For Planners

An event isn’t going to be well-organized if the person behind it isn’t. The following tools keep planners on track by helping with travel, accounting, scheduling and planning.

Contactually

Not everyone can have a personal assistant keeping track of emails and tasks. Contactually is a relationship management tool that connects directly to an email inbox and takes note of who the messages are from and how frequently and quickly the user responds to certain emails. The system prioritizes contacts and helps keep track of follow-up. Reminder emails from Contactually keep important relationships top of mind. The web-based platform is compatible with Gmail, Outlook and most email programs online and on all mobile devices. It also syncs with most CRMs. contactually.com | Plans range from $15-$150/month

Doodle

Faxing a sign-up sheet around to colleagues? Sending reply-all emails to a group? Try the online meeting scheduler Doodle, which easily coordinates schedules with polls that sync with Google, Outlook, Exchange and iCal to help pick the best dates and location for everyone involved. doodle.com | Free or premium plans $39-$479/year

Powersquid

Bring along the ultimate powerstrip, the PowerSquid, which fits in a briefcase, has a flat profile plug to squeeze behind furniture, two glowing outlets, surge protection and a bevy of octopus-like extensions for multiple electronics. powersquid.com | $12.95-$59.95

 iRunuRun

This mobile app and web dashboard focuses on performance and accountability rather than acting as a task manager. Users select up to seven measurable actions that can be weighted according to priority and lead to a big picture goal (i.e., “reach out to 10 attendees a week on social media” rather than “improve engagement with attendees”). Weekly scoring and benchmarks give users metrics to mark their progress. Purchasing a directed account allows leaders to create teams, set goals for employees, monitor progress, create competitions among a group and add custom branding to the app. Also check out iprayupray, a beta website that uses the irun concept to encourage individuals and organizations to manage prayer among communities. irunurun.com |  $0.99 app; self-directed account: free-$4.99/month; directed account: $500 team challenge fee, ongoing subscription based on users and performance discount during initial challenge |  iPhone

TIP | Use tweetchat.com to join Twitter chats. Sign in on the website using your Twitter account and type in a designated hashtag. The system filters the relevant tweets into a chat room and makes it easy to message the group. Smart pausing prevents new tweets from being added to the top if the user scrolls down to read earlier posts until scrolling back up. No prep work is required for the organizer either. Make sure followers know when to join and what hashtag to follow and it’s all set.

For Events

From marketing and registration leading up to an event to on-site gadgets and post-event follow up, event technology enhances connection, engagement and participation throughout the experience.

Citywide Attendee Credential System

ITN International’s BCARD badges take interactive name tags one step further. Embedded with Near Field Communications technology, the identification cards double as a way to track attendees within the conference (think: education credits) and as a free pass to public transit and tourist attractions throughout a host city. The host CVB can provide discounts around town, or tickets to a convention-wide event at an area attraction. itn-international.com | Pricing structures depend on size of event and sponsorship opportunities

Padgett Plus

The affordable device has login capabilities and a full numeric keypad for voting and polling. It is the most popular of Padgett’s devices for faith-based events, especially for elections. An LCD display shows two-line messages, including an alert when the organizer receives the vote or answer. Upgraded devices from Padgett include the Ativa with a full-color, customizable LCD touch screen that can engage participants in a fun game of “Jeopardy” or other custom game shows in addition to its audience response capabilities.
pcipro.com  | Flexible pricing is based on the number of keypads, number of days used and location of meeting

IML Connector

The BlackBerry-like device has a full keyboard and color screen. In addition to simple polling during a presentation, the device works well for voting on amendments, elections and other important matters. The organizer can give voting privileges to certain individuals and make responses confidential, providing professionalism for important votes or fundraising initiatives. A built-in speaker and microphone allows attendees to contribute to the conversation or ask questions during an open forum. Simpler models are available through IML for polling and fundraising. imlaudienceresponse.com | $10-$25/day per device

Social Tables

Anyone who’s ever gotten stuck at the crazy cousin table at a wedding knows the importance of a good seating chart. When there are assigned seats, drama and unhappy guests can follow. Social Tables gives attendees the power to help with the seating chart without the chaos a planner would expect from crowdsourcing this aspect of planning. The collaborative program allows multiple organizers at different locations to determine seating. The organizers’ purest intention, though, is to allow guests to pick their own seats. Planners can put guests into categories giving them certain options of where to sit, and guests have the ability to interact beforehand and pick their seats, ideally with new contacts. socialtables.com | Free

Square

The best way to take payment on-site, this tiny device attaches to a smartphone, accepts all major credit cards and charges merchants a 2.75 percent rate. It makes registration a breeze, and direct-deposit payments are in the bank the next day. square.com | iPhone, iPad, Android

For Social

Events are social. We plan gatherings to initiate connection and interaction among colleagues. Social media gives that interaction a year-round platform, encourages face-to-face connections and offers the potential to elevate events to a new level. New players in this field add excitement to what planners can achieve through social networks.

Pinterest

The hottest trend in social media, Pinterest, beat YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January and is fast on Twitter’s heels. The social networking site is an online pinboard where users share things they love on the Internet. It’s perfect for the visually stimulating world of events. Planners can go in several directions with it. A planner might create a board that markets an event, pinning articles about education, images that go along with the theme, speaker videos and host city information. Or, the planner might create a personal idea board with centerpiece possibilities, great food and beverage presentations or cool audiovisual. And, if the site seems geared too much for the female set, its manly (unrelated) counterpart, gentlemint.com, has a rougher exterior. pinterest.com | Free | iPhone, iPad, HTML5

Pathable

Technology has increased engagement at face-to-face events and extended lifespans online. One of the pioneers in this area is Pathable, a custom online community for events, which had a makeover at the end of last year that made it even better. More than simply a custom social networking site, the platform was designed with events in mind. It integrates with registration systems, giving attendees a virtual presence and allowing them to network with one another, create custom agendas and download session handouts. Attendees, speakers and suppliers dialogue in forums, and a virtual trade show floor gives additional exposure and connection opportunities to suppliers. The benefits of 2.0? Allows all of that engagement year-round, makes it all mobile and browser-based (i.e., faster). pathable.com | $3,900-$27,200/year | iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows phone

For Mobile

Today, in order to mobilize attendees, many meeting planners have to mobilize their content. Making the event website mobile, having an on-site mobile app and using a personal mobile device as a tool are necessary.

Gamify App

Competition fuels engagement, and gaming—the No. 1 most popular mobile activity—turns attendees into active participants. EventMobi has created GamifyApp, a customizable gaming app for events. Attendees earn badges by checking into exhibitor booths, answering questions about education sessions or taking part in an event-specific scavenger hunt. Organizers receive data about who checked into locations, which they can share with exhibitors or use for their own feedback. gamifyapp.com | $2,500 or combined with EventMobi packages starting at $799 | iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry

Swivl

This is not your average tripod. The Swivl base holds a smartphone, and automatically follows a presenter wearing a Swivl sensor. The speaker is free to move around and stays in the camera’s view. swivl.com | $159 | iPhone

For Websites

An app, social media, online registration system and print pieces are all important aspects of event marketing, but they all link from or to a crucial information hub: the event’s website.

Event Manager Theme

The new website theme built for a WordPress platform was designed based on feedback from the Event Planning and Event Management LinkedIn group started by Julius Solaris, editor of the Event Manager Blog. The template is easy to manage with custom dashboard sections for speakers and sessions, integrates with Eventbrite for registration, and is responsive, meaning it adapts to web or mobile platforms automatically. The clean layout is easy for attendees to navigate. It’s recommended for small to medium events, and has a custom version with upgrades and extra features for large events. eventmanagerblog.com/event-manager-theme | $99, $149 with 1 year of support

Facebook Badges

Share personal profiles, a “like” box, photo albums or an event’s Facebook page on a main website to draw attention to the event activity on the social network. Users don’t have to leave the website to like the event’s page or check out photos from previous events. facebook.com/badges | Free

Don’t forget there are still more tools in the April/May issue of Rejuvenate, and read an interview with Michael Williams of Chick-fil-A Leadercast about how he implements technology here. Let us know in the comments below some of your favorite meetings technology tools.

You’ll see a lot of the same elements at faith-based conferences. The style and substance of these events vary wildly (a 10,000-person congress certainly demands different things than a 200-person youth event), but most faith-based meetings have a few unifying factors: education, worship, speakers and community events. It’s the way these elements are delivered that’s changing. And a few meeting planners are stepping way outside the ascribed planning box by focusing on creating an environment that changes the attitude and conversation about a meeting before it ever begins.

“If everyone else is doing it, we’re probably not going to do it,” says Katie Strandlund, sponsor care coordinator and director of operations of Story conference, an annual event held in Chicago for self-described artists and creators (mostly Christian) who are trying to communicate their stories. Now in its fourth year, Story continues to break the standard conference mold. “It’s more of an experience than a conference,” says Strandlund. “It’s meant to inspire and help people see what’s possible and push imaginations to a greater level.”

The speakers you see at other faith-based events? You won’t see them at Story. Musicians? The bands at Story are up-and-comers or barely-knowns. Breakout sessions? Not here. Everything takes place on one main stage at Park Community Church. Speakers are intermixed with bands. Bands are intermixed with theatrical acts. Those acts are intermixed with monologues. The agenda is unexpected, the content is unusual, but the focus remains where it should be: on the attendees.

