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Please only lecture for 20 minutes

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Adults will only pay attention for 20 minutes before you need to do something else.  Speakers – are you listening?  20 minutes.

If you can cook an entire meal in 20 minutes -  you can get all your relevant points across in a lecture.

Really look at your content.  Are your points clear and concise?

Can you get your attendees to talk amongst themselves to talk through your main points?  Will the discussion further your learning objectives?

Even if you just CAN NOT cover everything in 20 minutes, STOP, Do something else and then start up again.

Allow people to ask questions.

Allow people to discuss in small or large groups.

Prepare an activity that reinforces what you were talking about.

Just please don’t keep talking for another 20 minutes.

We all have a responsibility to make meetings and events better.  As Calgary event planners we work with speakers on the finer elements of adult learning.  We stress to our speakers to only lecture for 20 minutes at the most without breaking it up with something else.

The “anything but lecture time” can be simple – it might just be a few questions from the audience.  It just has to be a moment when someone else is talking.  It needs to be a change of pace for the audience.  Let them re-group and you’ll find they pay attention to the next 20 minutes a lot better.

What are examples of things you do at the 20 minute moment?  Or do you even wait 20 minutes?

Posted in Event Management, Increasing Learning at Meetings, Reasons to hire a planner | No Comments »

I spent a week in a “U shape” and never want to go back

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

I spent a week in a “U Shape” set up and I never want to go back to anything else.

My week was with the “Adult Educator” Seminar Series at Mount Royal University.  Our very first class on Monday morning was set up in a U Shape.  As a conference and event planner I know the reasons to set people up in a variety of shapes (theatre, classroom, boardroom, etc) but we rarely experience being in that shape for an extended period of time.

But here we were, 28 of us, in a great big U.  The empty middle section was quickly used for a group activity to introduce ourselves.  Then it became an area where smaller groups could meet with each other.  We were in our “U” for the first 6 seminars.

Then seminar #7 had us in a traditional classroom format and I found myself resenting it.  Truly, I hated it.  No longer could I see everyone.  Now I had to look at the back of people’s heads.  Now I could also check out.  I knew my instructor couldn’t see me as well.  I think I went to facebook for a while.  I was less engaged.

We know there are better formats than theatre style and sometimes space doesn’t allow us anything else.  And sometimes our audience just doesn’t know better either.  But it’s time we started booking rooms that allow for U’s and allow for more movement.

What shape you do like to be in the most?  Why?

Posted in Event Management, Increasing Learning at Meetings | No Comments »

20 slides x 20 seconds each: Pecha-Kucha

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Pecha-Kucha 20×20 is an event that began in Toyko in 2003.  The concept is 20 slides for 20 seconds each and presenters talk over their slides.  The slides are on auto-follow so there is no slowing the presentation down.  Presenters have to keep up to their slides.  Each presenter has a total of just over 6 minutes for their presentation.

The concept began as a way for people to show their work in a relaxed way.  And a way that EVERYONE can show their work.  Artists have a chance to quickly demonstrate their portfolio and based on the short presentations, you can have a large number of people showing their work in one event.

Calgary Arts Development has been hosting Pecha Kucha events – you can see them in action at http://vimeo.com/user885490/videos.

The next event in Calgary is on July 16th at the Olympic Plaza Stage.  Click here for more details.

I’ve been looking at the Vancouver events and admiring the collection of people they have coming out to speak.  It’s eclectic and I’m sure fascinating and exciting to have a number of people do dynamic, quick presentations on a variety of topics.

As an audience member you must at least know that if the presentation is boring at least it is less than 7 minutes long!

The Pecha Kucha website answers the question about how it is related to TED.  (www.ted.com)  Their response:

“Many people have said – “oh so you’re like a local TED!” A very nice complement but not quite right! TED is brilliant but very different to PechaKucha. TED is top down, PechaKucha is bottom up! Deanne the hooper, Astrid daughter or Marks mum could not present at TED – but they had awesome stories and creativity to at recent PechaKucha’s”

PechaKucha is trademarked and they allow one event organizer per city to not have people stepping on each other’s events.

But how about we take on the concepts and apply it to our  Calgary event planning and our presentations?  Maybe it isn’t 20 slides in 20 seconds but some other short, concise timing.  It is getting presenters to speak over their slides and to get their messages out in quick sound bites.  We have limited attention spans and our brains really can only take so much information – so give us the main points and combine it with great visuals.

How about at the next conference we have 2 speakers give 15 minute presentations with a maximum of 15 slides (1 slide per minute) and then allow the audience the remaining 30 minutes to discuss amongst themselves?  What would we come up with?  What inspiration could we spark?

Meeting Professionals International is doing

Posted in Event Management, Increasing Learning at Meetings, Reasons to hire a planner, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Small meetings are wonderful.

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

I recently attended a small meeting and there is something so inspiring and innovating about a small meeting.

Everyone gets to know each other. Now this group works at getting to know each other ahead of time, but when you have a group of less than 15 you can take the time at the meeting without taking up too much time on the agenda.  People stop being a nameless face within the room – you get to know each other and you start to develop a relationship.

Great discussions happen spontaneously.

More trust amongst participants.

I think these 2 statements relate 100% back to getting to know each other better.  Once you know the others in the room better you are more open to sharing information as you trust each other better.  And when you are open and share ideas – great discussions happen.

And as I write this I’m reflecting on the number of participants.  I don’t think 15 and under is a magic “small meeting” number – nor do I think that you can’t apply these principles to a larger group.

What work do you do to encourage your attendees to truly get to know each other?  How do you facilitate engagement prior to your meetings?  What different results do you see when people DO get to know each other better?

Posted in Event Management, Increasing Learning at Meetings, Team Building | No Comments »

Re-thinking Incentives – changing how we do things

Monday, March 8th, 2010

The title of Daniel Pink’s TED talk is “Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation” and it caught my eye as we look at how to change our meetings and events.

So often we create incentives with rewards – or as Dan Pink calls it – the carrot and stick or the if/then rewards.  If you do this, you will get that.  Recently at a tradeshow I walked around and got my passport stamped and then I was rewarded with the possibility of winning sunglasses.

However, the science shows that the way we do business is wrong.  Other than rudimentary tasks – performance declines with incentives.  My tradeshow experience was a rudimentary task so it did work in that instance (although I don’t think they had the participation they were looking for).  But what about a company that offers trips as incentives?  What about those sales teams that are rewarded with great prizes?

The science shows that people work better when given autonomy, mastery and purpose (according to Dan Pink).  People given the freedom to work creatively, on their own and for their own good purposes will achieve greater things.


Dan Pink on Motivation

Imagine what would happen if rather than creating a great trip for the best salespeople you created an event with ALL the salespeople and let them be creative at whatever they liked and let them share the information.

Imagine what would happen!

Imagine what else we could do.  If the tradeshow format encouraged participants to be creative and to find their own purpose to visiting the booths.  Could that work?

As meeting and event planners we need to continue to look at new ways to do things.  I don’t have all the answers but I’m willing to keep looking for them.  Just like incentives – if what we are doing is not working, we need to look at what will work.

Posted in Event Management, Increasing Learning at Meetings, Team Building, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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