got me thinking about risk... and I don't think I take enough of them. I have definately taken a few, and they have all worked out perfectly. Some ended in massive failure, but what I learned from that failure prepared me for another task later.

My first big risk was college. Upon graduating high school, I left my home state of Georgia and moved over to Texas, finding a roommate from the university's off-campus housing department (because all the dorms were full). Best risk ever.

About a year out of college, I quit my high tech marketing job to work at a high tech recruiting firm. It was a blast! Then the economy tanked and there weren't any jobs to recruit for. So they asked if I would like to spend a week in Boca Raton getting trained on how to become an account executive and recruit jobs (instead of people). I'm no salesman. I couldn't sell girl scout cookies to my own mother. But I figured it would be interesting to take the class, so I did. I made sales calls for about a month after that, to no avail. The company closed about 3 months later. FAIL. But what did I learn? Well, I definately reinforced to myself that I'm no salesman. :-) I also learned that I enjoy solving problems. When the problem was no jobs to recruit for, I decided to try and solve it by learning how to get more jobs for the company to help with. I learned that as a salesperson, marketing is vitally important. Even the basics! If I didn't have any collateral to give my prospect, there was no way they'd ever think of me when they needed to hire someone. Actually spending a couple months in sales was really the best marketing experience I could have gotten.

I've been at my current company for more than 6 years now, and have taken relatively few risks, but have been fortunate to have opportunity find me. I did take a professional presenting course through our Executive Briefing Center, and was encouraged to go take an improv comedy class. That was a spectacular risk! Standing in a class with 15 other people being spontaneous for 2 hours a week, enouraged to fail. We were taught that "there is no such thing as failure, just unexpected results." Most fun I've had in the last 5 years!

Recently, I was asked to keynote at a user conference. It's only 50-75 people, but it will be my first time truly in the spotlight telling a story. It's a risk. I'm SUPER excited about it... but this time, failure is not an option!

As the article I referenced above mentions, the key to risk is preparation. So I've hired my professional presentation instructor to help me prepare for my keynote, and my improv training will undoubtedly prove very valuable. In this instance, there should be minimal risk of failure. I'm ready!

Giving for the greater good

True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense.

  - Emanuel Swedenborg

I love my company! Last November, we instituted  a meeting points donation plan through our Dell YouthConnect program. We do not use meeting planning points from our events for personal gain, but instead capture them throughout the year and donate them to charities through the Dell YouthConnect network. 

Just for fun, I checked our account balance. Without much effort, and just with a few folks remembering to put our points number on contracts, here's our current point amount:
41,000 points on Starwood
56,000 points on Marriott
7,000 points on Hyatt
Unsure on Hilton, as all points go directly to the Boys & Girls Club of America

Our next step is to ensure that all of our suppliers are aware of our program so they can begin sharing the account numbers as they book events. How awesome will it be to say that our events gave more than a month's worth of hotel stays to organizations with recipients in need.

If your company is interested in setting up a charitable points program, I'm happy to share our best practices. Just comment here or tweet me @lizlathan.

Virtual gatherings

Internet:  absolute communication, absolute isolation.  

  - Paul Carvel

When I saw Botox, Skype, and face-to-face meetings in the title of this post, it was a must-read. Then when I read it, it was a must-respond. 

It takes me right over to my little soapbox about virtual event environments with their little static fake people standing around. Some looking like they’re talking to each other, some standing alone, even some illustrated holding a cell phone to their ear. Really? This is how I’m supposed to engage and experience a virtual event? By pretending I’m there in person, when I'm really alone at my cube or in my home office? 

I think we’re all mentally stable enough to know that we’re not physically there. I also think that we go to virtual events for a specific purpose, not to create a cartoon avatar to show up in our profile. At least for me, I attend a virtual event to either watch presentations I couldn’t get to in person, or download content that will help me on my quest to solve a problem. If I engage with other people in the environment, it was to ask a question about a product or solution from a vendor. Sitting in a chat room with 3 professionals and one kid who snuck in and randomly types profanities is not my idea of a good use of time. 

