UTHOR AND CONSULTANT SIMON Sinek speaks to audiences all over the world — yet none, he said, was more important than the meeting planners and event professionals he addressed during the opening general session at Meeting Profes- sionals International’s (MPI) World Education Congress 2011 (WEC). Approximately 2,500 people attended the conference, held on July 23–26 at the Orange County Convention Cen- ter in Orlando.
Bringing people together is critical in an age where technology is increasingly the medium in which we communicate with one another, Sinek said. “Nothing replaces human interaction,” he said, “or the role it plays in building trust in another. Our very survival depends on interaction.” Sinek’s keynote launched a meeting where the emphasis on technology was pronounced. In fact, discussion about social media and hybrid meetings dominated the session “What Does The Future of Meetings Industry Look Like?” But panels and speakers also under- scored ways in which technology can be used to enhance person-to-person interaction. The most successful organizations “combine
COOKING SHOWDOWN: At MPI’s Loews Iron Chef Lunch, executive chefs guided teams
of meeting profession- als as they competed to create winning dishes from identical sets of ingredients.
high-tech with high-touch,” said Simon Bailey, founder of the Brilliance Institute, who spoke during the afternoon-long session “Flash Point — Ideas Assembly,” where speakers talked for 20 minutes.
There were significant structural changes
to WEC 2011, including the replacement of the traditional trade show with a hosted-buyer program, where more than 225 suppliers met with planners in a total of approximately 3,500 appointments. Sessions were crowdsourced before the meeting, with an online voting system, and attendees also met on site for the “Daily Download” to discuss key points from that day’s sessions and use handheld devices to vote for programs they would like to see repeated during the conference. MPI also offered free live-streaming of
general sessions on its website, and digital access to many educational sessions for MPI members. From July 23–26, WEC Online had more than 6,500 visitors, and more than 1,000 people viewed the broadcast content. n — Barbara Palmer