“The environment—from the time you arrive to the time you leave—is meant to be inspirational. We want to make it an experience. We want to make it something you want to come back to,” says Strandlund. That means bringing in speakers via hologram (yes, a hologram, on stage, speaking). It also means making it rain, indoors, on the main stage. It means dispatching a “surprise and delight” team who hands out throwback treats from the ‘90s (think MoonPies and Yoo-hoo chocolate milk).

Not every planner can make it rain on stage (Strandlund says, “Don’t ask me how we do it”), but much of what you see at Story can be lifted, even in part, for your own meetings and events. Story’s website is an amazing online portal and gateway to the event, with an innovative design and functionality. Last year, conference organizers checked everyone in with the EventBrite app, which, despite being relatively easy-to-use, made a huge impression on attendees. During Story’s breaks, organizers created special environments in which attendees could hang out and relax. One was a garage lounge with a DJ and comfy couches. Another was an art gallery. Yet another area was an acoustic cafe. They gave the event a “festival feel,” says Strandlund.

Story is big and bright and fun. Its vision is obvious. The passion that Ben Arment,  author and founder of several ministry events including Story, and the rest of the planning team have is clear. They want to inspire people. They want to bring their attendees something they can’t find at other events. And they have that goal in mind before they even begin lining up music acts and speakers.

“Start with identifying your goals and design meetings around that, innovate around that and create around that,” says John Nawn, an organizational psychologist and founder of The Perfect Meeting, a meeting facilitation, coaching and design advisory firm. It’s impossible to be creative and try new things without first knowing what you want to get out of your event, he says.

Blaine Hogan, creative director of Willow Creek Community Church, opens his mouth to catch a few raindrops as it rains on stage during the 2011 Story conference in Chicago.

Nawn also draws a distinction between creativity and innovation. Creativity, he says, is developing new ideas. Innovation, by contrast, is the process of transforming those ideas into valuable or profitable solutions. When planning meetings and events, you can be both creative and innovative, but being innovative can help you actually measure ROI. “You need to understand and get past self-imposed barriers,” he recommends. Instead of focusing on the fact that you have a tight budget or time constraints, think instead about what opportunities those barriers can ultimately create. Limited time for education? Consider the TED approach by shortening the time speakers have to present. Tight budgets? That’s when creativity really flows.

“I believe most people are more creative than they give themselves credit for,” says Nawn. They just need to be more confident, he says. It takes guts to forgo printed conference materials in favor of electronic ones, possibly alienating a few members, and it takes a lot of confidence to start with absolutely nothing and, within months, build an entire event and watch people explore and enjoy your creation.

That’s what happened to Scott McClellan, director of Echo Conference, an educational event for the artists, geeks and storytellers that roam behind the scenes at their churches and organizations. The conference attendees are primarily on staff at churches or ministries, and “they are communicators who don’t have a traditional pulpit,” says McClellan. “Most of them aren’t teaching Sunday mornings, but they’re communicating the same message or enhancing the Sunday morning message through other media.”

Echo was founded by RT Creative Group, which is also the parent company for Igniter Media. Igniter Media has been helping to create media resources for churches for a decade. “As Igniter Media, we were passionate about using new media to unite the church and serve its people,” explains McClellan. “We found that there was no magazine dedicated to that conversation, exploring the art and resources and practice of those things. The magazine we wanted wasn’t there, so we started Collide,” he says, which was a magazine for Christian creators the company often worked with. (Collide has since ceased publication in favor of an online outlet, EchoHub.) “The conference that we wanted wasn’t there either.” So, they started brainstorming. That’s how Echo came along.

McClellan joined the planning team for the 2009 conference, the event’s second year. One of the first things he recognized was the pressure to be creative when planning an event for creative people. “I feel that pressure,” he admits. “Although, what’s interesting about our audience is that they come from such different churches. One person’s definition of creative because they’re on staff at a 10,000-member church that does 3D and immersive experiences is truly different from someone who comes from a rural church of 400 people in Montana.” Because of that, McClellan and his team have to be careful not to overplan and overdo the technical aspects of Echo.

“We started out going full throttle, as graphically intensive and media intensive as we could get,” he says. “And our attendees said, ‘That was great, but we can’t go home and replicate that.’ In some ways, our eyes began to open. How can we model creativity without modeling something extravagant?”

That’s when McClellan and his team refocused on the goal of the conference. What they wanted to do was inspire and equip people and show them what’s possible in multimedia church offerings, but in an approachable way. “We started imposing some constraints on ourselves,” he says. What resulted is a conference that’s “creative in a good way,” as McClellan describes it. “Being creative doesn’t necessarily mean being more extravagant.”

Take, for example, Echo’s speaker introductions. Rather than having a moderator introduce speakers, Echo plays short, two-minute videos as introductions. For the last few years, the videos have featured Johnny and Chachi, a Christian comedy duo (watch the videos). The videos aren’t excessive or overproduced, but they’re funny and original.

In recent years, Echo also introduced a user-friendly mobile website with all conference information rather than producing a pricey app that has to be reformatted for different phones. The site works on any Droid or iPhone. Echo has to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to conference technology because its uber tech-savvy audience demands it. Inspiration and new ideas for Echo come from everywhere, says McClellan. He recently heard about a speaker who presents sessions using an iPad because he can seamlessly transition between his keynote address and another app that allows him to sketch something on the projected screen. McClellan plans to adopt the idea for the sessions he presents at Echo.

Richard Kang speaks during the 2011 Echo conference in a session on the mobile Internet.

McClellan gleans inspiration from lots of sources, and reviews them with his team in an effort to come up with the best ideas. Nothing impairs the creative planning process more than negative feedback, says Kristin D. Charles, Ph.D., a communications and adult learning expert. She often presents educational sessions on the topic of planning and creativity, including a recent one at an MPI-Wisconsin event, “Balancing Creativity and Critical Thinking in Event Planning,” in which she identified a number of steps in the creative planning process. “The first step is being creative and thinking divergently,” she says, which is the process of coming up with as many ideas as possible without evaluating them.

In all subsequent steps, thinking divergently is a key to maintaining the creative approach. Like Nawn, Charles finds it important to identify goals and the vision for your event as a way to facilitate the creative planning process. “Ask a ton of questions of all your stakeholders. What do they want the meeting to feel like, look like, sound like and taste like? Get as many ideas as you can, then go through an exercise of narrowing down themes,” she says.

It can be difficult to get people to open up and brainstorm as a team, says Charles. Some people dominate the conversation. Others are critical of ideas, even when it’s been established that there will be no negative feedback. It takes a strong leader to set the tone and be clear about the goals of the session. “Don’t have negative consequences for thinking creatively,” she says. “Someone has to say, ‘We’re going to have fun coming up with the most ridiculous stuff we can.’ Then you reward people who are willing to go out on a limb and come up with crazy ideas.”

Deciding you’re going to bring in a speaker via hologram? That’s pretty crazy. Choosing to produce speaker intro videos? That takes some planning. Many ideas originally proposed for Story or Echo never made it into their events, but that’s OK, too. It’s about throwing out as many ideas as possible, then seeing which ones stick.

Story conference is all about the unexpected, including little-known bands.

Nawn says there are two different models for planning events, and neither is right or wrong. Neither is better or worse. They’re just different perspectives. One is comparable to the Apple model. In many ways, the late CEO Steve Jobs convinced Apple consumers what they wanted before they knew they wanted it. That’s true of many meetings. Planners organize meetings based on what they think attendees want. “That happens by default because we’ve been doing meetings like this since the beginning of time,” says Nawn.

But in recent years, another model has emerged. “We reach out to our audience and ask what they want in partnership or collaboration with them.” These crowdsourced conferences are built and improved over time based on audience response. It’s more difficult to perfect the Apple model, says Nawn. TED has been able to do it, but few conferences have replicated the TED conference well. It takes a very creative person who’s willing to take risks, implement the top-down approach and do it successfully.

Regardless of the way you plan events or who you plan them for, there’s always an opening for creativity. Some planners bust it wide open, and that’s when you get conferences such as Echo and Story. Other planners—in fact, it’s probably safe to say most planners—never quite get the courage to fully explore their creative resources. In the faith-based community, opportunities abound to break out of the norm, and one key reason is because the audience is often willing to accept what is offered. They’re looking for inspiration. They attend events because they want to see and feel something new. You can help open their minds to new ideas when you do the same.

“Bright Ideas” is the third article in our Rethinking Meetings series, which examines the way the planning and production of meetings are changing. We invite you to think about how you can use concepts presented in this series, discuss them with your teams and organizations, and share your insights with us. Email editor@collinsonmedia.com or add your comments on our wall.

Photo: Joshua White

As the executive director of Chick-fil-A Leadercast, Williams is responsible for the planning and execution of the annual event aimed to inspire leaders to make a difference in their local communities.

Forget the 1 percent you hear about in the news all the time. Michael Williams is trying to reach a different 1 percent—the 1 percent of the world’s population that, research shows, can create a culture shift when they grab onto an idea and embrace it. One tool he uses to do this is Chick-fil-A Leadercast, a one-day leadership event started more than 10 years ago by John Maxwell and one of a number of events produced by Giant Impact, challenging people to shift their thinking about how leadership works. On May 4, a number of world-renowned leaders (including CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien and pastor Andy Stanley) will gather in Atlanta for Leadercast to deliver inspiring speeches that will be broadcast to more than 125,000 people worldwide. Here’s how Williams, executive director of the event, and his team do it.