So why do we continue to see virtual event platforms that try to mimic in-person events? They are a different kind of engagement and should be included in the customer journey planning for virtual audiences as a parallel path to the in-person experience. 

Online should be viewed as a content channel. If you’re going to have breakouts online, then plan for it and use something like Skype or Google+ to have a 5 to 8-person web breakout. The virtual event can no longer be project managed as separate entity. It must be folded into the entire customer journey and experience strategy so attendees, whether in-person or online, leave your event happy that they acquired the knowledge they hoped to gain and satisfied with the connections they made.

In other news, Why Virtual Events Fail.

Event professionals' social use stats

Quit counting fans, followers and blog subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead, about what you’re hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you’re doing.
  – Amber Naslund of Social Media Today

A recent Successful Meetings article announced that social media use among event professionals is on the rise, but as I dig into the statistics a bit, I find more than meets the eye. Let's dissect it a little.

71 percent of the 830 people surveyed say they use Facebook for networking or marketing purposes. There are no more detailed statistics beyond this very high-level number, but I would be interested to know the conversation density of the activities taking place on Facebook, and whether the site is being used by event marketers as event-specific communication, or as a vehicle in a larger marketing campaign program.

41 percent use Twitter regularly - close to double the number who used it last year. Twitter is an interesting beast. If you're not following a hashtag of interest or datamining for a specific hastag, it's largely just a bunch of useless drivel from a bunch of friends and random people. When used appropriately, however, Twitter provides a wealth of information. When used for an event Twitter handle, you must either have a strong following or have a limited following of strong influencers with strong followings. Without an audience for updates and interactions, Twitter serves no purpose. I think Twitter can be used better than it is currently being used and we should advocate for some training for our event professional colleagues!

69 percent of people used LinkedIn. Ah, but are they using it to keep their resume up-to-date and gather connections and recommendations, or are they cultivating the hidden communities lurking beneath the LinkedIn surface? Because, man! Some of those are great!

25 percent use YouTube. I can argue a number of perspectives on this one. Rich media content is awesome and more people should use it where appropriate. Interviews with keynote speakers and breakout session leaders, and interviews with customers and event staff can be really great! But you don't just stick that on YouTube and hope people will watch it. You actively have those ideas included in the marcom plan and feed them into your event hypersite, while simultaneously promoting them via other social channels. However, I rarely sit around watchin YouTube videos. When I do watch them, I usually found them via Twitter and they are usually under 2 minutes long. So that's my advice.

24 percent read blogs. Well, that's because there are 800 bazillion million gajillion blogs out there and no one has enough time to keep up! But that's where Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn come in. Sharing an interesting blog post encourages others to read it. No one comments on blogs anymore, so what? The idea that a blog is a two-way conversation was a facade from the beginning. It's one-way, with the chance to comment, and if you're lucky the blog author will comment back to you. What blogs really do (including this one), are provide an outlet for the author to share thoughts and opinions. If they are good ones, other people will share them, too.

16 percent use QR codes. Just as I suspected and wrote about previously... We haven't really figured out how to use those things very effectively, have we?

The biggest question I have for event marketers trying to harness the power of social media is this: Is social media an integral part of your face-to-face experience and the long tail of content afterwards, or is it an add-on vehicle that you have for your event because you feel you must? If the former, great! I love to watch the feeds from events like that and feel the buzz from the event. If the latter, I recommend not even trying to make social a part of your event and just let it happen naturally. It will happen anyway, and you'll get better results with organic social than forced social.

Are you a disruptor?

