PCMA CONVENING LEADERS 2014 PREVIEW

‘The meeting industry has been around for a really long time, and I would surmise that there are business practices that have developed in the industry for historical reasons that can now be questioned.’

I’m generally more of a fan of the quantitative data that you can actually [collect] in a way that’s implicit — so you’re not asking people to think about something, you’re just observing what they do and changing your behavior accordingly. But surveys and question- naires are hugely useful and they’ve been used for 50 years for this purpose, in helping to inform the context around an event. “Are people actually happy?” — that’s the kind of question you can ask.

In what areas do you see meeting profes- sionals potentially most benefiting from data science? The opportunity I would look for is a place to question old assumptions. The meeting industry has been around for a really long time, and I would surmise that there are business practices that have developed in the industry for historical reasons that can now be ques- tioned and taken advantage of. I would look into the behaviors that people do just because that’s the way it’s done or everybody does it this way, and see if there’s data that can show whether those are actually good behaviors or whether there’s something that a clever meeting organizer could take advantage of to really boost the quality or lower the cost of their event.

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Sarah Beauchamp is an assistant editor of Convene.

ON THE WEB

› Hilary Mason will be a Masters Series speaker at PCMA Convening Leaders 2014 in Boston, Jan. 12–15. For more information, visit conveningleaders.org. › Learn more about Hilary Mason at hilarymason.com.

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