What is the purpose of Chick-fil-A Leadercast?
Our big goal is to change the leadership culture of America—really the world, but starting where we are—from pride-based leadership to humility-based leadership.

Why is it important to align sponsorships, like you’ve done with Chick-fil-A, with the mission of your organization?
We want to find people with the same DNA as us—people who have a high amount of quality service and operational excellence. When we have global brands that stand for those same qualities, it is assurance to the world and reiterates the quality of the event. It’s also a risk for us. When we put a national sponsor’s name on it and they have some sort of negative press, it affects us. So we look at who we want to emulate our message.

How can planners seek those kinds of partnerships?
We’ve always gone at it with the attitude of relationship before any opportunity. We don’t even talk about sponsorships until we’ve added value in some way to that sponsor.

Frans Johansson speaks at the 2011 Leadercast

Why do you simulcast the live event?
If our goal is to change the leadership culture of America first, that’s a huge number of people. Studies show if you can change 1 percent of a given population, you start to see a culture shift. You see that throughout time. You look at the Civil Rights movement. If you start to get 1 percent of the population to stand up for an issue, you see that tipping point. We looked at working class America, the everyday leaders in America, and if we can have an impact on 1 percent of them, we will shift the culture. That number is actually 2,301,315 people. That’s our BHAG—our Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. We can’t do that with one event. We’ll cap out. We’ll have 5,000 to 6,000 at the live event in Atlanta. Simulcast allows us to empower influencers all throughout the world.

More than 800 host sites simulcast the Atlanta event live to attendees present at their venues. How does that work?
They buy a license to simulcast our event, and they turn around and sell tickets to their public. We have host sites that do it for all different reasons. We have chambers of commerce that want to do it as a way to raise funds. We have churches who do it as an outreach to a local community. We have entrepreneurs who do it because they want to be life coaches and this is a great way to bring clients in around leadership. About 30 percent of our hosts are corporations who are simulcasting internally for their own company benefit.

How do you attract host sites?
We promote through social media. We’re following folks on Twitter and adding value and sharing content with leadership experts there and on Facebook. We take part in a lot of other events and trade shows. We partner with a lot of other organizations who have community influencers involved and we reach out to them with a message of, “We truly want to partner with you to influence your community.” We do that through a variety of technology, through email blasts and through Chick-fil-A. They have a raving fan database they send messages to about the event.

How do you encourage host sites to have a similar experience to the live site?
It is completely up to them. Anything we do at the live site we share. We share minute-by-minute [plans], we share creative ideas. We view host sites as partners, and every day we’re constantly striving to get better at how we equip our host sites. We do webinars, letting people know what we’re doing, the ways we are engaging people, and we encourage them to share best practices between each other.

What are some creative ways you’ve used social media?
We’ve created a private group on Facebook of all of our host sites. You have 800 people who are community influencers or are bringing this into their companies, and they share best practices. It’s amazing to watch that from the inside.

Attendees experience the event from the executive lounge

How do you engage followers?
We’re reading and following our raving fans, and retweeting and interacting with them. We want to know who’s following us and reach out to them because a lot of them have incredible stories and incredible things they are saying.

What about on-site at the event?
The last two years we’ve been a trending topic on the day of the event on Twitter. We do creative things during the event encouraging people to use our hashtag. Last year, we were trying to get a response out of Ryan Seacrest. He’s a big Chick-fil-A fan, and so Tripp [Crosby], our emcee, told everyone to tweet Ryan Seacrest and ask him if he would have lunch with Tripp next time he’s in L.A. or Atlanta. Now you have 125,000 people tweeting Ryan Seacrest with our hashtag, so now it’s interactive. We ask people to tweet in questions to our speakers and we have a backstage interviewer, Michael Hyatt, who’s interviewing speakers when they come off the stage and really looking for the questions from the audience on Twitter. Also, leading up to the event we’ve done twitterviews—interviews over Twitter—with John Maxwell and Suzy Welch. We’re lining more up for this year.

What is the Choice video contest this year?
This year, the theme is all about choices. The choices we make on a day-to-day-basis—the small choices—tend to lead to macro results. We opened a contest to give a $5,000 reward for the best 10-second video clip that illustrates a choice being made. We’ll use all the videos at the event and create a larger, longer video.

Why is engaging your community in this way important?
It guides us when we are coaching speakers and specifically ask them to speak on some of these topics. It’s really important for us to listen, not just push information out, “Hey, here’s a good leadership tip,” but really asking a question on Facebook and on Twitter and engaging to hear what people are saying.

How has social media changed the way events are planned?
One hundred percent. In the past, we’ve had this speaker vetting process to see who is going to speak at our events, and it’s just been us deciding. Through social media, we can ask who you want to see on stage and we get a list of names. Then on top of that, people are tweeting about it and it’s giving access to the speakers. If all of a sudden 10,000 tweets say I want Suzy Welch or Bono to speak at Leadercast, then Bono is getting all these tweets and thinking, “What in the world is this Leadercast thing?” Then when we reach out to them they say, “I was wondering about you guys.” It’s done so much to help bridge access to these speakers.

How has it changed the event?
Especially in a simulcast world, you’re so distant. How amazing is it that I can literally be sitting in South Africa and tweeting Tim Tebow a question that gets answered right then and there? The level of engagement and ownership one attendee feels is absolutely tremendous.

Coca-Cola and Mentos explosion

Tell us about the production involved in the Atlanta event.
We want everyone who comes to the live site to be wowed, so we look at sensory in production—what they hear, what they see, what they smell, what they taste. We use LED lights and huge screens and interaction pieces. Last year, we had fire jugglers and we did a Coke and Mentos explosion on stage. Also, sound—we bring in great musicians. We’re constantly asking how can we engage all the senses and make it something that all fits into the theme.

Why is it important to be creative?
People won’t engage if you’re not. A lot of people think, “I can’t spend the money to be creative,” and then they wonder why there’s 200 people who showed up at their event when they were hoping for 1,000. You’ve got to give people an engagement, and that comes through creativity. Spending the time, the energy and the money creating these wow moments and sensory experiences are what make or break an event.

What if they don’t have your budget?
I wish we had twice the budget. I’m amazed when I walk through and see what our team has created when I know what the budget is. Where our team gets the most creative is when we have a very, very, very tight budget, and then ask, “How do we use what we have?” We’re forced to be creative at that time. Throwing money at something takes no creativity.

What inspires you in your job?
Any event planner who’s doing a large event of some sort has to build an incredible team around them, who know what they’re doing, who are working in their unique skill sets and abilities. I get the most joy out of watching attendees’ faces, seeing the experiences that people are having, and hearing the stories of change, and then to be able to look at my team and say, “You did this.” As the leader of this team, the true joy and the true excitement comes when I can hold a mirror up to the team and say you have done the most amazing job at transforming life all around the world.

Fire jugglers entertain between speakers

How do you encourage your team?
As a company, we really try to reward character, competence and influence. The executive team calls out and appreciates those folks and the team. We also celebrate stories from host sites and attendees. To be able to share these stories, to get a letter in the mail, or a tweet or a Facebook message that talks about the power of impact, and to be able to hand that off to [my team] and say, “This is because of you. Thank you.”

How do you relax after an event?
Run and hide. Most of our team goes dark for a good while, a week or so after the event. A lot of us take vacation. I’m an entrepreneur. I love starting things and having my hands in a lot of things, so I make sure on days when I’m unplugged on the weekends, I really unplug. So I encourage the team to take true free days after the event and leading up to the event. I think it was released recently that event planning is one of the top 10 most stressful jobs in the world, and we all understand why. When we are rested and rejuvenated, we actually work in our most creative zone.

What’s your best advice for fellow planners?
Have a system where you can unplug completely. Turn off your iPhone for a 24-hour period. Turn off your email. Be unreachable. If you can’t turn your phone off, you’re not a good leader. Your team needs to be empowered to make decisions when you’re not around.

What do you have to have on-site?
My phone and my assistant.

Favorite book?
“Good to Great,” by Jim Collins

Favorite music?
I love hip-hop. I love a good beat. I love dancing and having a good time. Hip-hop makes me smile and usually makes people around me smile.

Favorite quote?
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” —Mahatma Gandhi

College students from around the country pencil in a few days at the end of every year to attend their regional Campus Outreach conferences. This year was different, though. Every 10 years, the regional campus ministries and alumni gather for one national conference, which includes inspirational speakers, concerts, breakout seminars and sporting tournaments. Dubbed CONatCon by organizers, the conference took place in Chattanooga, Tenn., Dec. 28– Jan. 1. The major endeavor required four key event planners leading a preconference planning staff of 20 and a conference execution team of 60.

The event’s lead planners—Mary Beth Rogers, Luke Niday, Bobby Pepiot and Chris Devine—took the time to document this year’s event for Rejuvenate magazine from their point of view. They arrived in Chattanooga on Dec. 26, two days prior to the start of the event, and worked tirelessly until the conference ended on Jan. 1. They’re used to planning small regional conferences for about 500 to 1,000 students. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to organize an event for 5,500.