Change before you have to.
   - Jack Welch

I caught this link on a Twitter feed on the #eventprofs hashtag and identified with it immediately. Sometimes I get frustrated trying to implement and manage change at work and revert back to the easy path of "follow the rules, do what your boss says, and don't make waves." But my nature is to push the envelope. I'm no Richard Branson or Steve Jobs, but in my own little world, I'm known for making people think beyond what they are comfortable doing. I want to find efficiencies and foster creativity.

In events, this means making more meaningful engagements happen in more surprising ways. Like I mentioned in a previous post, it's important to create memorable moments throughout your engagement.
People are at your event for the session content and the networking, so taking opportunities to surprise and delight them in unexpected ways is what disrupts their view of "yet another business conference."

I'm a huge advocate of disruption for the sake of breaking status quo (not disruption without purpose). I was an early adopter of eTouches registration tools, for examples, because I believed they were truly thinking from an event marketer's perspective, with a software hat on, rather than thinking from a software perspective with an event marketer's hat on. They get events, they get social, and they get the need to customize things for each customer. They are disruptors like I am.

Innovation is the buzzword of the moment, and it's a good one. Disruption is the activity we must do to pave the way for innovation.

How to not work

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
  - George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

I love the book The Four-Hour Workweek. I love The Energy Project. And I love this Harvard Business Review blog post.

The gist of these grand tales is that we should stop working so much, and start prioritizing our lives to be what we want them to be. The risk inherent in this, of course, is that a) we fail to meet deadlines, b) we fail to look like we're working as hard as other people, c) we fail to get as much stuff done. So I think we're seeing that it's a fear of failure here (at least it is in my world).

But I like the principles and I am learning from my new manager (of about 6 weeks now) that this is actually possible. If you ignore the chatter of the silly, you can focus on the challenges that matter. One more book for you: Long Fuse, Big Bang. This one has a great quote that really stuck with me - "Don't let the tyranny of the urgent stifle the pursuit of the important."

Set aside time to think. Prioritize prioritization. Calm your mind and reflect on the day behind you. Then calm your mind and prepare your head for the day in front of you.

Now, to get to that 4-hour workweek... (though I'm fairly certain I could never really just work just four hours a week as I would be bored out of my mind...)

How to write an RFP

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

  - Oscar Wilde

I have had some really great successes creating RFPs for event projects (and have received some great feedback from my partner companies responding to the RFPs), so I thought I'd share some of my guidelines.

My RFP template comes from an amalgamation of RFP templates provided to me by my industry friends including 3D Exhibits, Czarnowski, Jack Morton, Event Marketing Partners, and Derse, among others, and my learnings from the last half-dozen or so RFPs I've completed in the last year!

1. Cover page: I always name the project and provide the contact information necessary throughout the process, as well as the due date for the proposal.
2. An overview of the business issue: This is the place to describe the project in a brief paragraph. Be specific and concise in describing what the final product should look like.
3. Description of product and services: In a few paragraphs, describe what you are looking for the company to produce. I also like to put in this section the type of partnership I am looking for from the company (execution-only, strategic consulting, etc.)
4. Company information needed for proposal: In this section, I share all of the details of the project and about the company or department that would be helpful to the agency to know. Not a place to air dirty laundry, but be very upfront about the way the group likes to work and any challenges that the company may face.
5. Proposal format: Let the respondents know what you are expecting by way of response. If you want giant, bound books of designs, or if you want everything done in a pdf or Power Point, share that here. One of my best practices is creating a survey (even a short one in Survey Monkey) to gather the basic information from each respondent in an easily-comparable format.
6. Due date: Very important!
7. Timeline: Respondents understand that this may shift, but sharing the basic timeline for them is very helpful. For example:

• February 11, 2011: RFP sent out
• Week of February 14: Q&A calls with (Company Contact 1 & 2)
• Week of February 21: (optional) (Company Contact 1 & 2) available to pre-review proposals and make suggestions
• March 4, 2011: Proposals due
• Week of March 7: Internal core team reviews proposals. Core team made up of (list names here). Core team to set up calls with candidate companies to review proposals.
• March 11, 2011: Business awarded, planning calls begin

