PCMA CONVENING LEADERS 2014 PREVIEW

Mike Walsh

Futurist Mike Walsh wowed the audience as a plenary speaker at PCMA’s 2013 Education Conference. And he’ll be back on stage for Convening Leaders 2014 in Boston this January.

By Barbara Palmer T

he ballroom at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver fell mostly silent following Mike Walsh’s presen- tation at PCMA’s 2013 Education Conference this past

June: “Technology: Winning the War for Tomorrow’s Attendee.” It wasn’t for lack of interest — Walsh generated a buzz that spilled into other sessions. Instead, it was that Walsh, founder and CEO of Tomorrow, a consumer innovation research lab, seems to have done that rare thing: given his audience new ways to think about familiar topics. Said one attendee: “I needed time just to process.” Among Walsh’s takeaways: Don’t focus so much on the differences between generations; think instead in terms of the “smartphone” generation, consisting of attendees of any age who use mobile technology. And rather than zeroing in on technology itself, pay anthropologist-like attention

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to the changes in attendee behavior that come as a result of new technologies. (For more from Walsh’s Education Conference talk, see “The Next Generation of Meeting Attendees,” p. 75.) The sustained interest in Walsh’s “Technology” session has led to another rarity: The futurist will be a returning PCMA speaker, and soon — delivering a General Session pre- sentation at Convening Leaders 2014 in Boston this January. And speaking of encores, Convene included Walsh among

the 13 experts we talked to for our June cover story about how meeting planners need to prepare for the future. He described the need for planners to think like editors — content curators

— and to consider their role in part as creating communities. Here’s more from that interview that didn’t make it into

the article. SEPTEMBER 2013 PCMA CONVENE 73

PHOTO BY JACOB SLATON