Monday, Dec. 26
Evening
We arrive in Chattanooga and get ready for set-up tomorrow. We organize the office, and Bobby and Chris stay up late working on a detailed guide to hand out to resource staff. For tomorrow’s events and throughout the rest of the conference, we will divide into four strategic teams:

Team Mary Beth
• Pre-con meetings with hotels
• Organizing conference notebooks

Team Luke
• Set up assembly line to complete conference registration materials

Team Bobby
• Work with DCR Media and Systems, based out of Atlanta, to set up ballroom, lighting, sound, video screens and set
• Set up Cafe, which is a trade show, bookstore, concession and  gathering area

Team Chris
• Gather free-day passes for city attractions
• Prepare for sports tournaments
• Secure food discounts

Tuesday, Dec. 27

8:00 a.m.
Everyone meets, and we divide the more than 60 resource staff members into groups that will pack registration bags, make name tags, organize T-shirts and giveaways, set up the stage, mark off fields for free-day tournaments, meet with hotel staff members to set up nine different decentralized registration locations, and meet with local food vendors to secure discounts at more than 20 restaurants in the downtown area throughout the day.

9:30 a.m.
The frenzy begins. People are dispatched throughout the city, others jam out to music in the office, spending the day stuffing 5,000 bags and preparing name tags.

6:00 p.m.
All staff gathers for dinner and a short meeting to assess progress: registration areas are ready, staging area has made much progress, and all free-day tournaments and food vendors are set up. Only a few specialized tasks remain, so we call it a night.

Wednesday, Dec. 28

8:00 a.m.
We start the day with a meeting to gather the troops and give them the evaluation of where we are and what still needs to be done to get ready for the conference. Luke shares three key tips to make the most of the conference: 1. Prepare for the King. 2. See Jesus in the little things. 3. Enjoy your work.

9:00 a.m.
Our teams scatter to set up nine registration areas at our conference hotels: Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel, Staybridge Suites, Marriott, Sheraton Read House, Courtyard by Marriott, Hilton Garden Inn, DoubleTree Inn and Suites, Hampton Inn, and Holiday Inn and Suites. Each registration area has a live twitter feed streaming on a projector screen, computers to register attendees via Eventbrite, sound systems to play welcome music and a photo booth. Each location also has one of nine pieces of a 60-foot banner that students can sign that will be hung up in the hallway during the conference. (This is a hit!) Team Bobby puts the final touches on the main rally room and gets the lighting hung in the Cafe area.

3:30 p.m.
Registration begins. Mary Beth did a great job in getting her team prepared; through Skype she was able to train the registration point people to be proficient in Eventbrite. Attendees use Sharpies to write their own names on name tags, which makes the system really simple. Members of regional campus staffs greet attendees. Students mostly arrive as groups; buses of students came from Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Daytona Beach and other cities.

We have a slight hiccup with registration at the Sheraton as we received the keys in room number order not in alphabetical order, so our team has to put them in alphabetical order before they can be processed at registration. There’s also not a great set-up for registration at the Sheraton; we have a very small room and 700 people have to make their way through one standard-sized doorway, but it’s the most convenient meeting space in the hotel. All the other locations are flowing great. Of the nearly 900 keys at the Chattanooga Choo Choo, there are only eight wrong keys, and seven of them are Campus Outreach’s fault.

6:00 p.m.
At the end of registration, we’ve processed 3,900 attendees at the nine sites.

7:15 p.m.
Attendees begin lining up outside the main rally room at the Chattanooga Convention Center for the opening session.

7:30 p.m.
Doors open, and hundreds of college students sprint to the nearest seats available. Speaker J.D. Greear arrives on time and sticks to the schedule.

10:00 p.m.
About 350 students arrive to the city for late registration. Overall, the conference sees about an 18 percent increase for the national conference compared to the combined total of last year’s regional conferences.

10:30 p.m.
After the main rally, we help guide students out of the main room to find their regional rallies. We have 15 different ballrooms set up for regional rallies. The goal with the regional rallies is to make this large conference feel smaller. Each regional rally is shaped differently to bring a personalized feel to the conference. They were set up by the conference team and are executed by the regional staff teams. For these first rallies, some regions are throwing a welcome party with music and dancing and games. Other regions are walking through how to make the most of the conference and staging a flash mob. Other regions are talking about how this conference is going to change the shape and scope of what they are doing back on their college campuses.

11:00 p.m.
We come together as a planning team to evaluate day one. It’s going better than expected. The twitter feed is blowing up with tons of positive comments. Four meetings are added to the agenda.

Thursday, Dec. 29
8:00 a.m.
The entire planning team meets in the morning to walk through the day’s big upcoming events: feeding 5,000 attendees, setting up security and rally teams, and concert planning. We spend 30 minutes focusing on the food plan. We divide into our teams to prepare for speaker arrivals, set up AV in breakout rooms, attend programming meetings, etc. A hot topic this morning: One student did not check into the hotel on time last night. We referred to our master online database, sending out an email to registered attendees to help us find the student, who was in the wrong hotel.  We’re a little tired from the search.

10 a.m.
Morning session with speaker Matt Chandler begins on time, with about three minutes to spare. Attendees really respond to Chandler; tweets come in at a rate of about one per second for the rally’s first 30 minutes.

Noon
Men leave the main ballroom for lunch while women remain inside for a rally. In 15 minutes, 2,500 men are served lunch. The only problem: We get them through the line too fast, and they’re left sitting for 45 minutes to an hour before their rally.

1:15 p.m.
About 20 staff members help send men out of an exterior exit to re-enter the ballroom elsewhere while the women are released to go through the lunch line.

2:30 p.m.
Smaller breakout sessions begin. One of the projectors goes out and we realize we don’t have remotes to flip through PowerPoint slides. But all seminars start on time and all speakers are here.

3:30 p.m.
Second set of seminar sessions begin. More than half are at maximum capacity and the rest are all at least half full. We’ve also set up two information tables and have stationed staff members throughout the center for students who have questions during the event. After the session, students have free time to eat before reconvening for the 8:00 p.m. rally.

7:30 p.m.
Students arrive early for the 8:00 p.m. rally and enter the rally room. They start waving regional banners and become a bit unruly because we have a lack of leadership and security inside the ballroom. It’s all stationed at the door. We should have used our @conatconstaff Twitter handle to send a message to our regional campus staff leaders to help calm them down. They were mostly just having fun. As soon as the emcees came out on stage, everyone started listening.

8:00 p.m.
Rally with Matt Chandler begins.  Attendance holds steady at rally.

10:00 p.m.
A concert with Trip Lee and Sho Baraka begins. For late-night events, we add security at the ballroom door and in the hallway. After the concert, we’ve organized free shuttles for attendees who have to walk more than five minutes to their hotels. We feel responsible for students the whole time due to the fact that their hotels are conference hotels and we paid for them the same way we did the convention center. We’ve worked with local CVB to communicate with the police force and get them up to scope on our schedule. We ask students to stay  in groups. We also have campus staff  staying in each hotel, helping the  students go from their hotels to the  convention center.

2:00 a.m.
Our day is finally over.

Friday, Dec. 30

7:30 a.m.
Staff meeting begins, and members are blowing up 1,000 beach balls for a rally later in the day. Chris leads a group of 35 people to set up concessions stands and equipment, fill out brackets, and set up basketball courts and flag football fields. Pre-conference planning included locating fields, getting insurance and waivers, coordinating teams, seeding brackets and setting up field coordinators, logistics coordinator and runners. Our team will also spend much of the day setting up the alumni conference running simultaneously over the weekend days of the conference.

About 225 alumni will come to town for the weekend. They will have their own room off to the side and their own emcees, stage, and band during each rally. Live video of the main session speakers will be shown in the alumni room during rallies.

10:00 a.m.
Sports tournaments begin: a basketball tournament with 110 teams and a football tournament with 55 teams. More than 1,000 attendees take part. They last all day.

7:00 p.m.
Trip Lee and Sho Baraka return for a rally. We had planned to break a world record with beach balls, but had to cancel it for this meeting because of time. We’re not sure where they will fit it in the program, but there are 1,000 beach balls blown up and ready to go.

9:00 p.m.
Students again break up into their regions for rallies, which last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

11:00 p.m.
We convene one last time before calling it a day. The biggest problem today was that we had to move five regional rally rooms because they weren’t large enough. Also, one of our staff members was approached by people from a blood-donor mobile who were in crisis and needed blood. One of our staff people allowed them to set up outside the center’s doors and recruit students. After we got word of this, we had to put a stop to it as this could cause a liability issues, especially in light of our stringent schedule. They set up their operation a few blocks away and students donated when they had free time.

Saturday, Dec. 31

8:00 a.m.
Our team meets for our daily morning meeting and we discuss how Campus Outreach directors are pushing for mobilization, which is being involved in the Campus Outreach movement after students leave college, to be large takeaway from this conference. Some of that communication didn’t cross over to the planning team, so we’re making adjustments to add meeting times for different regional mobilization times. Adjustments also have to be made with the musician because there hasn’t been enough time given to the band, creating some tension with our planning team.

10:00 a.m.
Fifth conference rally begins with Harry Reeder.

Noon
Women’s lunch and men’s rally begins. There are no problems coordinating today’s lunches.

