Conference 3.0

Conferences are about telling a story, together with speakers, public and facilitators. Conferences are about strategic, tactical and operational excellence. At least: at surface level. At a deeper level they are abut connecting spirits, minds, souls, about transformation of practice, transformation of people. Nothing esoteric: its simply about making it happen through connecting the powers of kindred and inspiring spirits. Of knowmads.

Almost in with this much of the conference thinking is still firmly stuck in what I call the conference 1.0 and 2.0 thinking.

Conference 1.0: put an inspiring speaker (or a series of inspiring speakers) on stage who inform, educate and entertain the public with their thoughts. There is limited time for interaction with the speaker(s) - if there is time at all. The goal of these conferences: to inspire and educate. To show a new horizon, new ways forward.

Conference 2.0: combine inspiring speakers with workshoplike formats, thus allowing for interaction between members of the audience and speakers.

The conference 3.0 format that I can see arising, is the type of conference where the audience learns from the audience. Where the audience is it's own teachers, facilitated by professionals who know how to connect people and how to connect knowledge. Action learning in groups and teams. Unconferencing. Away from the top down method. Onto a method where you put value to the audience and their knowledge. People will hardly come to your conference to hear something new. The new is out there, in the social media. And the other new - original thinking - is out there in conferences like TED. Which are great, but not every conference can be a TED experience. And not every conference should aim to be. Conferences are about your public and about your goal. It is a working form, a means to reach and end. Not an end in itself. 

People come to conferences, to share their experiences and learn from others. They come to transform their organisations and their own functioning. 

If you want a conference, note these trends, give some thought to whether a conference is the right means for your end and if so: give these new forms some thought if you want a conference. Dare think about this and dare to do it, before you start organising on the automatic pilot on the 1.0 and 2.0 format. 

A lost generation?

Over much of the last years I have been involved in educating professionals in the field of cultural entrepreneurship, educational leadership and other topics. Sometimes we started off on a specific topic but through dialogue, action learning etc whole new fields were discovered. Education as it is supposed to be: interaction, the human dialogue in the center if and where needed supported by ICT, activiation of tacit and hidden knowledge of participants, making full use of the creativity of all involved.

Yes, there is heaps of creativity in people who are 30+. Why the somewhat irritated yes? Because the main focus these days seems to be on the seeminly boundless creativity in kids. That focus sometimes makes me feel like I am part of a lost cause, a lost generation. Away from the personal an a generational level I think that in focussing so much on the next generation we are forgetting our own strength, ability and responsibility in developing this society.

I am part of a generation that was brought up on regimented schools, learning facts, being taught on the borders of old fashioned school thinking and new instruments and didactical thoughts and possibilities brought on by ICT. A generation that does a lot of DYI when it comes to e.g. ICT and self development. A generation that is currently looking for anchors and sustainable development and that has the incredible challange in doing so while being both the catalysts, designers and subjects of change. We are in and of the changes that we experience, initiate, create and are subject to.

How can we enhance this generation of 30, 40 and 50 year olds in their quest to develop themselves and so develop society? Not only in instrumental relation to their work but also in more general terms? We cannot only live by putting all hopes on the next generation and putting our time in developing the best curriculum and educational strategies and products for them. In doing so we are cutting corners: it puts way too much pressure on the coming generation to "save the world" whilst simultaneously underestimating the qualities so abundantly available in the current working generation. A generation that I feel we can support by bringing the human interaction back to the center stage of the educational process. By taking advantage of technical solutions but also, and probably mainly by exploring innovative ways of combining ideals, passion, knowledge and emotions into a conscious learning processes.

the flu

I managed to escape the virus for a while but now I have succumbed: I am in bed feeling definitly beaten and I am trying hard not to cough my lungs out. The hardest thing though is the fact that a headache makes me unable to think clearly. While there is so much to think about... Hope to be up and running soon again.

World wide in The Netherlands

When you travel and work internationally, even in your home the world comes to you it appears. A comforting thought. Since we returned from our travels we have been able to rekindle many business relations and friendships across the globe through skype, e-mail and phone. And sometimes the travel just comes to you. On our journey from Russia to Australia we produced our own power by biking through the Busch& Muller e-werk. This led to an inspiring meeting with fellow cyclists this weekend.

