SPIN: The Senior Planners Industry Network

Issue #11

June 2011

Be part of our SPIN Hosted Buyer group.

Our group will be comprised strictly of senior-level planners, which promises great networking and social opportunities as well. 

You must apply to join our group and be approved by IMEX to participate as a Hosted Buyer.

SPIN is participating in Hosted Buyer Programs all across the U.S. and overseas: click here to be notified when we head to cities of interest to you.

We came, we saw, we hatched (ideas).  The inaugural SPINCon brought together just over 100 people from across North America, from California to New York, Canada to Puerto Rico.  It was a fantastic representation of the SPIN group as a whole (we only wish more of you could have joined us for the first SPINCon!).   The conference fulfilled its promise to be an INCUbator for ideas, with sessions full of innovation, next-level topics, collaboration and unique concepts. 

We danced through the generations, laughed ourselves silly with some great improv, learned about smart foods, and discovered new ways to keep attendees engaged.  We networked without business cards via Poken and EventMobi technology, and toasted together over champagne as we celebrated how SPIN brought us all together for this first North American senior-level planner conference. 

Attendees generously provided baby supplies, assembled backpacks full of school supplies, and wrote cards of encouragement for area children and their moms.  They experimented with peer conferencing, strange session times, varying session lengths, SPED talks and a unique take on A/V (the general session room had no LCD and screen).

We tried some things that worked well, and some that didn’t.  We discovered that paperless, boothless tradeshows put the focus back on the conversations and relationships (and suppliers thanked us for letting them leave their brochure stashes booth giveaways at home!).  We learned that with hybrid meetings, the technology has to provide a solid foundation for the wonderful presenters, or nobody will hear them.  We learned that ice cream sundaes are a great, interactive meeting break.  We learned that there are many, many fantastic, talented volunteers, speakers and suppliers who were willing to help us through the challenges of hatching a brand-new SPIN conference.   We learned that crazy session start times like 1:08pm are good in theory, but a headache in reality!

Best of all for the group at large, we learned that there will be a SPINCon 2012. We hope you will join us when it hatches.

Visit www.youtube.com/user/spinplanners to see videos from SPINCon 2011.

Instead of highlighting just one member this month, we have a whole group to recognize for their selflessness.  We’ll call them the SPINCon Six, because all six of them were instrumental in helping us orchestrate the inaugural SPIN Conference earlier this month in St. Paul, Minnesota, and all were selfless volunteers.

Sean was the King of Logistics for the entire conference, keeping everything on track and flawlessly orchestrated.  He also helped Linda get set up for the floating trade show on the Mississippi (which had its share of last-minute challenges with missing school supplies for our CSR project).

Juli ran registration for us, while Julie Ann served as our roving photographer for the event.  Amy-Marie helped us with set-up and wherever we needed a hand.  Ann graciously ran the Hosted Buyer program, including using our (embarrassing) duck call to signal appointment times.

SPIN sincerely thanks all of these wonderful members for lending their time and expertise to our inaugural conference!

I’d like to feature a Selfless SPIN Member each month.  Please email me confidentially to nominate yourself (or someone else).  Don’t be modest! Your act of selflessness will inspire others. shawna@spinplanners.com.

• Do you want to help determine the dates and frequency of SPIN Think Tanks to be held in your city for the next year? 
• DO you want to serve as a volunteer Ambassador, facilitating the round table discussions at one of your city’s upcoming Think Tanks?

We’re looking for steering committees of 4-6 SPIN members in every major North American city to help with the above.  One representative from each city’s steering committee will join a nationwide conference call to get basic guidelines from SPIN, and then committees in each city meet independently to determine your city’s upcoming Think Tank schedule, frequency and SPIN Ambassadors for the next year.

Interested?  Email Shawna@spinplanners.com. 

Interviewed by Shawna Suckow, SPIN Founder

SS: Amy-Marie, tell me about your planner background.
AML:  My background in events is pretty robust from working in all areas from operations to sales to event management.  Most recently I was at Capella University as an Event Manager of Specialized Residencies for almost 3 years.  Prior to that I was at Boston Scientific for 6 years as a meeting planner in both marketing and in clinical.  I transitioned to being a planner from the supplier side where I did sales, restaurant and banquet operations and even worked as a cutter chopper and a maid!

SS: What are your special skills? What do you love about planning?
AML: I have a strong background in operations and logistics, but I love the strategic collaboration with senior leadership and thought leaders to deliver innovative and engaging meetings and events.

SS: If you could create the perfect opportunity for your next job, what would it look like?
My ideal opportunity for my next position would be move to London for the next year and to work with the London Olympic Games Organizing Committee and help with the London 2012 Olympic Games in some capacity...through a sponsoring corporation and planning all of their corporate hospitality and events, in one of the many Olympic venues and assist with their operations and logistics or working on the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.  After that, I would love to come home and work as a corporate meeting manager with senior leadership to deliver strategic meetings and events that align with and help achieve their company strategic plan.