1:15 p.m.
Men’s lunch and women’s rally begins. More than 2,500 people are served lunch in 11 minutes.

2:30 p.m.
After seminars begin, many are overflowing and we have to send some students to their second or third options. One seminar was moved from the room it was in two days ago, and the AV equipment wasn’t moved. We set up our own equipment rather than asking the convention center for help because it needed to be done quickly.

8:30 p.m.
The event’s sixth rally with John Piper begins. It begins and ends on time. We coordinated an extended worship time with music and devotions at the end. After the rally, we have 30 minutes to set up for a New Year’s party we’ve planned. We move and stack 2,000 chairs for the party and set the room. The party starts on time and the team decides to bring in the beach balls. More than 1,000 beach balls create a wave of fun over the crowd. It brings a lot of energy to the room energy and works out so much better than if we had tried to do this during a main session. We have to document the event to send it in for a new world record of the most beach balls in the air at one time.

11:15 p.m.
The New Year’s party is in full swing. We’d ordered black lights and party favors, created highlight videos, and hired a D.J. During the party, we give away gifts such as Kindles and iPads. We use a mobile text drawing system to give away prizes where students text in their phone numbers, one is randomly drawn and the number is called back to award the winner. We ring in the New Year at midnight, and the party lasts until 12:30 a.m. We send everyone back to the hotels by 1 a.m. After a brief meeting, staff members head to bed at 2:00 a.m.

Sunday, Jan. 1

8:30 a.m.
Campus staffs and students meet to fill out evaluations, either on paper or mobile phones. Everyone is tired but excited about all that is happening and looking forward to hearing from John Piper again.

10:15 a.m.
All the students stay until the end of the conference for the final rally with John Piper. Each student receives his book “Don’t Waste Your Life.” This rally is always short and sweet from a programming standpoint because we have to get people on the road.

Campus Outreach planners always had four key objectives in mind that guided all decision-making. See a grid outlining the objectives here.

Challenged with educating future generations, meeting membership organizations are reevaluating and upgrading course content and certification requirements. Many faith-based meeting planners fell into their roles accidentally, but they’ve realized the importance of career training and advancement. Some make the decision to get into the industry early in their careers. Universities are developing educational material on the intrinsic value of meetings and events in business. There are now advocates for the concept that students majoring in business at institutes of higher learning should be required to take an elective, special course or a minor in event management.

Where does the discipline of meetings and events belong in the contemporary academic curriculum and why? A little more than two decades ago, virtually any courses of study relevant to people in our industry were offered in the newly formed hospitality or tourism departments (the latter of which owed their name, their focus and their existence to the word “tourism” and its supposed ability to pull revenue into a given city)—or within some part of facilities management instruction. For many in the academic world, this is how courses of study on meeting and events are still understood: as footnotes to subjects like facilities management, as elements of other business-driven course offerings such as sports marketing or tourism, or perhaps as community college material in narrowly defined areas such as social and wedding planning.

In recent years, meetings and events have emerged as powerful tools for strategic messaging; public relations, marketing and advertising play a more important role. Clearly, well-planned, well-executed, well-branded events are having an impact on the bottom-line, forcing academic institutions to reassess their course offerings. Considering the glacial speed at which any kind of structural change tends to unfold within long-established academic silos, the shift that has taken place during the past decade has been remarkably fast, and is accelerating. There has been a real reassessment of the business case for meetings and events as an academic discipline in its own right. What follows are some of the most interesting voices and intriguing insights from the emerging academic discussion on how, where and why to teach people to become meetings and events professionals.

Janet Sperstad: Educating clients on the value of meetings is key

Joe Goldblatt: Women will change the dynamics

Elizabeth Rich: We are in the communication industry

Patti Shock: Projections point to strong growth despite setbacks

Tim Brown: We are waiting for academia to catch up

Amanda Cecil: It goes beyond ordering large amounts of cheese Danish

“The Great Shift” is the second article in our Rethinking Meetings series. In future issues, we’ll explore change as it affects the design of convention and conference centers, hotels, seating and setups, production and programs, food and beverage, travel and every other aspect of what we do in connection with events. We invite you to think about how you can use concepts presented in this series, discuss them with your teams and organizations, and share your insights with us. Email editor@collinsonmedia.com or add your comments on our wall.

What simpler way could there be for event organizers who want their conferences to make a difference then to jolt attendees into action with coffee? “Everyone wants the opportunity to help transform lives, and for many of us jumping on an airplane and going on a mission trip is either too scary or just isn’t feasible, but there are simple things we’re doing already in life that we can transform into being missional and help build the kingdom,” says Robert Crow, community and relationship director, Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee Company.

Click here for videos of giveback organizations covered in this story

“One of those things is making sure the coffee you drink is helping people and not exploiting them.”

Thousand Hills sells Community Trade coffee, which is based on the company’s goal to build relationships with farmers in Rwanda, Thailand and Haiti by providing them a fair wage for their coffee and equipping them to become better farmers. Using coffee from Thousand Hills could be a first step in aligning every part of your conference with your organization’s mission.

Common Vision
When developing giveback elements of your conference, the most important decision is choosing which programs best match your group and your conference’s mission. Thousand Hills found connection with the mission of Story Conference, a gathering of practitioners from a variety of creative fields who want to inspire and equip the next generation. “Story believes that the Christian story revolves around everything you do—that every action you have revolves around that story,” says Crow, including the coffee you drink.

The company has worked with Story, as well as Orange Conference and Catalyst, to share its Community Trade philosophy. At conferences, the company brews coffee, sells Rwandan lattes and merchandise, and distributes information about the impact of purchasing its coffee. Bulk orders also can be purchased from Thousand Hills that come with materials and videos to educate attendees. Crow says 135 pounds of coffee supports a farmer for a year. That’s the equivalent of 2,700-4,000 cups of coffee, an amount easily consumed during many conferences. Founder Jonathan Golden speaks at conferences and churches about sustainability as a solution to poverty and using coffee to build Christ-centered relationships in the communities it serves.

Better World Books funds literacy programs and donates a book to organizations around the world for every book purchased from the social enterprise. It is the official bookstore of TED conferences. “Our values align,” says John Ujda, vice president of marketing for Better World Books. “The concept of TED is spreading ideas to change the world. And what Better World Books believes is that books are a good way to spread ideas and we’re trying to improve the world.”

The bookstore, which seeks a social, economic and environmental profit, exhibited more than 300 titles from TED speakers and books recommended by influential TEDsters like Bill Gates at TED2011 in Long Beach, Calif. Other conferences can partner with Better World Books by sponsoring book drives at events or using the online bookstore, betterworldbooks.com, for purchases.

“There’s a halo effect for having Better World Books as your bookstore, rather than any other bookstore that is strictly for profit,” says Ujda, who also urges organization’s working with social enterprises to be willing to compromise on fees and other costs. “Be conscious of the value their brand brings to the game, and be willing to make some tradeoffs because of what comes with that.”

Lights, Camera, Action
Sometimes passive changes that encourage attendees to contribute to causes aren’t enough. Some organizations plan entire events around giving back.

Christ in Youth recognized an opportunity to educate more than 60,000 attendees at more than 100 events a year about social ills around the world by using a medium that was familiar to its participants. “The students we see are really part of that Millennial Generation,” says Chris Jefferson, director of organizational advancement for CIY. “They are 10 to 18 years old. Everything they have seen in education or entertainment has a video screen or a computer. Even at live events, they look up to see a replay on the video screen.”

CIY produced several short films and a feature film that are shown at the organization’s youth events, Know Sweat (now called Engage: Service), Move, SuperStart, Believe and Mix.

After a video presentation, a speaker expands on the topic and at the end of the week-long or weekend events, students can accept a challenge card to come up with a creative idea either individually or as a group to meet the need on their card. The challenge might be related to a global issue in the movie, such as not drinking anything but water for a year to raise money and support for clean water in Africa, or closer to home, like collecting 500 coats for the homeless in their community.

The result? Two middle school girls raised $24,000 in one year for clean water in Zambia, Africa, by selling hand-sewn decorative birds after seeing “Zambia’s Song” at Know Sweat. A couple of teenage boys sold T-shirts at concerts and music festivals to raise money and awareness for victims of sex trafficking in Southeast Asia after watching “Baht,” a movie about the issue, at Move. There are hundreds of stories about students who were challenged at the events to make a tangible difference for others.

Each summer, CIY chooses a single organization to support. “We try go beyond the event in a way that is real and lasting and impacts communities here and around the world…rather than scattering support to four or five different organizations,” Jefferson says. This past summer, the organization focused on persecuted Christians around the world through a full-length feature film, “Love Costs Every Thing.” Representatives from the Central Indian Christian Mission spoke and interacted with students during events. “[Students] immediately know who the money is going to support,” says Jefferson. “These are real people whose lives are being impacted.”

The films and additional resources are available from CIY for other groups to use at their events. “Video clips become a powerful teaching moment as razor-sharp illustrations, than become products of an event,” Jefferson says. “A five-day event with video elements is its own living breathing thing…the video has the opportunity to encourage greater involvement.”

