REVOLUTIONARY: “Relationships rise to their

best when people are building lega- cies together,” Cooperrider said. “The Complete Convention can revolutionize the meetings industry.”

CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE

the configuration of all the strengths in the sys- tem. Skeptics always wonder how you can design the future with thousands of people. Here are some examples:

UnitedWay of America felt that its annual convention

was getting very stale. Lots of good speakers, but all the tal- ent of the participants was being underutilized by not hearing their voices. UnitedWay of America called on the AI process for creating the values, mission statement, and vision for the next decade. The American Red Cross used a similar process with

5,000 people. Imagine convention participants turning to one another in the first moments of a conference and [interview- ing each other] about strengths, assets, opportunities, and results.Next they take “what’s best” and ask “what’s next?” The tools are increasingly available to transform meetings

into tremendously concentrated events…to create rapid movement that might otherwise take years to develop by tapping into the best at all levels in shorter time.

How would a meeting using AI work? It is large-group planning, designing, and implementing using a whole system of strengths, people at all levels, in a concen- trated way to work on criticaltasks. Everyone is engaged together, as designers, across all levels, and therefore takes

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To learn more about Appreciative Inquiry, visit http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu.

ownership of making [this] big-league opportunity successful. We are obviously in an era of financial belt-tightening, aren’t we? It’s in this context that the meetings industry will be asked harder questions. What is the productivity of this convention? Is it going to be worth the time and the financialcost? We are just starting to sense what the meetings industry is capable of—which is moving from a traditional model of

downloading information or networking to a joint design and collective-action model. I call it the “Complete Conven- tion.” It is not either/or. It is both/and. There is still great net- working and speakers, but we are creating a blended model whereby there may be three days with the afternoon sessions all designed in a traditional way with speakers, panels, and networking, and where the three mornings are spent in the large whole group in a task-oriented summit modality. Day one morning [session] achieves the discovery phase

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