Dick and Trudy will be off on 1 February. They are about 50, have two grown up daughters, they said goodbye to their work and their own company and sold their house to start living on two bicycles for a year. We discussed the practicalities of the e-werk apparatus, but also the more mundain topics of how as a woman you can go at any time any place when you really need to. Stuff that hardly anybody talks about as it is not sexy and probably does not contribute to inspiring travel enthusiasm. However, as always: practicalities like these can either seriously enhance or taint the on the road experience :-)

For us their visit tuned into our good memories. Moreover it is hugely inspiring to talk to people who are equally passionate. The lure of hard core travel, of discovering for yourself what you are made of and what the peoples of the world are made of, a desire to travel and to explore that it is so intense that at some stage(s) of your life you are willing to give up everything you have worked for, everything you have acquired and fought for to chase that one dream, is quite hard to explain to some. Most people end up making a choice: staying at home, dreaming of going but eventually never leaving, or going never succeeding in making a home again eventually loosing all sense of belonging, all sense of anchor in this world, becoming eternal nomads living from small job to small job. Both entail a loss of essential freedom and an even more essential loss of self we feel. So we set out to have both: to travel AND to work on a professional level, against the odds even both establishing a proper career true to our training and ambitions. All it takes it that we work a bit harder. But that has never killed anybody and I actually quite enjoy it. Every step gives meaning to and lays the groundwork for another step.

We thoroughly enjoyed meeting these kindred spirits, who at their age - when most have firmly settled -give up everything, trustig themselves, their own magnetic north, the future and the part of the world they are going to explore.  We wish them the very best of luck, an inspiring journey and a meeting of minds and hearts with whoever crosses their path. As always, may the road rise to meet them.

marketing & education: the case of the Hammam

Who of you have visited a hammam recently? My last visit was quite a while back, but I am diving into it anew as the hammam here in The Hague has enlisted my help to develop a marketing plan. The hammam has recently come under "new old" management. New, because Hans Klomp and Marian van Vliet had handed over the management to a different board in 2007. Old, because both, and especially Hans, are the founders of this bath house. With this transition to new management the hammam needs to find its place in the local, regional and national landscape. Who are the competitors and why? Who visit the hammam? Which new target groups do we want to reach? Etc. In short: your average good old fashioned marketing plan.

But not quite! One of the reasons I enjoy this so much, is that the marketing for this intercultural institution goes directly to questions of identity. The hammam is not Turkish, not Moroccan, not Tunesian. It is a bathhouse firmly rooted in the Turkish Arabic culture that has the aim to attract multicultural visitors. And in large(r) numbers I may add. But in order to attract visitors, the nationality question is important. People want to own it as "theirs". It cannot be taken over by westerners. In other words: if we would draw up and implement an entire marketing plan to attract westerners we would finish off the entire purpose of the facility. We have to do justice to the hammam as a platform for intercultural meetings, for intercultural contact.

In the meeting today we discussed the first draft of the marketing plan. It needs to be taken one step further but the general opinion was that we are well underway to a feasible plan that will deliver both a guideline for the next five years as well as a concrete plan for action for 2011. Which will be an exciting year for the hammam as not only have they decided to go for a new corporate style (I just linked them up with the graphic designer) but also because they will start training the staff in hospitality, marketing etc. This will put the basis in place for the years to come. Also we quite extensively discussed the use of social media to promote the hammam. Hans and Marian do not feel very digital and so this will probably be something for the staff to take up. For the website we discussed the possibilities that e.g. blogger offers. True, it is a blog, but with any imagination it can quite easiliy be (ab:-)used as a very dynamic website. NRC - a Dutch newspaper - has gone this way as well, be it not via blogger. But I found it inspiring and bearing in mind that the hammam has a low marketing budget and wants easy websitemanagement, I thought this would offer a good opportunity at least for now. Which immediately brought us to the organisational consequences. Using a blog as your website means that it has to be maintained on at least a weekly if not daily basis. Who is capable of doing so? Do we devise ground rules for this? What can we write and what not? But it also requires a different mode of thinking. To prepare for the discussion with the graphic designer the hammam staff and management will create a moodboard, as that makes the discussion with the designer so much easier. So I suggested that they make pictures and take some moving images to put on their website to give voice to their process of professionalisation. And that is when marketing becomes fun and GOOD: when you go past the campaign concepts and past the corporate image to really develop the organisation.

(hand)book on conference management for the non profit secto

June 2010 we temporarily closed MK5060 full circle projects to enter a time of reflection. I had lived and build up the business for 7 years, guiding myself and the people in my network through turbulent years, working with new people on new fields...turbulent and great years. But it was time for reflection and although this did not work out on the bicycles we did get our time off and we finally find now that there is room in us for new ideas, adventures and projects. Probably the overriding conclusion for me is that I will consciously work on creating synthesis.

For a number of my clients I am a passionate conference organiser, others see me as a marketeer with a deep understanding of the subject and apt at market research whereas for yet others I am a project manager whom you hire for projects that need strategical, tactical and operational attention. Projects that need peoplemanagement. Rarely the marekting, educational and organisational angles come together. So for 2011 that is one of the things that I will aim to create.

As a first step I have started to write. Something that I have always done but that as of late lost the battle with the tremendous amount of work that came my way. Don't get me wrong: I am not complaining. I mean: you start your own business and you have to good fortune to hit the ground running and to keep on running which is a gift, a treasure. But I have agreed with myself now (and aren't those the hardest agreements to keep) that one day a week I will write, with the aim to create a (hand)book on conference/eventmanagement for the non-profit sector. I am itchting to address the gap in eventmanagement between the strategic level and the level of operationalisation. To write on how one can and should address the needs of the guests. How to put hospitality and speakers center stage, how to leave your ego at the door, opening yourself completely to the needs and wants of your public and your speakers so that the story that needs telling, the goal for which you organise the conference or the event is reached.

