Value of the Meeting is in the Message
With the emphasis on ROI from upper management, more and more corporate meetings and conferences put all their planning efforts into the content or message of the event. Gone are the days using the "fluff" factor to make a "wow" impact. Lavish centerpieces, large entertainment troupe for the welcome reception, pricey golf outing during the mid point of the conference, no expense limit of an off site party, gold leaf notebook binders for attendee collateral material and the $300+ per person corporate gifts. All these items are going the way of dinosaur for the near and far future.
Many of the fortune 1000 companies have been laying off thousands of people this year and hunkering down on expenses across the board. As mentioned in earlier reports, corporate meetings and special events are taking the "back seat" of priorities. As a matter of survival, money is being horded as the proverbial "rainy day fund" to keep these corporations afloat.
There is a good thing that this kind of "survival - think" is generating within the corporate world. In house meeting planners are making it a point to really clarify the message and meaning of the conference or special event. In other words, more care is made to simplify the message and how it is conveyed to the attendees.
Information Overload
Another dynamic is playing out at the same time. The quantity of meetings for upper management is increasing almost 10 fold and making a wave of "information overload" for them. Information overload is the most often quoted problem among management in all levels. To help alleviate this problem, the corporate message must be concise and easy to understand and implement. The corporate meeting planner now must stay away from adding too many corporate objectives or messages in one conference. If revealing too much information, the attention to any one message will get "lost" in the multitude of other messages.
Conclusion
While corporate meetings will never be what it once was, the positive is that the attendee will be happy to know that the message of the conference will be more relevant and easier to retain, therefore taking back to the work groups a clear of path of objectives.
This issue of "news articles" written by Bruce K. Inouye of www.P2 Events.com
(Please contact this author for permission to reprint in any other publication.)