David Adler: Event Trends To Watch in 2012 (Part 2)

Posted by: Jenise Fryatt

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

BizBash CEO and Founder David Adler seems to have a gift for connecting seemingly disparate pieces of information in a way that identifies important trends for the future of events and meetings. His presentations on the subject are fascinating and often spark engrossing discussions.

Recently, he agreed to answer five questions on important event industry trends.  You can read his answers to my first two questions here.  These are the final three questions I asked, along with David’s answers.

Are there any trends taking place that you consider bad for events?

Fear of Feedback

Are boring or ineffective events death? Did your event run its course?
Boring events have been bad since the beginning of time. But now we have the technology to find out soon and make adjustments. So why do they still occur? People don’t want to know when their event is a failure. Dwindling attendance is the ultimate vote, but do you have to wait until next year or your next event to know that your event was a failure? I think fear of getting feedback is still a major trend that we are not seeing effectively addressed.

When planners don’ t recognize that something is failing, when attendance is down year after year, it is a sign that something has to be done. With all the tools of feedback in today’ s world it is easy to do that kind of analysis. Events evolve, times evolve, and the needs of your audiences evolve.

Over-Dependence On Technology

I feel that a dependence on technology is really bad for events. Events are about storytelling, flow, pace, social engineering and numerology. The brain works more emotionally rather than logically and events have got to create that managed serendipity that make events magical.

Don’t Be Too Big For Your Britches

The past controversy over the caterer not showing up for the premiere of a major motion picture pointed out to me that it is important for event planners not to get too big for their britches.  Attention to all of the details makes it imperative that someone is watching at all times.  Unlike other businesses, you can’t just plan something on the spreadsheet and it will happen in the event world. Someone actually has to go to the meeting with the entire team to make sure that everything is working properly.

If someone has too many events and cannot focus on the event that he has in front of him then it usually will not be successful. All attention has to be put on the event at hand.  Doing the day-to-day grunt work, no matter how  high up the ladder you are is still as important as ever.  Checking with the caterer to make sure he has t the  right date  is not above any of us.

What new technology or tools should event professionals be keeping an eye on?

Business Gaming

Business gaming allows organizations to move from tell to show and experience. Just the high-level simulation tools used in business gaming are so sophisticated that even the military can be using games that business organizations are using. People have to realize that usually things don’ t work out the way you plan.

You can plan as much as you want in business and still not be prepared for unexpected circumstances. Business games allow organizations to test how workers deal with issues under pressure. It is much better to do it in a business setting for practice rather than with real customers. What is also very cool about business games is the ability to measure absolutely everything that someone does and to see how their workforce stacks up.

Presentation and Story Telling Tools

Is PowerPoint dead? How do we engage people by combining words, video, photos, in a seamless way to tell the story to get the point across, to learn about a new thing, to influence, or to just entertain.

I have frequently use PREZI as a very effective way to combine video, words, and pictures to improve my storytelling.

With all the change that is occurring right now, what is the best way for event professionals to stay on top of things?

I saw a great Ted talk recently where the speaker talked about understanding the why as opposed to the what. It’s important that we understand why humans gather in order to do our jobs. Learning everything about the motivation of gatherings, their connection to how the brain works, and how they inspire people to make change is critical to our understanding of what we do. I see the why of what are are, in effect, managing: the 21st century town squares of our society.

It is important to understand logistics of planning an event as a given. Those things should be done with the highest level of integrity that is humanly possible.

They should be done always with an eye to how to innovate to make them even better. We also get better at it the more we do it. And the way to get better at it is to talk to people to find out how they do it. So it fits into my premise as to why I started BizBash. This is an industry that it is not easy to peak over the fence to see what other people are doing.

Look Outside the best event planners I’ve ever seen are people that are not from the industry. They are the architects, the decorators, the product designers, the furniture designers, and others who have a knack for understanding how things should fit together the best possible way. I say read read read watch watch watch talk talk talk be interested in everything. We are programmers of human interaction and most of all have to be observant.

Also it’s important to get technical.  During every holiday one thing that I like to do is learn a new program so I can really understand it. For example learning WordPress gave me a complete sense of how the world is going in terms of communicating online and integrating the past that can be done so that I can now communicate fast via video words and photographs and can edit down things on YouTube.

I use a program called Nova for mind mapping which has helped me tremendously in thinking out a project and seeing that it may be so big that it’ s not worth doing.

I am using Merlin to do project management. It integrates directly from the Nova mind mapping software to figure out projects and to actually plan the more effectively.

Listening is the skill that needs to be strengthened in all of us. With all the collaboration tools out there many times we just don’ t listen. The strength of group ideas empowers everyone.