View Amy-Marie’s full profile at www.linkedin.com/in/amymarielemanski and contact her at amymarie.lemanski@gmail.com.

I’ve been meaning to write about my experience at SPINCon but like most planners, I have more to do than there are hours in the day.  How do I know it’s a common issue?  Because I talked to a table full of planners during breakfast on Saturday and they told me so.  That’s just one small example of what I learned at SPINCon. 

It was a truly amazing event that demonstrated the potential of SPIN as an organization.

For those of us who work independently or in small offices, it’s easy to become isolated.  Our focus is either on our projects or on finding additional projects.  There is little time for continuing education or networking with other planners so we get stale and stuck in our own (sorry, Shawna) paradigms (she hates that word). 

Over the years, I’ve joined other planner organizations but I grew tired of fending off people that wanted to sell me something and let my membership lapse.  I try to read industry publications, but most of them are very destination focused or provide academic, entry-level information.   Don’t get me wrong, they are all great resources that provide useful information and services to their membership and readers. 

They just didn’t meet my needs.

Then I heard about SPIN and thought I’d give it a try.  Only planners with 10+ years of experience, a “no sell” zone and the tag line “By Planners, For Planners” … it sounded like my kind of group.  But could it really be “By Planners, For Planners?”  If SPINCon is any indication, absolutely.

There were great sessions where I learned about the newest meeting technology, how to use food to improve attendee learning, how to plan hybrid events and how to increase content retention.  It was real-world, practical knowledge that has made me a better planner. 

The best part of SPINCon was talking with other planners and learning that they face the same day-to-day challenges that I do and how they deal with them. 

But then came the session that blew me away.  “SPIN 2.0.”  There was the founder of SPIN, asking me what SPIN should become.  That’s insane!  What kind of crazy planner organization would dare ask planners what they need from it?

That’s when I realized the true potential of SPIN.  We can make this anything we want.  It can be so much more than a source of destination information and supplier recommendations.  Not only can it be a source for meaningful knowledge and support for senior-level planners but it can provide inspiration that reawakens our passion for what we do.  All we have to do is ask … and participate.

I encourage everyone to let your voice be heard.  Tell Shawna what you need from SPIN.  Throw out ideas and start a conversation.  SPIN can truly be “By Planners, For Planners.”

I like to think of the “Cheater’s Guide to Awesome Hybrid Events” as an experiment in bringing together the right people for a great purpose.

The Back Story: I attended the Event Camp Twin Cities (ECTC) in September 2010 and thoroughly enjoyed the entire day of session. I was fascinated by the Dallas, TX, and Basel, Switzerland “pods” who were watching the event simultaneously as well as the hundreds who were participating online and via Twitter (still an enigma for me).  This was my first Hybrid meeting! When we started putting together the program for SPINCon, I approached Sam Smith, who had organized ECTC, about doing something similar at SPINCon North America 2011, but with a new twist.

Via conference call, we pulled in Erica St. Angel who is with Sonic Foundry out of Wisconsin and one of the major players in the success of ECTC. I shared with them that meeting planners almost always are going to be in the live portion of the hybrid meeting, so we may not be as aware of what happens in the other “venues,” and may not be familiar with how the participants perceive the meeting from those perspectives.

The Front Story: Let me tell you, it takes a village to pull these off! Sam and Erica agreed to be co-presenters. We pulled in the hotel, the in-house audio-visual company, CRS Computer Rentals and Maple Lane Media to get all the pieces we needed. So with an Internet connection, our plan was to stream off Maple Lane’s video camera from one room to another (right next door at the hotel, but referred to as “Canada” to replicate a faraway group).  Another room at the hotel we dubbed the “at-home” room set up with computers and headsets, to replicate that type of attendee experience. I attended the “pod” we called Canada. We used a webcam and a moderator to send our thoughts back to the main room, while the at-home folks sent messages through the #spincon hash tag. Here’s where we learned some lessons that will save you major headaches (and money!).

The pod room could see the speakers, but not the slides (by design). The audio was a little scratchy, and there is typically a delay of a few seconds. Engagement began to sag. In the at-home room, the Internet connection was not up to the bandwidth and some participants couldn’t get logged on and/or couldn’t hear what the presenters were saying. They eventually gave up and/or went back to the live room.

When planning a hybrid meeting, the perspectives from these different venues must be orchestrated differently than the live room. Consider the remote room (i.e. “Canada”) as a television audience—they need to see and hear as much as possible, and may need “commercials” or other content to keep them engaged if there is a lull in the action in the live room. You can’t prevent limited bandwidth for those at home, but you can test your connections to ensure the best possible delivery. These attendees also need to have stellar visuals and audio that are synchronized. Be sure to capture the live event for streaming later, in case these participants did not have adequate connectivity. It’s also a good idea to have a moderator for each of the locations, including one who is monitoring your Twitter hash tag. These moderators can tell if the message is not coming across properly and can pose questions to clarify for their audience.