For the past two years, youth ministers at the Worship Center in Lancaster, Pa., have hosted events supporting Sweet Sleep, a faith-based organization that provides beds for orphans in Moldova, Uganda and Haiti, to educate their students about living conditions around the world. In September, almost 80 fifth through eighth graders participated in Under the Stars, a lock-out event during which kids sleep outside in cardboard boxes in order to raise money. “It was a hands-on experience to help others in need,” says Heather Bivins, Worship Center student ministry pastor of Route 56, the fifth- and sixth-grade ministry. “Even if it was just for a night, they could step outside themselves and see the rest of the world.”

Due to rain, the event was moved inside, but the kids listened to speakers, played games like hauling water through an obstacle course and carrying mattresses on their heads, and slept some. They raised enough money for 80 kits for orphans in Northern Uganda that include a sleeping mat, mattress, mosquito net, blanket and Bible in the child’s language.

“[The kids] were excited to know they could help someone they would never meet,” says Bivins. “Eighty kids’ lives were forever changed, plus it was a lot of fun.”

Sweet Sleep provides promotional and educational materials, videos and an event plan for each of its programs. Under the Stars is recommended for high school and college students, but Bivins recommends choosing programs in which the format can be adapted to fit the needs and culture of your group. She combined aspects of Insomnia, a lock-in event that encourages participants to stay up all night to experience an uncomfortable night similar to what others around the world face, and Under the Stars. “Also, I would start promoting earlier,” she says. “In promotions, I’d explain more about who we’re helping and what we’re actually doing at the event.”

Other Sweet Sleep fundraisers include Bed Races, Nickels for Nets and Build-A-Bed. Event organizers can get creative. At Rejuvenate Marketplace this year, Tri-Valley CVB sponsored a station where attendees could make stuffed animals for the orphans who receive a bed from Sweet Sleep. Attendees stuffed 200 “buddies,” which were donated to Sweet Sleep and Next Door, a local women’s shelter, and purchased enough Sweet Sleep T-shirts and jewelry made by women in Uganda to purchase 40 beds for orphans in Uganda.

Increased Demand
Convention and planning executives in various cities say the demand for volunteer activities in conjunction with meetings has led them to create lists of local organizations that need help and welcome volunteers. “It’s becoming more and more common,” says Judi Quesonova, director of convention services for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau. “I think more companies and organizations are doing it because they want to leave their footprint on a local community.”

That increase is expected to spread, keeping meeting and convention planners on their toes. Quesonova reasons that an organization that does it in one city is likely to do it in each city in which it holds events, prompting a change in how conventions are planned. Community projects, while noble, present their own challenges. Many tourism bureaus assign specific staff members to work with individual companies on giveback activities, but it becomes just another task on the long list of responsibilities for those staffers who often juggle multiple convention clients. If a client requests ideas about a local charity to work with, the staff member must be ready to make suggestions.

“Getting the client with the right group is the biggest challenge,” Quesenova says. “It has to be a good match. These events can be used as part of the convention programming as a teambuilding exercise. You’re going off-site and you’re helping the community, but you’re also working together as a team. So it’s important, if the client wants that, to match them with the right organization that will allow them to do that.”

Houston’s CVB dedicates a service manager to work with each convention client, Quesenova says. Besides serving as the primary liaison with the client on meeting logistics, the person also helps plan a local charity event.

Arvie Murff, director of special events and conferences for Aglow International, says the religious organization, which has locations and ministries in more than 160 countries around the world, partners with local ministry chapters and CVBs in each city in which conferences are held to identify local charities in need of help.

For its worldwide conference in Houston last summer, Aglow worked with the Houston CVB and targeted Redeemed Ministries for outreach. Aglow donated more than $15,000 worth of retail gift cards from Target, Wal-Mart and other local grocery stores. It also donated journals and Bibles. “For us, it’s basically about wrapping our arms around those who are in need to show them that they have the love of the Lord, and that they have not been forgotten—and not just forgotten by people that know them, but by strangers as well. Everyone is important,” Murff said.

The publicity surrounding post-Katrina volunteer projects in New Orleans helped spread the adoption and popularity of community giveback programs as an opportunity for meeting participants. “These types of projects are powerful tools for teambuilding and create unforgettable meeting memories for attendees,” says Jennifer Day from the New Orleans CVB. “This type of work is so positive, and really about the essence of a national and global community. After the storm, the city’s nonprofit organizations exploded with assistance and in turn their capacity and skill set has truly fine-tuned their ability to accommodate groups large and small and to create customized experiences to fit the client’s needs.”

—Andrew Guy Jr. contributed to this article.

We’d like to publicize your good works. Tell us about your meeting or convention giveback program or experience. Contact editor@collinsonmedia.com.

When considering hotel and meeting venues in international destinations, it is important to craft a request for proposal that includes as much attendee demographic and historical information as possible, even if the meeting was not held in that country previously. It is also important to provide an estimated per person budget, keeping in mind that most international properties include breakfast with the room rate. Many countries also package the meeting requirements into a separate rate often referred to as the daily delegate rate (DDR). This rate would include the meeting space, coffee breaks, lunches in the restaurant, writing materials and basic audiovisual such as a projector and screen. If you are looking for a private lunch not in the hotel restaurant, you might incur a surcharge on top of the DDR.

The hotel also will require international groups to pre-pay the cost of the meeting space in full. Transportation and tour companies require 90 to 100 percent pre-payment. Many international properties will charge a fee for payment by credit card. Inquire what the supplier’s policy is and request that the fees be waived.

Contract concessions typical in the United States, such as complimentary meeting space and a 24-hour hold on that space, are not the norm and should not be assumed. It’s important to allow more time for the contract negotiation process when dealing with foreign countries. Ping He, CMP, director, global sourcing and partner relations for Experient Inc., suggests building in more time to account for time zone and language differences as well as forming a relationship with the sales person. “Salespeople are not as incentivized to close the deal as they are in the U.S.,” he says.

When writing the RFP and negotiating the contract, be careful not to use words that would be understood by American suppliers, but unclear to service providers abroad. For example, requesting a “light lunch” might have a different meaning in Latin America and even more so in Asia. It is better to provide the number of courses required and use basic descriptors such as a meat, poultry or fish entree, starch, vegetable and dessert. “Use simple English in your communication with non-English speaking countries,” he says. “We know what ‘How many rooms have been picked up?’ means in the states, but a manager of a small Italian hotel will not understand. Say instead, ‘How many rooms have been used or actualized?’ and you will get a quicker response.”

Paulette Hopkins, president of the Hopkins Alliance, suggests contacting the destination’s tourist board and working with a local destination management company to help navigate cultural disparities. “Research the country’s holidays and bank holidays,” Hopkins says. “Unlike America, other countries honor their holidays and most businesses are closed.” She points to an example where the word “weekend” does not always mean a Saturday and Sunday for Muslim countries. “For most Muslim countries, ‘weekend’ means Friday and Saturday as Friday is a Muslim holy day,” she says.

While planning your budget, be aware that hotel room rates, meals and services will include a value-added tax or VAT, which could be as much as 15 to 20 percent. Because visitors or non-residents of the country do not technically owe the tax, groups can request a refund to reclaim all or part of the charges. It is important to request that the VAT amount be separated so you can keep track of the charges and file for a refund. “I recommend working with a VAT reclaim services company,” she says. “It can be a complex process and take up to a year to reclaim.”

Airport entry fees and visa requirements are also budget considerations. Argentina, for example, charges a $140 entry fee, which is valid for up to 10 years and multiple visits. A passport is required to enter and leave most foreign countries and if your attendees include young adults, it is important to verify that they have this essential travel document. The U.S. State Department strongly advises American citizens to register their travel abroad with the Department of State. Registration makes it possible to contact the traveler in the event of a family emergency back in the U.S. or to alert of a crisis in the visiting country. Note that U.S. medical insurance is generally not accepted outside the country, but short-term policies can be purchased for travel abroad.

When considering a hotel, venue or mode of transportation for your group, remember that the Americans with Disabilities Act is a North American requirement. Historic hotels, which are often smaller in European destinations, may not contain elevators or be accessible to attendees with special needs. International shipping requirements also vary from country to country. To avoid delay of your shipment in customs, it is best to use a broker based in that country who is familiar with the guidelines and has influence to move your materials if necessary.

Learn more about international travel with these tips.

“Six hours is one thing. Six days is another,” Bell says. He’s referring to the six days this August after Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz canceled his speaking appearance at GLS due to pressure from an online petition urging him not to speak. Bell had to find a replacement before GLS opened for a live and simulcast audience of 66,143 people.

The incident and its aftermath highlighted the risks and benefits of high-profile speakers. In those six crucial days, Bell and his team responded to the crisis in a manner that generated news and brought almost universal admiration to GLS.

The conference, of course, went on without Schultz. Twelve other speakers addressed 7,424 attendees during the two-day conference at Willow Creek Community Church’s Barrington, Ill., campus Aug. 11-12. The event was also simulcast at 217 locations across the country. A total of 165,000 attendees are expected to watch custom telecasts of the event at global locations around the world throughout the year.

Here Bell shares the thought process that resulted in WCCC Senior Pastor Bill Hybels’ carefully crafted response to the cancellation and the lessons learned. Watch Pastor Bill Hybels’ response in video here.

When did you first learn Howard Schultz might back out?
The first hint came about six days before, and it put us in scramble mode. There were many conversations back and forth, and it was official Monday before he was to speak on Friday. That’s when I was able to land Patrick Lencioni, who we’d had before.

