Get your mojo working
I have difficulty staying out of bookstores. Call it a weakness. So last summer, when Kathleen and I were on vacation, I found myself browsing the shelves of a Borders in Clifton Park, New York. And I stumbled across Small Giants, by Bo Burlingham. I’d never heard of either the book or the author, but [...]
A Higher Bounce
I really hate to admit it. But lately, I’ve begun to see a degree of wisdom in one of my all-time most hated phrases. The phrase and I collided almost a decade ago, in a suburb of Dallas, TX. I was attending one of the annual chapter leaders’ conferences hosted by our professional association, Meeting [...]
World AIDS Day and the Ultimate ROI
When it comes to assessing the return on investment (ROI) in large, face-to-face meetings, it’s hard to think of a more basic measure than 3.8 million years of life. With the approach of World AIDS Day December 1, the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative issued a verdict of sorts on the AIDS policies [...]
A Virtual (R)Evolution-Part 2
Part 2: Greater Than the Sum of the Parts There’s a tremendous opportunity brewing for meeting professionals and the organizations they serve. Some parts of it trace back to recent U.S. election campaigns that have become a proving ground for an unprecedented mix of live and online learning, persuasion, and mobilization. It’ll be a while [...]
A Virtual (R)Evolution-Part 1
Part 1: A Recipe for Disaster Start out with a well-rounded, well-founded measure of enthusiasm for the latest virtual meeting technologies. Add a healthy dose of concern about climate change, with a dollop of unintended greenwashing. Factor in a preoccupation with cutting meeting costs to the bone, without pausing to consider what may be lost [...]
A Time to Renew
SAN DIEGO COUNTY—I spent much of the weekend in awe-inspiring company, attending the semi-annual meeting of the Concepts Worldwide Advisory Board (CAB). And, as it happened, not a moment too soon. Concepts is a company that formed 20 years ago, and has positioned itself as a world leader in the corner of our industry offering [...]
Breaking News from Our Man in Vancouver……
Yesterday was one of those days when you examine your career choice and wonder what you have done to deserve it. I thought about this as I rode the bus to the world-famous Fuzzy Creek golf course. The weather was incredible, the view was spectacular, and it was part of my job to go golfing. [...]
Learning to Fly Right
Imagine an industry that shows a cumulative net loss after decades of operation. Its main business model is a poster child for showing MBA students the strategies they should avoid at all costs. Imagine that this industry generates a large share of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Factor in that industry’s acute vulnerability [...]
Dinosaur Economics
The power of the Internet is partly about the unexpected connections that help people share knowledge and build community, often in ways that make services more affordable and environmentally friendly. In meetings, we’re just scratching the surface of what might be possible online. Not simply to try and replace live meetings with virtual ones, or [...]
‘People Will Still Have to Meet…’
The fact that he came over to chat had very little to do with me. I was sitting on the patio at Bridgehead Trading, the funky, fair trade coffee shop that serves as an informal meeting room and home-away-from-home for our office two blocks away. One of the counter staff came over to visit with [...]