8.  Questions: On some of my RFPs, I let respondents know that we will answer questions at any time and all questions emailed to us will be shared with all respondents, unless the respondent requests the questions be kept confidential.
9. Estimated budget: This is a very debatable section - especially between myself and my procurement team! My procurement team believes that we should let the companies come back with their own proposals. I firmly believe that the respondents need parameters. I generally like to give a budget range, but ask for the proposal to be priced out in an a la carte format so I can understand the pricing structure (hourly, project-based, etc.)
10. Detailed Business Requirements: If not already covered in the sections above, I spend about a page here describing the details of the project and the outcomes we are seeking. If we are RFPing for booth design, there are a number of specific questions to ask... including what rush charges for graphics are!
11. Selection criteria: In this section, I clearly articulate what we are looking for in our partner and how we will evaluate the proposals. I also list the names of the selection committee and their roles as it relates to the project. I like to use a spreadsheet with weighted criteria for areas like account management, pricing, customer references, creativity, case study examples, previous relationship with our company, etc.
12. Performance Metrics: Here I describe the cadence of partner reviews and evaluations. I make sure the partner knows that they will be evaluating us as a client, as well. Partnerships do not work with the client just gets to evaluate and blame the partner - it's a two-way street!

I'm very happy to share my RFP templates with anyone in need. Ping me on Twitter @lizlathan, or drop me a note here!

Social engagement at events

Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan.

~ Zach Dunn

A recent blog post I read about mistakes event planners make with social media got me thinking about some of our success... and failures in the social space.

We're doing some amazing things at my company to bring social engagement to life at events. From QR codes for information (basic, and truthfully not always successful), to fully engaging mobile apps that are built in to the event strategy process.

You've often seen me type that "events are the original social media." I firmly believe this to be true. Even with social media online and in mobile, people make the most important connections face to face.

But let's look at some of the social engagements for events that I've seen succeed and fail at recent conferences:

QR Codes - We like to think these encourage interaction and engagement among our attendees. In reality, either very few people know how to scan them, or you have a bunch of people playing with their phone trying to figure out how to scan them, only to scan them and be taken to a URL that was built for a regular website and is pretty much useless on a mobile device. Bottom line: They make you look tech savvy, but I've rarely seen them offer real value.

Mobile Apps - Most of the mobile apps I've used at events act as a replacement to the traditional paper pocket guide. They have maps. They have session schedules. They have sponsor advertisements. They save trees. Bottom line: You really can't do an event without one and still look professional. If you don't have one, get one.

Gamification - pronounced "Game-if-ick-a-shun" - means offering rewards to the attendees who engage with your event in different ways. From Four Square badges to Facebook Places rewards, these activities can draw attendees toward an activity for either a physical prize or a "title" award (Mayor of booth #310!). Bottom line: Good for fun, but may not get the most qualified attendees to your booth for the right reasons. When used at your own branded event, gamification can be modified for your activity and can help you move the flow of traffic around for the attendees who are using their mobile devices to engage.

Augmented Reality - Using geolocation or the GPS in phones, you can overlay an augmented reality layer onto you event; for example, onto your show floor. This allows attendees to hold up their phone like they would using Google Street View and see content related to each area of your floor. You could put exhibitor information, cool facts, customer comments, ratings from participants, and so much more. Bottom line: Super cool to play with. Who has extra money just sitting around to throw at this? And is there anything valuable there other than the cool-factor?

I believe that the key for event marketers is to evaluate the technology for it's value to the attendees first, then its coolness factor second. If the event must showcase the latest and greatest just for the WOW effect, that's valid. If the event should be focusing on content and personal engagement, let the social engagement happen without the guided hand of the event gods.

The best social media engagements at events are the conversations about the event, not the conversations about the social media at the event.