How were you able to get another prominent speaker so quickly?
I knew [Schultz backing out] could happen and I’ve known Patrick for some time because he had been here before, and I was able to get to him right away. We were very, very fortunate he was not traveling that week. That came out of relationship. We try to build relationships as much as possible. We spend a lot of time trying to get speakers. We spent the last five years trying to nail down Howard Schultz. I spent five years trying to land Colin Powell. I was his assistant’s dripping faucet. The same thing with Pat Summit. Going after speakers is a team effort. I’m accountable for it, but actually Bill Hybels was the connection for Colin Powell. He was at an event where Powell spoke, and was able to land him. It’s as much an art as it is a science as how we get to the speakers. We do as much relationship connecting as we can.

How did you decide on the summit’s now viral response?
For several days, we met as a planning team, sharing ideas about what we would do. Bill Hybels, who is the leader of the movement and founder of the event, as well as the host, was going to interview Howard.Obviously, he’d be the one to address this. Initially, we were not happy. There was an immediate, knee-jerk reaction, and then, thank God, we had time to think, “Well, that wouldn’t be helpful.” It gave us time as a team. Bill began to work on a statement. We went through a few different revisions with multiple persons on our team, people Bill trusts personally, then some of the other church folks. One of the final cycles Bill made was with elders of the church. It concerned the church because people don’t separate Willow Creek Association and Willow Creek Community Church. It was very important to the church. We care about everybody, our doors are open to all, and some of what was said is just not true, but we don’t want to get mean-spirited about it. When someone comes at you with an untruth, a reaction in a spirit of meanness and “get even” isn’t right. A final thing—someone told Bill that he might want to think about the fact that in this world of tweeting and blogging, [the media] can take any sound bite and make it a headline. The headline chosen can make it a statement even if that’s not what was meant. It was quite a process.

A YouTube video of the statement was posted on the WCA blog the same day Hybels addressed the summit, which today has 50,000 views. Did you expect such a strong reaction?  
I can’t even think of a critical thing that we’ve heard. It’s been overwhelmingly positive. It’s been one of the best teaching moments of the whole event. The way it was handled in that moment is a lesson learned by everyone—taking the high road, turning the other cheek. How do we think Christ would respond?

Like Schultz, many of the GLS speakers are well-known leaders. How do you select the lineup?
We have a thorough conviction that all truth is God’s truth, so we can learn from all different segments of society. So at the core of the summit faculty are highly respected leaders who are world-class in what they do, whatever their area of expertise. We have a core group of highly respected pastors around the world so we want to bring in other elements, learning from all kinds of disciplines: business, academics, the sports world— we’ve even had political and military leaders—and there are lots of compassion-type organizations that have been represented. We look for someone doing something remarkable, having significant impact in their fields, someone who can share hands-on lessons. [We balance] people who are actually in the trenches and academic people who study leadership concepts. We never bring non-faith-based speakers to share about faith-based topics. They share about leadership principles.

How does this support the summit’s mission?
A planning research team works on this stuff year-round. We know what we’re getting ourselves into. Sometimes we have to make judgment calls. We’re unapologetically Christian without question, and we don’t want to dumb anything down. We want people to be stretched. Of the number of things we’ve learned over the years, one is that the best learning happens when there’s a level of disequilibrium. Ashish Nanda is a Harvard Law professor and is of an Eastern faith. He talked about the risky business of hiring stars [in 2006]; he was a real value-add that was phenomenal. Henry Cloud isn’t a faith-based speaker; he’s a clinical psychologist. His 30-minute session had great takeaways. He had practical handles and skill development leaders can use everyday.

Are you always looking for celebrity or a buzz-factor?
There’s always a certain level of “Oh, wow, he’s coming!” But it’s very difficult to get people at that caliber to commit. We’ve had former presidents [Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter], Bono, Jack Welch—and there’s a certain buzz factor that comes with that.Typically, we always have a surprise session when we have an experience where people are just blown away. After this many years, the level of confidence of attendees is: “I’m going to trust these guys because they deliver consistently. I might not know this person, but I’m going to come and see.”

Is scheduling high-profile people or speakers outside your ministry area worth the risk or controversy?
It’s worth it because some of the best learning happens with disequilibrium. You look back at a very painful thing and you wouldn’t choose to go through it again, but it’s a biblical principle that good can come out of the ashes. We’re more effective down the road.

There is a lot of disequilibrium when things don’t go as planned, but sometimes those are the most memorable times. They’re the fun stories later on. You look back and see how it landed, the moments of humor. It brings teams closer together. We all have times we wish for a do-over but sometimes it works out and we say, “Wow, God helped us there. God protected us.” [Schultz] not coming may have had a bigger impact in terms of takeaways. We wish he could have come though.

Advice for other planners: I think it’s probably wise to go through exercises just to say, “What if?” To think of what some plan Bs could be. What could be a contingency plan? We all face that [as planners] because there’s always a tension in my mind; someone’s always by me with a radio, [saying] “So-and-so has landed,” but it’s wise to think what if so-and-so doesn’t [arrive], and have a couple answers in your back pocket.

With technology today things can be captured [on video]. If something’s been a smashing success somewhere else, get some rights and have it as a plan B. Hopefully, you don’t have to use it, but it’s there.

Inspiration: I see what I do as a calling, and that’s what motivates me. And what really motivates me is when I see the impact of my small part in it. My purpose statement is: This one thing I do with a cheerful attitude that honors Christ and my family, my personal mission is to create life-changing tools, training experiences and life opportunities that motivate God’s people to become difference makers.

Favorite planning resources: Trusted team members and people who are in it together, who have a shared passion, a shared vision, who care about it as much as you do, who look at it as more than a job. It’s a cause.

Favorite book: The one I’m reading at the moment…that’s like if I had to narrow it down to one Scripture. Some books in the past I think of are “The Blessing” by Gary Smalley and John Trent. This summer I read, “Get Capone.” It was a fascinating read. Typically anything Jim Collins writes, classic books, “The Discoverers,” “The World is Flat.” One I’m into right now is “The Wilderness Warrior.”

Favorite quote: From John Wesley, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

The whole concept of meetings—whether conferences, conventions, events or other forms of gathering face-to-face—has changed. The scope is larger, even if the attendee list or timeline is shorter. Tim Sanders, a “people-centric” business expert, says, “The only reason to have an event is to change the world.” Think about it. Hasn’t that idea crept into our subconscious and the language of meetings, much like the slide into touch screen technology?

We’ve shifted from talking about logistics to meetings architecture. We are now confident that meetings make a difference, to local and global economies, to workers and executives.

We promise innovation. We seek out influencers or cultural architects rather than simply speakers. We talk about engagement through social media, immersive learning, creative experiences and authenticity. We push for convergence conferences.

Still, the heavy lifting, the difficult aspect of change, smacks most of us in the face every time we begin the planning steps that lead to the next meeting: the will to make a conscious effort to implement change and then follow through on its execution. Plans and resources (education, equipment, training, testing, time, etc.) are necessary for deployment, but the first step before anything happens is acceptance—acceptance that we need to push or prepare for change.

Click on the image to read "Way Outside the Box"

Inside and outside the industry, there are creative pioneers who urge us to embrace social media, look for inspiration from the culture at large, think about content delivery as performance art and get more visual with presentation. Scott Klososky asks us to think how Cirque de Soliel would deliver a business talk; to think about how they changed the delivery of a circus. “We need the same change in the experience of content delivery at events,” he says. Jeff Hurt wants us to start planning for screens and stop planning for platforms. “It’s time for you to adopt this 21st century technology and prepare for screening,” he preaches. “We are fast becoming people of the screen.” If you don’t grasp what he means, read his blog.

Our industry has its rebels, even if they are not on the front lines with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Take for example Joan Eisenstodt, a well-respected educator and consultant, who has long challenged meeting planners and facility managers to consider the different learning styles, needs and safety of attendees when designing room spaces. She says most meetings are boring and is not shy about calling out colleagues to join her efforts to shake up the status quo. Then, there’s Keith Johnston who aggressively delivers sharp criticism and insightful ideas.

Finally, most industry thought leaders point to TED and other social and information exchange conferences as evidence that people are the greatest event resource. Not the over-the-top ballroom, the top chef menu, the big name speaker or the most popular seminar presenters. Instead, it’s the people most of us still think of as our attendees or our audience who we need to embrace, turn our meetings over to, enlist—tapping into their ideas, enthusiasm, experience, networking contacts, problem-solving skills, money and muscle.

On the following pages, those pioneers mentioned above and others with relevant expertise open up about what changes they think are essential now. In future issues, we’ll explore change as it affects the design of convention and conference centers, hotels, seating and setups, production and design, education, food and beverage, and every other aspect of what we do in connection with events. We invite you to think about how you can use these ideas, discuss them with your teams and organizations, and share your insights with us.

