what's new at our meeting

We're working on a slew of new projects for our upcoming Annual Meeting... including:

• A "greener" meeting - no more photocopying zillions of slides, most of which don't mean much to the listener. Instead, speakers get to develop a meaningful one-page handout for listeners to use as the follow along... in combination with...
• Speaker training - we've conducted training (with Jeffrey Cufaude's assistance) to educate our speakers about adult learning principles, the principles of good slide design and how to create effective, useful handouts
• A blog - yes, we're starting a conference blog. I'll post a link once we've got a few posts up.
• A learning guide/workbook. We've reformatted our final program into a workbook, incorporating notes fields following every session, so that learners will be encouraged to use it as a reference.
• Updating the "schedule at a glance." I shamelessly stole this idea from Mike Mason at Communicatio... We got it down to one page, on the back cover of the final program.
• Targeted marketing... see my earlier posts.

I'll report back on how these go over with the attendees, but I'm pretty excited about the changes!

guess i should explain...

David asked me about the crazy idea - and I realize I never did tell the details. We decided to segment our marketing to our target audiences for the conference. I identified three sessions that each of our audiences would be interested in attending, put them on the cover of our brochure along with a statment such as: "We've designed the following sessions for chief executives like you!" Then we mailed that cover to our CEOs and COOs. We did it for 4 distinct audiences and then a generic for everyone else. We intended to personalize but that became cost prohibitive. (And maybe we didn't even need it!)

Is this rocket science? No, not really. But a big, big step forward for us.

that crazy idea....it is working.

I am absolutely thrilled that my cockamamie idea in June that caused me and my coworkers so much stress has apparently resulted in an 85% increase in registration for our meeting over this time last year. Truly phenomenal. Some folks have suggested that may not hold through the rest of the reg period. Frankly, I'm just happy that something in our marketing mix is working. Heck, not just working, but kicking butt. If nothing else, we've gotten 85% more people to commit to our meeting earlier than ever.

Can't beat that. It wasn't so crazy after all!

what is the bigger picture here?

Got a lot of things on my mind, this 4th of July-eve. I've really been bugged by the whole working mother thing as of late. Lots of attention in recent months on breastfeeding and working mothers - and breastfeeding in public. It's a shame in this country that we are among the worst of industrialized nations when it comes to how we treat new mothers. After 12 weeks of leave - half of which was unpaid, the other half paid, thanks to vacation leave I had accumulated and a bit of short-term disability - I was just beginning to get my feet on the ground. Thank God that I was able to extend my leave through the winter holidays. It really felt like a very cruel thing to do, to have to return to work, as I was just beginning to get to know my daughter.

Obviously, their are serious considerations for employers - it would be quite an effort to accommodate a year of leave for every woman who gets pregnant. On the other hand, I wonder what we are giving up? What are we sacrificing? As we continue to witness more painful things in our society - an obesity epidemic, violence, bullying, helicopter parents - I wonder if we started out right, what that might do for us as a society. No, a year of maternity leave won't solve any of those problems. But I have to believe that valuing motherhood - parenthood - that might be a good start.

still here...

Yes, I am. Still here. Been caught up in an unexpected challenge over the last few days at work. You know when you have a great idea, but then reality smacks you in the face and you realize that your great idea is about 10 times the work you thought it would be? Yeah, that's what happened. It was the right thing to do, but it cost a lot of my time and my coworkers time. I'm pretty lucky that they haven't completely lost it with me.

This has prompted me to consider, once again, what it is that drives me, us, to continue to try to improve. Occasionally, I find myself down in the dumps... in despair... looking for a way out. Whatever it is. Work, school, life. I just get frustrated, tired, bored, irritable. Maybe my attention span is much shorter than it really should be. But I always find a way out of the slump. There's this strange inner force. A force that drives me to keep trying - sometimes even when I know inside that it's probably a futile effort.

Today's project? Well that was no futile effort - it was completely worthwhile. But heaven knows I was ready to give up. Yeah, if it goes well I should see a nice bump in revenue come this fall, but more importantly, if it goes well, the right people will come to my party - my conference - enriching the experience for the rest of the attendees. Not unlike a dinner party, where you really want to find the right mix of folks to sustain a rich, intellectual (heck, just fun would be fine) dialogue all night. If I get all the right people at the meeting - then yes, it'll be like a fantastic dinner party - one that lasts three days.