Podcast: Easy ways to build energy at your event, ethics, 7 ways to utilize twitter at events

So let’s get right into the show, today’s show we have 3 sections the first section is from Sue Pelletier from Meetings Net and if you haven’t checked out their new I Pad digital application it their magazine online it is really interactive, it is really cool you should go check it out, download it, she has pointed out a few of her favorites from an article they had in their magazine this month called “48 easy ways to bring energy to your event” there are some cool tips and tricks to build that energy that they give you and she is sharing a few of them.

Second we have Pat Aheasy who is talking about ethics, Pat’s segment really hit home with me I have had recently had some issues with a client who had some interesting things maybe I will talk about it on another show but it really kind of got my hackles kind of raised up after that I was thinking about how some people are ethically challenged.

And the last segment is from me, it is called 7 ways to utilize twitter at your next conference. So let’s get right into it and again thank you very much for listening.

Sue:  Hello, my name is Sue Pelletier I am one of the editors at the Meetings Net Group of Digital Magazines and Media for Meetings Professionals. Today I would like to give you a few ideas from our digital magazine apps April issue cover story “48 easy ways to bring new energy to your event” the story includes tips on everything from creative ways to welcome attendees to your ice breakers and food and beverage to your arts and designs even award ceremonies. Here are just a few of my favorites from the article and we all know ice breakers can be a little corny but if you bring some creativity to them they actually can be pretty sweet. One idea that my colleague Alison Hall found was called the Candy Bar personality test I guess different types of people are drawn to different types of candy bars who would go figure! Anyway basically you have round table set up with piles of specific type of candy bars; milky way’s, 3 musketeers, snickers, butter finger, nestle crunch etcetera. People are told to sit at the table with their favorite type of candy bar and then do activities listed down in instruction sheet at the table, these activities are things like pick the ten people leaving your desk that you most likely to have dinner with or what you need to survive on a desert island that sort of thing and it can be tailored obviously to what your group interests are and then it is a fun way to highlight views in the room and then you get to eat the candy- I am a snickers girl apparently, then when it goes to food and beverage an important tip that my colleagues have discovered is what to ask and how to determine the food allergies people may have so that you can plan your menus accordingly and safely.

She spoke with Tracy Stuckrath the President and Chief Connecting Officer for Thrive Meetings and Events who had a lot of great suggestions. She suggested one thing was to ask registering attendees to indicate if their diet corresponds with any of these 7 categories; vegan, vegetarian, phalli, glutton free or food allergy and then if the attendee says they have a food allergy you would ask them to indicate exactly what they are allergic to; peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, fish, soy, milk, eggs, wheat or other. Tracey says that 90% of all food allergies are on first 8 categories so if you get those covered then you should be able to do a good job with that and keep everyone safe and full.

When it comes to session design that is the session I did I guess some great tips from a session I went to at PCMAs convene last year on personalizing the attendee experience they will read with the American society of hematology and he led the session he provided a list of ideas generated by the session attendees which were great there is just a tone of them but one of my favorites was to designing area outside the general session that mimics this for a casual coffee has five of a star bucks which is where a lot of people tend to migrate to instead of going to general sessions and then you can broadcast the general session on the screen set up area for those who wouldn’t go to the session anyway and that way you can get your information across to these people and they get to sit in the environment that they are most comfortable with you can even generate some revenue by selling naming rates and branding opportunities and space so talk about a win-win.

Another idea that came up in that session that we share in the article was to ask people to sit where their brains are most people they have a pretty good idea which side of their brain is dormant and the logical analytical, objective less side or the intuitive, thoughtful, subjective right side so why not split your general session sitting into right and left sides and ask your attendees to sit according to their thinking preferences and of course you will learning through the section for those who don’t know, don’t care, just don’t want to play along with it you can tailor your handouts to accommodate the different types of thinking those on the left can get text oriented, logical and sequential handouts and then handouts from people on the right can be more graphic and less detailed and sort of information randomly arranged on the page. And according to the person of this session who tried this the attendees went all wild with the experiment so it could be a fun thing to do very different and definitely not something that anyone would be expecting. So that is it from me for now but feel free to browse the app and the story on the interactive app for the other 44 tips and have a fabulous day, thank you.

Pat: 

Do event planners take the high road or the low road?

Event and meeting professionals are confronted with ethical decisions every day. Ethics is one of those slippery words that is often difficult to define, for different people ethics means different things. Shouldn’t ethics really be a standard? In January I read a New York Times article by Eleanor Turgen entitled “In life and Business Learning to be Ethical” what Turgen wrote resonated with me, Turgen begins “lot’s of new year’s resolutions are being made and no doubt ignored but there is one that is probably not even on many lists and should be-act more ethically”. Most people if pressed would acknowledge that they could use an ethical tune up, maybe last year they have fought some numbers at work, dented a car and failed to leave a note, remained silent when a friend made a racist joke or because it was a great beach day called in sick at work. Meetings and Events Professionals are confronted with ethical decisions all the time.