Get Strategic | Ashley Muntan

Encourage Discussion | Glen Guyton

Explore Creativity | Billy Kirsch

Abandon Fear | Keith Johnston

Concentrate on Content | Amita Patel

Create Social Experiences | Jeff Hurt

Collaboration is Key | Jeff Shinabarger

Make it Magical | Joan Eisenstodt

Meet the experts

In college, Peter Maher was an English major with a passion for music, earning extra cash at restaurants by performing in the front-of-house on weekends and cooking in the back-of-house during the week. His time in the kitchen led to a career as a chef, but after 15 years he wanted more time with his young family. He moved to sales in computer programming services in 1992. Then, in 2001, he returned to music, managing a music school with 650 students. He continued to perform, mostly in churches, and that same year, everything changed. He volunteered to help during a National Association of Pastoral Musicians event and was hooked. The association hired Maher to plan its events.

Like many faith-based planners, Maher came into the industry sideways. After nine years as program coordinator for NAPM, his role has grown and evolved. As director of convention operations, he is an equal decision-making partner where events are concerned, especially for the annual national meeting and trade show, which typically draws 3,000 delegates and 130 exhibitors. While Maher’s full-time planning role officially encompasses a complete range of event management responsibilities, he unofficially wears other hats, like that of tech advisor.

When you ask planners how they landed in the industry, their answers are often circuitous stories like Maher’s. Ask them why they stay in the career, and many will answer: They love their jobs. This is certainly true in the faith-based community, where so many of the planners arrive at their jobs unexpectedly after volunteering with their churches. Some continue to organize events for their churches or organizations part-time, while others assume full-time responsibilities. Still others have started their own planning businesses. Whether they plan meetings in their free time on the weekends or they’ve committed to 40-, 50- or 60-hour weeks, they are seeing their jobs change. Technology, education, certification and expectations are adding to the demands, but it’s hard to find a more devoted group of planners.

A DIFFERENT WORLD
Alisa Wolfe has worked in event management for 18 years. She moved into a faith-based position this past year, and notices a difference between it and other sectors. Wolfe is the event coordinator for the Jewish Family Services of Broward County in Plantation, Fla., but she’s also the public relations and marketing assistant. Forty percent of her day is spent on marketing, PR and fundraising, and the rest on event management.

Because faith-based organizations often depend heavily on donors, sponsors and grants, planners usually are forced to do even more with less, starting off planning an event with meager resources and adding elements as funds arrive. Wolfe says that within faith-based organizations people are more humble. “We’re family,” she says, and the focus is on helping people. “Doing our jobs well doesn’t change our salary in faith-based planning. It means helping more people.” The events are different, too. There are fewer awards and recognition, and more focus on raising funds for causes like domestic abuse or poverty.

Wolfe began her career as a legal assistant but changed her track when she answered an ad for an office manager for a destination management company. She was intrigued by the contracts she saw and began observing the salespeople and their events. Soon she was learning on the job, and transitioned into sales. She developed a specialty in talent and music entertainment, taking on larger clients with up to half a million dollar events.

Wolfe says she didn’t really need any certification to get big-name clients because of the reach of her company, but she says in corporate and third-party event planning, the Certified Meeting Planner designation brings value and respect. Official CMP certification is less common in the faith-based world, but on the rise.

MAKING IT OFFICIAL
This year, more than 900 meeting and event professionals earned the CMP designation, according to the Convention Industry Council, which administers the CMP. “With the economy, there was a lot of competition for the same job,” says Christina Buck, CMP program director at the CIC. “People were searching and also had time on their hands, and saw the value in investing in the CMP, materials and study programs, instead of doing a masters program.” She attributes the steady climb to several factors: a growing demand for CMP qualifications listed in job descriptions and postings; more international countries recognizing the designation; and the variety of planners now seeking the designation, including those in the faith-based community.

Of the 413 registrants for Rejuvenate Marketplace, 27 hold a CMP designation, or about 6 percent.

Peter Maher has his sights set on certification. Each year, he takes the time to work toward his CMP, though he hasn’t completed the process yet. “It’s an affirmation that I can do this job. A [governing] body has set up a set of standards. I know I’ve achieved it, in my heart,” he says, even though he doesn’t have the paperwork to prove it. He has more than enough Continuing Education Units to apply, but like many planners, it’s hard for him to find the time to finish.

Marcus Brewer also sees the value in certification, but time constraints hamper his ability to gather enough experience and CEUs to qualify. His full-time job is as a research engineer with Texas Transportation Institute, but he’s serving as the part-time state office coordinator and main point of contact for the Texas State Association of Free Will Baptists. Planning the association’s annual meeting each June and the smaller board meeting each January takes up 50 percent of his time; the other 50 percent goes to maintaining the state directory, newsletter and website, as well as fielding inquiries from churches looking for new pastors. He enjoys “switching gears,” he says, spending time planning on the weekends and evenings.

Brewer can’t qualify for the CMP certification, which is only open to full-time planners, even though he has been on the job since 2003. He’d like to see an authority body create a certification to recognize his abilities and experience, one for which he and other part-timers could qualify.

But not all part-time planners feel the need to make it official with a CMP designation. For Stacy Robinson, event planning is also outside her primary profession, and she has no plans to pursue certification. She’s the founder of the Robinson Agency, a Christian speakers bureau, and she fields inquiries from faith-based planners. Most people contacting her are laypersons volunteering for the first time at their churches, and they’re open to any planning suggestions Robinson offers. She‘s learned a lot during her 25 years as a volunteer planner. Next February’s national conference for the Christian Women in Media Association in Nashville, Tenn., will benefit from her time and experience as planning committee chair.

CHANGING TIMES
Robinson began planning at a church level in 1985, and she’s seen plenty of changes in the industry. She cites the use of email as making “a significant difference in how we communicate.” It’s eliminated a lot of wasted time and phone calls, and helps with volunteer coordination, she says. Now Skype and group spaces (like Google docs) provide additional options to bring people together more easily, she adds, making planning a little easier.

Dezzie Jackson says technology has “opened doors to learning more of what’s going on in other states and cities.” Jackson founded the Women of Faith Outreach Ministry and plans monthly fellowship meetings for 50. Her housing coordinator duties for the Illinois/Wisconsin Diocese include site selection and hotel negotiation for an annual April meeting that consistently has about 125 attendees. She also does international missionary work.

Jackson, 70, has been volunteering for 20 years as an event coordinator, meeting planner and housing coordinator for various Christian church groups. She first ventured into the industry when she worked part-time at a relative’s Chicago travel agency, overlapping her final few years at Illinois Department of Veteran’s Affairs as a veterans service officer, a job she held for 30 years.

Click to enlarge

Her volunteer role began when the church discovered her travel agency work and asked her “to do the same for the Lord.” Jackson makes a major distinction between planning she did for a range groups at the travel agency and what she does for the church. For her, the calling to serve her church makes it easy to volunteer her time to do what she was paid for at the agency. Robinson even spends time on vacations to take in sights and venues where faith-based groups may like to go, then reports back to those she feels will be interested.

The biggest change she’s seen is that cities and CVBs are starting to recognize the importance of faith-based planners. She’s glad to be invited on familiarization trips to destinations she may never have considered for events. “I didn’t know there is a Billy Graham museum right here in Illinois,” she says.

MAKING THE JUMP
D’Wayne Leatherland, CMP, was studying journalism in college when he started working part-time for a church’s denominational headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. “The experience presented so many opportunities to practice and explore the meetings industry, from board meetings to membership or delegate citywides,” he says. “It was a real incubator.” He bypassed his original career interest when event planning took root.

Fifteen years later, Leatherland used his experience to launch his own company, Leatherland Consulting. Since its beginnings in 2008, his independent planning firm has increased its portfolio to 100 percent faith-based planning. Leatherland believes the CMP designation helped him establish credibility and a sense of professionalism. “People realize this is my vocation, not avocation,” he says.

He says faith-based planners often doubt themselves “because so much of what they do is ministry,” but argues that they should feel confident in their profession alongside other planners. Leatherland sees the role of the faith-based planner evolving and focusing on professional development. He’s glad to see a movement toward greater awareness of certification.

Chariolett Johnson has been part of that trend. Her CMP is just months old, and already it’s given her a confidence boost. “I know what I know, even if I refer back to my reference books or colleagues,” she says. Having her CMP gives her a knowledge base and “expands our appreciation for others who help us, such as AV people. It gives us perspective on what they do and what they require, which helps them help us by having the right information, knowledge of terms, and being able to express what our needs are.”

The CMP was a requirement for Johnson’s new full-time planning position at the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists. As assistant to the vice president, Johnson’s title doesn’t say event planner, but 95 percent of what she does is event management, whether advising directors on RFPs or contract processes, handling registration, working on-site as event staff or managing an entire meeting. With 12 to 25 events ranging from eight to 6,000 attendees each year, there’s plenty to keep her fully occupied.

Johnson is a rare breed who says she wanted be a planner her entire life since working on church events and concerts when she was younger. She started as a computer science major but her cooking skills led her to catering, where she quickly changed courses to marketing and management for event planning when she realized event management could be a career. Though not common, some young people are realizing a desire to get into hospitality and planning early in their career. (Read about one of them, Chris Turner, in “A Day in the Life” here.)

After college she’s continued to study, qualifying as a professional bridal consultant, obtaining her Certification in Event Management from George Washington University, and then her CMP. Now she’s working on becoming a Certified Special Events Professional. In the 15 years she’s been planning events, she has seen the role become more widely recognized in faith-based organizations and is pleased to see a greater realization that a capable planner has the skills to research and qualify the ROI of an event, justify it and not just do a little marketing here and there. Certainly her colleagues would agree.