Maximizing the Value of Meetings: Creating
Social Networking
Opportunities
 I came across an interesting
interview on
Meetings.net recently; Bob Andelman interviewed Elliott Masie, futurist
and
founder of the Masie Center. Among the several insights Masie
offered
about how meetings need to and are changing and adapting to cultural and
technological shifts, he observed that: "The No. 1 thing
that
people will tell you is that the value for the meeting was what happened
outside the meeting rooms."
Gone are the days when
conferences were just about what
happens in the seminar room. Increasingly,
meeting organizers and planners are recognizing that what happens in the
white
space between meetings can be even more important. In the white
space is where new relationships are formed, and
acquaintances are solidified into productive business partnerships.
With this burgeoning appreciation for the
value of the time between conference sessions, savvy conference and
meeting
organizers today create white spaces in their events to foster this type
of
social networking. Golf events have long been all about building
business
relationships. This same concept is now
moving into more traditional conference events. Coffee breaks are
longer, more networking activities like cocktail
parties or outings are incorporated into the agenda, and opportunities for
scheduling
private, one-on-meetings with sponsors, vendors and presenters are all
serving
to move events beyond awareness building to relationship development.
For meeting planners, scheduling and registration for these
white space activities, particularly one-on-one meetings adds several
layers of
complexity. To seamlessly incorporate
one-on-one's into your conference, you need to be able to capture the
participants' interest in meeting at the time they register for an event,
or at
a minimum in the system you are using to register attendees. And,
ideally, when setting up personal
meetings, you want to have some idea of prioritization and preferences
from
both parties. You need tools for scheduling meetings
that put all of this
information in front of you so that you can make decisions as to who
should
meet with whom and where to put the meeting.
Once the meetings are set, you need the ability to communicate with the
venue about how many rooms you need and you need to send to each party a
confirmation that the meeting has been set and where they should meet.
With MeetMax's unique One-on-One meeting scheduling
system you can create a richer conference experience by facilitating
relationship development among presenters, sponsors and
attendees. Within the Financial Services industry,
banks have been using one-on-one meetings to further relationships at
their
conferences for many years. Since 2003,
MeetMax has been the system they turn to for their registration
needs. Now companies in diverse industries like
healthcare, pharmaceuticals, media are realizing the benefit of
incorporating
white space meetings into their events, and are turning to MeetMax for
their
registration and meeting management needs.
If
you want to read the whole interview with Elliott Masie > |
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