Method to Our Madness planner’s

notebook Kelly Peacy CAE, CMP Senior Vice President, Education & Meetings kpeacy@pcma.org

Game Changer I’m not sure if games will solve all of our challenges, but we’re willing to give it a try. We also think it’s a good way to keep the newest generation of attendees engaged. Nearly 80 percent of the 2,000 Gen Yers who responded to a recent PCMA Education Foundation– commissioned study on meetings’ relevance to Millennials indicated a preference for interactive games. For more on the results, see p. 27.

Yes, we’re taking more risks at Convening Leaders 2013. But they’re calculated risks, with a sound business strategy behind them.

D

uring the Convening Leaders 2012 Opening General Session in San Diego last January, Jane McGonigal spoke about gamification’s implications for meetings and attendee engagement. If you

were there, you saw her on the big screen, from a remote live feed from San Francisco. Did you also happen to see me in the front row, off to the side? I was holding my breath every single second she was up on that screen, hop- ing that technology would keep its end of the bargain and our 3,000 attendees would be able to see Jane’s presentation without any hiccups. Attendees told me that they recog-

nized that we took a big risk that day. What if the technology failed? What if Jane didn’t present well in that environ- ment? I can assure you that the decision to have Jane speak via a remote live feed that could fail at any moment wasn’t made lightly. We had a solid business strategy. Even though Jane couldn’t be with us physically in San Diego, we wanted her to share her valuable insights with our audience — and we wanted to showcase a different way to power a general session. (To read more about how we pulled this off, go to convn.org/ mcgonigal-CL12.) Our Convening Leaders brand is

about taking risks and innovating the meeting experience, but we don’t blow things up and start over just for fun. Right now, we are taking Jane’s message to heart and figuring out how games might work to address key business challenges we face at Convening Lead- ers during Convening Leaders 2013 in Orlando. We’re pretty sure many of you have the same challenges and could ben- efit from seeing gaming in action. Here’s what I mean:

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Event intelligence We need behavioral data that helps us plan better attendee experiences. When we know who is going where and when, and how they engage with our meeting elements, we can focus our attention on these areas. When designed to generate reporting data we can analyze, a game can help us understand attendee behavior.

Education-session scanning Of course we want to scan your badge when you walk into an education session. Scan- ning allows us to collect critical infor- mation on attendee demographics in each session, leading to a more focused education experience. It enables us to electronically send individual evalu- ations for that speaker. And it allows PCMA to keep track of individual con- tinuing education hours for industry certifications and recertifications. We think a game will encourage scanning.

Better connections Convening Leaders is a large meeting. How can a game help create smaller communities? For exam- ple, could a game help people connect at our crowded evening receptions?

Stay tuned. I’ll be sharing our gam- ing plans as we put them in place for Jan. 13–16 in Orlando.

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