The long tail of content

"In world of infinite choice, context, not the content is the king."
 - Chris Anderson


My group does over a thousand events a year. Some are small 10x10s. Some are large user conferences. Some are internal events. For most of them we reinvent the wheel as though we had no idea this event was even on the radar. But this year we're getting smart and creating a true content hub. It's the only way to keep up with the speed of our event lives. Create once, execute multiple times. The "Rinse and Repeat" model.

But as Chris Anderson points out, all content all the time, anywhere you want it provides little by way of direction or usefulness to your customers.


We must take a cautious approach to our event portfolio's content. Categorize the audiences so we can categorize the content, or we risk the wrong message for the wrong audience at the wrong time. It feels good to have strategic direction again, and it will be such a lifesaver to have a hub of content to draw upon for an event anytime it's needed, and have the right content available to audiences online who missed an event or who are seeking more information. What a great feeling!  

The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperitives:

• Make everything available
• Help me find it.

I believe this works internally as well as externally. If we create the content and make it easy for the internal teams to find and use, we will get much more use out of it. If we get it to the attendees when and where they need it, we will have a much greater insight.

I hate seeing things like this

"More than meets the eye."

 - Transformers


I absolutely hate reading posts like this one about event managers. Yes, we are problem solvers. Yes, we are friendly. Yes, we can give you ideas on your next vacation.

A colleague popped by my cube area today and said something similar - that the first people he learned to befriend when he started working for our company were the admins and the event people. Admins know everything, and event people can get you the good shift for booth duty and upgrade your room for you.

Yes, those are great personality features of event managers.

But NO, that is NOT what event managers do. Event managers are partners in strategic planning and inserting the appropriate event opportunities that match marketing campaign goals. Event managers understand the business and the business messages. Event managers are experience designers for those messages. Event managers are financial geniuses. Event managers are forward-thinking. Event managers are confident and reliant upon their partners and vendors. Event managers are strong communicators.  Event managers are expert project managers. Event managers are professional facilitators between multiple internal clients. Event managers drive the planning process. Event managers are customer service gurus. Event managers are brand ambassadors.

I'm sure the blog post that ruffled my feathers meant its tone to be complimentary and friendly and cute, as did my colleague with his comments, but I'm so tired of having my team put in a menial position doing other people's work, rather than driving the message and managing the experience.

Stepping off my soap box now. Thanks. :-)

My Top 10 and Bottom 10 from SXSWi

A beautiful thing is never perfect.
 - Proverb

Top 10 Great Event Ideas I saw at SXSWi

1. Charging stations - Everywhere. For phones, for laptops. Plugs. Power strips. Everywhere! Love it!
2. Chevy marketing - Event shuttles were slow and far between, and sessions were spread out all over town. Chevy ran a promotion for their new Chevy Cruze where they had 10 cars driving around town branded with stick-ons offering free rides for conference-goers. I rode in the vehicles twice needing to get from one venue to another. All you were asked to do was tweet out a note with the hashtag #ChevySXSW to share the experience
3. Event app - The SXSW app was great! Worked on all devices and allowed you to see not only the goings-on all over, but also the "My Schedule" that you could create online.
4. Touchscreen gameshow at the Monster.com tradeshow booth - The biggest crowd I saw on the show floor was gathered around the Monster.com booth. They had a great interactive game using touchscreen computers and an emcee playing the game show host. People were really into the game. Not a lot of value to the content or the playing, but it sure drew a crowd and was a blast to watch people get into it.
5. Photos on badges (helps with non-transferring) - When you checked in for your badge, you were asked to step on the yellow line and they used a webcam to snap a pic of you. This pic was printed onto the badge so it could be associated with you and led to the feel of non-transferability of the badge (of course, no one checked the pics that closely in the sessions, but it was still a great idea)
6. Hashtags for each session - This was awesome! Every session had a sign with a hashtag assigned for the topic at hand so you could follow the room's conversations online as people gained knowledge from the presenters that they felt compelled to share with the world.
7. Queue-style badge pickup, not alphabetical - The queues were intimidating and really long, but with their Fry's-style setup, they went super fast. No finding the A-L line. Just stand in the line and go to the next available registration person. Really well done.
8. Great content - Some of the sessions I attended were really novel, really informative, and really well-planned. Some of the sessions I WANTED to attend got similar reviews.
9. Immediate content via multiple streams (a.k.a tablet envy) - Not only could I pay attention to the presenters and get really good information, but I could watch twitter feeds and online conversations and get great information from my peers, too. But I felt like a chump with my laptop open the whole time. I really coveted the tablets!
10. Simulcasts - With the event taking place all over town, the simulcasts of the keynotes were a great way to keep the crowd connected to the main keynote room.