I just drafted the first table of contents to focus my thoughts. I would love to make this a joint venture and I need your input. Please let me know what you would want to find in a (hand)book on conference management for the non profit sector, either by sending me an e-mail or by responding to this blog. I look forward to hearing from you!

Reading, eating

Finally getting around to reading some books that have been on the shelf for various amounts of time. Common denominator: too long... Not for profit, Martha Nussbaums warm hearted and to the point plea for a retake on education is a must read I find for everybody interested and/or involved in education. She goes to the core of education, steering away from the form of education (multimedia etc.). I do apologise for making the distinction between form and content here, a distinction that I fundamentally do not believe in: content without form is useless and form without content is nothing. But anyways: best way I can phrase it for now. Sorry. Not for profit is utterly readable for a wide audience and is a timely book. So go ahead, get it and read it! And share your thoughts. Upheavels of thought: the intelligence of emotions is another one I finally finished. Again by Nussbaum, inches thick and at times a slow read but what an utter joy. Philosophy can truly be art.

Also tackled Osterwalders Businessmodel innovation. Innovative content and innovative production process. Form and content rarely had a better marriage. Should have read this much earlier, but well: better late than never I guess.

I am eagerly awaiting Kotlers publication on Museum Strategy and Marketing, which I ordered at Amazon UK about 1,5 weeks ago, but which has not yet reached me. It should arrive any time now really, I am acting like a border colly on the doormat waiting for it:-) In the meantime some light reading in the evening hours: Oprah magazine which I borrowed of a friend and I find that the whole branding of the magazine is baffling in a positive way. And then there is my absolute favorite: Delicious. Yes I admit: I am a foody. Who is trying and finally managing to loose some weight (made it one dress size down already!). My, can I get happy looking at glorious food pictures and studying recipes. Almost as good as cooking and tasting it. But still: one dress size to go, so I need to hang in there and I will.

Alexander the Great

2011 for me started with a good conversation. Yesterday I was asked which exhibition I visited most recently, what I thought about it and which exhibition I would like to organise myself. Wauw. Inspiring questions! Especially as the most recent exhbition I visited was that of Alexander the Great in the Hermitage in Amsterdam. Having travelled close to Alexanders footsteps in Asia a few times my husband and I were immediately attracted by the subject of the exhibition and we simply had to go see it.

The marketing for the exhibition is excellent. The Hermitage is a fantastic building where cafe, museum store and exhibitions all ooze one thought, one vision. A total concept. Well done branding, in short which we found a joy to experience. Above all: what a great thought to organise an exhibition on Alexander the Great. Somebody who still inspires nowadays leaders and travelled in countries that speak to our imagination and have our hearts. It was really about time that this legendary man got his own exhibition.

What I did not get in the exhibition was an "Alexander experience". What was his world? How did the teachings of Aristotle influence his thoughts and actions? Imagine being taught by this greatest of thinkers and yes, I am guilty of jealousy here. How was he taught? And what did he learn? To what extent did his education shape his future? And can we connect this somehow to todays education?

Despite the many aesthetically thoroughly enjoyable objects (some of which gave a sense of homecoming as we had just seen them real life in Mongolia and China!) I admit that I struggled to get a feel for the magnitude of his undertaking. I had to think about the Terracotta Army at some point. Before we saw it real life we had seen pictures and read about it. But to see it real life really drives home the point of magnitude and scale. The same goes for Alexanders undertaking: with 50.000 soldiers trekking to unknown places, battling on unknown battlefields. Leaving your home leading a pack of soldiers and fortune seekers, crossing borders not knowing what you will encounter. Friends? Foes? What makes the battle worth the battle? How far will you go in risking the lifes of your friends and comrades to conquer ground unknown? How do you find meaning and purpose to your actions when all around you is a big unknown?

Remarking this is easy, but how to realise it? And do you want to do so? Do you aim to offer an "experience"? To bring history alive? That entails moral choices, collection choices, practical and policy considerations, financial limitations and probably other things that I am not even aware of. And I would not dare to claim that I can come up with an absolute answer in a mere blog or let alone something that will not have been considered by the staff. However, thinking out loud freely from a visitors perspective a different use of multimedia could have been of help I think. E.g. a strategic game, a schematic animation of major battles....Definitly not a re-enactment of some sort, but rather a representation that drives home the man and the magnitude of his actions, including the not so rosy side of those. While talking about it I noticed that I feel more strongly about this then I thought I did. Probably because his undertaking back then has such similarities to our current Western effort in e.g. Afghanistan. A window of opportunity to connect an inspiring and baffling past with an equally baffling present day that is the hummus for the future.