Hybrid meetings do have a place in the meetings industry; and as budgets are cut further, they may become prolific. We need to arm ourselves with as much information as possible (I don’t want to know the details of what it takes to stream a session!) about what is needed to create the best possible situation for each of the types of participants. The important thing to walk away with is the experience your attendees may be having. What are the must-haves versus the nice-to-haves?

Go back to the goals of the meeting to help you determine how you want participants to be involved and what you need to provide them so it happens well.

Then, arm yourself with spectacular professionals who know what they are doing and who get your meeting’s goals.  Special thanks to Maple Lane Media, Sam Smith’s Interactive Meeting Technologies and Erica St. Angel’s Sonic Foundry for showing us the way.

I promised to share the nitty-gritty with all of you after SPINCon, revealing the outcome of all the innovative (and not-so-innovative) ideas we attempted.  Some things we loved and were quite successful, and some things downright shouldn’t be repeated by anyone - ever.
The Good

• The Theme. I loved all the possibilities that unfolded from Tracey’s “Hatch New Ideas” theme, and especially loved our logo that morphed over six months from a cracked egg, to an egg with legs poking out, to an egg with legs and a head, until the day of the conference when our mascot fully emerged, and became known as “Hatch” after a survey of members.  Did we take it too far when we used a duck call to signal transition times?  I think not. Too much to have a giant stuffed duck on the stage? Never.
• The Dress Code.  We tried a new approach with an “Open Dress Code” at SPINCon. We told attendees to wear whatever they were comfortable learning in. It was confusing to some while packing for the trip, but liberating on-site as attendees walked around in an interesting mix of jeans, flip flops, business casual, even ducky slippers. What a refreshing concept – I was glad to see buy-in from the masses.
• The Room Set.  Thanks to Cort Furniture’s wonderful orange chairs, round white seating pods and funky cool couches, we were able to pull off a hybrid seating style with something for everyone, including traditional half-rounds scattered throughout. I loved the T-shaped stage with a catwalk, which I learned is called a ‘thrust stage.” It brought the speakers right out into the audience for further engagement.
• The Lack of Traditional LCD and Screen.  We worked with CRS Computer Rentals to create an innovative A/V showcase in the general session room.  Instead of the usual LCD/Screen, we placed a computer monitor at each round table, on coffee tables for the non-traditional seating, and one on each side of the thrust stage for those seated toward the front.  It required a lot of cords that had to be taped and hidden, a lot of technical equipment to hook them all up to the same feed, but CRS worked with Maple Lane (our wonderful production crew) and pulled it off in fantastic fashion, showcasing a set-up that I believe has never been done at an industry meeting before.
• The Variety of CSR Projects.  This was my baby – I wanted to showcase as many different give-back ideas as we could in 2.5 days. While at most events there’s just one social responsibility project, we did four: a school supply collection, a baby shower benefitting a women’s shelter, a soap collection by Clean The World, and a “CSR Bar” where attendees wrote notes of encouragement to struggling area women and children. Was it a lot to tackle? Yes. Would I do it again? Yes, just wait until SPINCon 2012!
• Paperless Networking and Trade Show

The Bad

• The Sponsor to Planner Ratio.  Most of you don’t know that we really struggled to break even on this first event.  We would not have done so had it not been for the generosity of the Crowne Plaza St. Paul Riverfront in waiving all attrition charges (we were a little over-exuberant in our first-year estimate of attendance).  We wanted to keep the registration fee affordable for everyone, while at the same time, we limited the amount of supplier funding we could collect because we promised to limit supplier attendance to just 25% of overall attendance.  The challenge was that we had SO many wonderfully generous in-kind sponsors (good problem to have), that we had very few spots remaining for cash sponsors.  We had to turn down several cash sponsors because we just didn’t have enough planners to balance the ratio, but in the end we kept our promise and our integrity, and the event was a success.  Will we set a similar supplier-to-planner ratio next year?  Absolutely, I think it’s the right thing to do for both suppliers and planners in attendance.  I also strongly believe that we’ll double or triple overall attendance next year, which will help balance out the balance sheet a little better!
• Hybrid Sessions Don’t Work if You Don’t Have the Internet Bandwidth. All the planning, the great concepts, and wonderful expertise from our speakers that go to support an innovative session like this don’t matter if nobody can get on-line to see it remotely.  Enough said.
• The Weird Agenda Times.  They did their job in grabbing attention and setting the tone of the meeting as something truly different, but no planner wants to be pinned down to starting every single session at a precise minute like 1:42 or 10:18. The real world doesn’t work that way, and we learned our lesson!