My Bottom 10 Worst Event Ideas I saw at SXSWi

1. Death by panels - It's great to get multiple perspectives on a topic. I love seeing a variety of experiences revealed in one session. But nearly every session was a panel and so many were poorly moderated that the panelists would get well off track of the session topic that was advertised. And just because it's a panel discussion doesn't mean you can settle for uncharismatic personalities.
2. Too few shuttles for too many venues - Good thing there were Chevy's because the buses took almost 30 minutes sometimes. And the shuttles varied their routes, so when you thought you had the one that was the fast track to the next hotel, it would take a totally new route, adding 10 unexpected minutes to your ride.
3. Poor signage - Shuttle signage led you to believe that the shuttles for SXSW Film, when in fact they took you everywhere. Good thing there were people standing there to help... would have been helpful if they actually helped and talked to the people looking at the signs and trying to figure out if the buses were the right ones.
4. Seating arrangements - I hate standard seating at these events. I hate standard seating at our events. I think the entire planet should subscribe to Dr. Paul Radde's recommendations. It is the only way to sit comfortably in those horrible convention seats.
5. Charging stations not where you needed them - They were all over the hallways, but not in the sessions. Probably a fire hazard, but when I needed to type blog posts and tweet and have charge on my system, I was in sessions. I was late to sessions sometimes just because I had to sit outside of them to charge my laptop.
6. Panelists who assume you know them and their product - I was in a couple of sessions where the panelists were introduced, and the name of their company or the app was mentioned, but then they went right on talking about their product as if everyone in the room knew what it was. It was hard to follow sometimes when I had no idea what their product did.
7. Slides that weren't "legally approved" before the presentation (camera phones are your enemy!) - a couple of times, audience members asked for the presentations. When the presenter worked for a corporation, they tended to respond with a "yes, once I get it legally approved, I will release it on SlideShare." Meanwhile, hundreds of people were taking pictures of slides with their phones throughout the presentations. If those weren't legally approved upfront, it's too late now!
8. Growing too big for attendees to handle - There were so many sessions to choose from and they were so far apart from each other that I ended up picking sessions based on location instead of content sometimes. That was frustrating. I missed some great sessions because they were so far from where my previous session was.
9. Terrible content - I got the Bait and Switch twice. The topics had NOTHING to do with the advertised title. Most of my experiences were great, but it was really frustrating when the sessions were 1.5 hours long and completely irrelevant to my needs. When you spend $700 on a pass, you don't want to waste 3 hours of your life on bad content.
10. Heads were all down - was anyone listening? - SXSWi is all social. Tweeting was the primary way of keeping up with everything going on. But in sessions, most people spent the whole time blogging and tweeting... and likely doing other things. It was hard to tell if anyone was really paying attention to the sessions, or if they were completely immersed in their online world.

The value of attendees and fans

What is the value of a Facebook fan? "...it may be best if marketers approached this question as if the answer is zero -- unless and until the brand does something to create value with Facebook Fans."
 - Augie Ray, Forrester

It's a true statement, and can applied to event attendees, too (especially if they are events you do not charge attendance to). If you aren't leveraging your fanbase or event attendees, then the value is zero. The value isn't just in the fans themselves, the value is in the ability to communication to the friends of those fans.