Would you accept a commission from a hotel or other supplier? Should you disclose this to a client if you are receiving a commission to also charge a fee? Is it ethical to select only a vendor that will give you a commission even if another vendor with the same qualifications can offer the same product or service at a lower price? If you work for a major company, government entity etcetera and love your 3^rd party event management company that must send out RFPs and show that you have received 3 bids including one from your favorite company, is it ethical to go with your favorite company if the others offer more value or better ideas? This particular issue is a difficult one but it is an issue. Or do you show the bids from the other companies to your favorite company and ask them to bid accordingly thus garnering them the contract? Do you let all those that receive the RFP know that you are merely fulfilling a requirement? Does one bid on a specific design and certain price and then fulfill this with less expensive materials or less staff to make more profit? Would you put 300 seats the other style in a room that is meant for 300 with just one narrow isle? Would you even think that no one would need those isles? Would you use drape on a stage set that isn’t fire retardant? After all who will know? You bet people will know if there is a fire! If you are a hotel sales person and a meeting planner asks for information for a room blog or meeting space, would you go around that person and contact the end client directly offering a slightly better deal? The thinking of some people is who will know, does it make a difference? I would say it sure does.

These are just some of the ethical dilemmas that I have run across in the meeting and events industry. If we are to consider ourselves professionals then we must have and abide by a professional code of ethics always not just when we feel like it.

Mike:  Alright, thank you very much Pat that was very interesting on ethics and also Sue thank you very much also but let’s get into my segment now.

Seven ways of utilizing Twitter at your Next Conference.

You want to have a dedicated hash tag for your event, you should share it on everything, on your print, websites, put it boldly on everything so people at the event can start to use that hash tag and follow what is going on or they can share. And it isn’t necessarily just with twitter that hash tag can go across to other things so it is easier for you to find what happened at your event or for your attendees to figure out what has happened.

The second thing is scheduling meet ups with twitter, it is a really great thing to do you can start to use that to find likeminded people before the event and it is just a great way to get together, it is always fun to put together a tweetup for whatever kind of event you have. Have a scheduled tweetup for all the twitter users to get together because they love to go and share and actually meet each other in real time.

Three it is a great way twitter is a great way to keep track of what is going on at your event. If you have a horrible break out session you can scan the tweets and see about what is going on if your attendee, conference producers can also watch and see what is happening on twitter to figure out who is a good speaker, who is not for then they are following you.

Number four, some of your presenters they can actually have their own rooms, have extra hash tag so they can interact with the room if they wanted to project right in the room on the wall you could project the twitter stream of that hash tag for that room. Which brings up that you could actually have hash tag or twitter walls throughout your event so people who aren’t really looking right at their phones can actually look at monitors that should say what people are saying about different things on the twitter walls which is a really cool thing to put up and actually it is great for inter sessions if you have people moving in and out of your event a lot of people like to monitor things depending on what your event is to make sure there is nothing out there that is maybe unethical or immoral you don’t want to have that stuff on your screens. And then of course you could put that hash tag on if you have a template for all your speakers about your event you could put that hash tag at the bottom corner of all of them. So another place to tell people how they can get more information about your event.

Number five, building a brand of how cool your conference is for others watching through twitter, it will improve your attendance if you are having a lot of great positive tweets going on, of course if it is a negative thing it could hinder your conference but if that is the grease and your conference is probably going down the tubes anyway so I would go push for positive and try and make those changes. One thing I do is if I don’t attend the conferences I do watch the hash tags on twitter sometimes I do a lot actually if I am interested in that event I will watch. I have actually been involved in some different ones as #eventprofs that is that is the twitter handle for event professionals that is used on twitter #eventprofs I have gone and actually kind of been involved in a show I am not at and I will be tweeting back and forth talking to people and then later on they will go ‘were you at that show?’ and I was like no I wasn’t I was checking it out from home but I was responding to people who were tweeting and so it is interesting dynamic on how you can start to learn about what is going on at events or watching those two. So keep that in mind that is what people are doing out there.

It is a real time I kind of talked about this a little bit already but it is a real time performer’s review and feedbacks from your show so you should really be following it if you are putting on the conference. It is an easy way to nip problems in the bud because that won’t then mushroom into something much bigger.

And seven is it is great to have a dedicated social media person who is actually following it all and answering questions for you because obviously if you are at an event you are running around doing what you do best putting on events and you don’t have time to really be monitoring that. So you can assign someone to watch the twitter stream you also can alert attendees about changes in the event or if there is after party changes or where the parties are and of course to answer questions promptly. It is a great way to interact I know in the past when we got our event camps we have actually had the hybrid portion of it where there is a social media counsel on site who is answering questions and taking questions and giving to the speakers on stage from the hybrid people who are watching from other places and that really worked out well.

And so that is it, that is my seven ways of utilizing twitter at your next conference I hope you enjoyed the show this was a great segment I want to thank both Pat and Sue again check out the Meetings Net App it is an I pad App I think it goes with other tablets too and I really love that I think you should take a look at it very well done, very interesting it is the future. And I also wanted to thank Pat again another great segment from Pat gives you something to think about like I said I had a little bit of…I recently had a little..some ethical things happened to my company but it is interesting how you can deal with it and sometimes you just have to let it go but very interesting to segment, thank you very much Pat.

And I wanted to thank our sponsors imex or the imex group if you are headed out to Frankfurt it looks like it is going to be a fantastic show coming up and then of course the Vegas show will be coming up too we will be there so I wanted to thank them, I wanted to thank AV for Planners, AV for Planners too is my company but it has really come along nicely we get doing a lot of evaluations and AV for Planners is AV and Labor Evaluations website and it really helps you. One of our clients Wells Fargo saved about $30,000 using it on one event so that alone should have you heading over there fill out our free RFP, find some AV companies and if you want we can do an evaluation we will put them side by side and give you a one page or so you can negotiate and you can really find out who gives you the best value for your meeting and the best fit for your meeting. The AV companies really like it too so it is coming along nicely.

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That is it, have a great day and thank you again for listening.