Innovative Meetings By Barbara Palmer

The Play’s theThing

Attendees at GMIC’s Sustainable Meetings Conference are invited to learn more, network more, and engage more—by playing a game.

When the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) began planning its 2011 Sustainable Meetings Conference, its leaders asked themselves a question familiar to many professionals in the meetings industry:Howdo we break the mold? GMIC’s annual meetings have a reputation for

delivering good education, but, according to GMIC President Paul Salinger, vice president of marketing for Oracle, they’ve followed the tradi- tional conference model of panels and stand- alone presentations. So how could GMIC create something unique and highly experiential—that was still capable of delivering the quality content for which the organization is known? The answer came in the form of a game—a highly collaborative, competitive game played by

Game Theory

At the beginning of the GMIC 2011 Sustainable Meetings Conference, each of the 15 teams received an iPad that was preloaded with a game application, including six case studies seeded with sustainability challenges. Each team was assigned one of the case studies and asked to work together to create a strategic plan to address those challenges. Objectives: Each case study included a hypothetical event and a particular objective—an association’s 5,000-person annualmeeting was seeking to reduce its environmentalfootprint by applying the new APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards, for example. Another case study asked players to step into the shoes of the staff at a giant, family-owned grocery-store chain and to outline a plan for a textbook example of a green internal meeting for 2,500. To complete the tasks, participants had to access a variety of sources of knowledge and data—the game either included the information as a resource on the iPad, or offered guidance on where to find it, including at seven educational sessions during the conference. Win: Points were awarded based on the quality of team responses—including how well

teams incorporated knowledge presented at the conference—but team members also could rack up points by participating in activities like blogging and tweeting, attending breakout sessions, visiting exhibitor booths, and building bicycles for local children as part of a CSR activity. A leaderboard tallied each team’s progress in a variety of areas, which according to one

participant encouraged “a lot of friendly ribbing.” Two winning teams were named at the conclusion of the meeting—the team with the highest score on the case study, and the team with the most overall points.

30 pcma convene June 2011 ILLUSTRATION BY MICK WIGGINS

teams of iPad-wielding attendees. Created by a group led byGMIC 2011ConferenceChair Eliz- abeth Henderson, chief sustainability strategist for Calgary-based Meeting Change, the game was designed so that, as attendees played, theywould work through the meeting’s objectives, encounter- ing everything from key educational content to net- working opportunities to sponsors’ information.

Let the Game Begin GMICdidn’t so much add a game to its meeting, as add its meeting to a game. When attendees arrived at the conference, held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Portland, Ore., from Feb. 20–23, eachof the approximately 260 participants was automatically assigned to one of 15teams.

“The biggest thing I think it did as far as the confer- ence as a whole went was to break down barriers between the attendees before they actually began to work as a team.”