When promoting or marketing to event attendees, you must leverage the power of their social networks in order to activate any intrinsic value. The first question to address is "what is the value you are trying to achieve?"

Look at event promotion. If you are attempting to increase attendance to your event, then the value may be in each fan sharing their interest or announcement of attendence to their friends who may also be interested.

If you want the content to be shared, like through a product launch event, then the value is in the product launch content being shared with the friends and colleagues of the target audiences.

Sharing your content via social media like Facebook, Twitter, blog posts and more can extend not only the viral reach of your message, but expand the life of the content and engage the fans and attendees in bringing the content to life. Even more compelling is stories of the people sharing the content and it relevance to them.

This is the integration of social and real-life that really excites me about the future of events.

Hotel Point Donation

True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense.

  - Emmanuel Swedenborg
 
I am super excited to announce on behalf of my team the Dell Events Hotel Point Donation Program.

We realized last year that we had no official program or governance for Hotel Planner Points, so our official rule was to decline them. Then we had the idea to actually accept them, but develop guidelines around who we should donate them to!

So the official rule now is this:

Option 1: If we can get any discount to the master with the points.
Option 2: If the hotel has a charity of choice (For example: Marriott has Children's Miracle Network), then points should go there.
Option 3: If the hotel does not, the point should go to Dell's selected charity of choice, like Boys & Girls Club of America or Wounded Warriors.

We're so excited to launch this program and hope that others will follow suit!

Answer First

In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid. I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age.

  - Thomas Gold

The other day, I had the pleasure of participating in an "Answer First" training course offered by a Bain consultant and put on by our Vice President. 

After Googling the premise, I asked my husband if he'd heard of it, and his response was, "Yeah, it's some methodology around putting the answer as the first slide in your presentation because people at our company are too busy to listen to a whole story."

Actually, that's the third pillar of the concept. The first pillar is what they call "Answer First" thinking. The premise (not unlike the article I published 6 years ago!) is that when faced with a problem, you should develop a hypothesis shortly after doing a quick evaluation of the situation. 

By creating a hypothesis,  you draw a line in the sand and create a rally point for your stakeholders and managers to either agree with or disagree with, allowing you to proceed with planning or start over. 

If everyone agrees with the hypothesis, you can create an assertion-based workplan to galvanize all of the disparate areas of the organization and help them understand the interconnections between the teams. Then the teams can create their task-oriented workplans around them. 

For example: Say your executive wants you to create the "best booth we've ever had at TradeShowWorld 2011." You might hypothesize that this means, "We will create a booth that garners us more than 30% share of voice and more sales-ready leads than we've ever achieved at this event in the past." If your executive agrees with this interpretation, you have a clear direction to begin the process. If your executive tells you that's not at all what s/he meant, you can then refine the hypothesis until it gives you the answer s/he actually wanted. 

From that hypothesis, you build out the supporting facts or ideas that need to be created in order to achieve the stated result. So you need something really buzzworthy and practically viral to gain the share of voice you need to reach. You also need ground-breaking content that has attendees clamoring to give you their email address to learn more. 

Now you have two paths to follow - buzzworthy "thing," killer content or offering. You can now create the workplans around these activities and not be trapped into the timelines of standard events ... driven by print deadlines. 


Finally, there is the Answer First Communication portion of the concept. This is close to what my husband described: Know your audience. Know how they like to receive information. If you are in front of them to present a solution, then present it first and show your supporting materials behind it. If you are you in the room to teach or inform, then you might need to put the answer at the end after you have completely told the story. 


It's yet another Consulting Company Brilliant Nugget: Obvious advice, but restated in a way that makes you realize not enough people work this way. I like it. I will use it. I kinda think I already did, but now I will be sure to!


For an overview of Bain and their Answer First philosophy, open this .pdf.