Elling Hamso Blog

When National Business Travelers Association (NBTA) recently launched the Strategic Meeting Management Certification programme (SMMC), meeting planners had it coming.

Meeting planners have been asking for ‘a seat at the table’, suggesting that general management should recognize the importance of meetings and place meeting managers alongside such professions as Human Relations, IT and Procurement managers.

General management took a quick look and asked meeting planners how they take care of the company’s money, applying good procurement practices, for example. The meeting planner explained that buying meeting services is too difficult for the professional buyer, who doesn’t understand meetings, and the meeting services providers agreed; leave meetings to the professionals!

Management didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Not knowing how to do your job is bad. Believing that you know something you don’t know, better than the professionals who know it, is deadly. The executioner is the professional travel manager who just launched the Strategic Meeting Management Certification.

Let us hope, for the sake of the meeting planner, that the General Manager has not asked any more questions, such as how do you manage meeting projects (online, of course), where are your quality assurance procedures, how do you manage risk? If a professional from any of these disciplines were to audit the average meeting planner, the meeting planner would be dead again, several times over. There are exceptions of course, like every reader of this blogpost.

Back to Strategic Meeting Management. What is it? In principle it is the application of good procurement principles to the total meetings spend across a corporation. In practice it means procedures whereby all meetings are registered and centrally approved, purchases are made from approved suppliers according to contracting policies and all payments are made through a system which captures and categorises spend. As a result, savings in the order of 15 – 30% are being reported by large corporations after implementing SMMP.

All of this was explained at the recent Paragon/NBTA Crossroads conference in Paris. I didn’t see many meeting planners there, but you may want to download Kari Kesler’s ‘Diving in to Strategic Meetings Management Programmes (SMMP)' (http://tinyurl.com/crossroadsparis) or check out some of the SMMP white papers on www.nbta.org.

I never quite understood when told that only 20% of our communication is words, the rest is body language.

Then I picked up ‘Social Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman, thinking that maybe this was my problem. Now I understand.

Based on research in social neuroscience, Goleman explains what it really means when someone has charisma or autism or is just liked by everybody, how a group of people may turn into a lynching mob in a matter of seconds, how excellent speakers spellbind their audience and why actors make such excellent speaker coaches.

Most of the body language is subconscious, we don’t even know it is happening, the socalled ‘mirror neurons’ in our brain pick up an incredible array of signals, from tone of voice to the slightest re-configuration of nearly 200 facial muscles.

And it is not just a matter of observing the other person, if our brains are attuned we physically feel the emotions of the other person, like the contagious smile or laughter.

Our ability to empathize with others depends on a number of factors demonstrated by neurological science, like light, colour, sound, food, drink, smell and temperature, but these are perhaps subjects of other books, I don’t know as I am not half way through Goleman’s yet.

The implications for how we design interactive environments are obvious and huge. But what has become even more clear to me is how the virtual relationship does not come anywhere near the quality of face-to face interaction. It becomes meaningless to think of virtual relationships taking the place of physical interaction, they are two completely different forms of exchange, supplementing rather than replacing each other.

I think all this is fascinating, you should read the book yourself, it is the kind of book you can’t read without a yellow marker at hand.

Finally an uplifting message, our brain is hard wired for empathy and kindness, don’t believe what the papers write.

And imagine, this was only 20% of my message, without the body language....

Best

Elling

Social media marketing is in its infancy, but major corporations are exploring its potential. Ford have just announced its plans to hand over the branding and marketing of the new Fiesta to 100 young people who scored high on ‘social vibrancy’. They will each be given a new Fiesta to drive for 6 months and documenting their experiences through YouTube videos, blogs and other social media channels. Read the full story on http://tinyurl.com/fordsocialmediamarketing

Elling

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Dr. E. Hamso
Managing Partner
European Event ROI Institute
E-mail: Elling.Hamso@eventroi.org
Telephone: +47 90 12 24 18
Website: www.eventroi.org
Blog: www.elling.no/blog
"Making Meetings and Events more profitable"
Check out 25 one-day ROI courses in Europe and Middle East: www.eventroi.org

I envy my friend who was able to visit this year’s Lift conference in Geneva in February (www.liftconference.com), a somewhat geeky example of the unconference to come with the Millennial generation. I have marked Marseilles 18 – 20 June in my diary.

Second Life is dead, was one of the main messages, he told me, It didn't change the world as they thought it would and won't do that in the future.

Don't you believe it! Just join me in a simple line of reasoning:

1. The Millennials play 3D interactive games, like World of Warcraft and hundereds of othes, they are at home in this virtual environment, they play and interact across the globe
 
2. Simulation and gaming is a growing trend for learning, it is extremely effective
 
3. The Millennials (gamers) are born after 1985, they were young teenagers when the internet became ubiquitous, 3D interactive gaming came later as they depended on widespread broadband.
 
4. So the 3D gamers are hardly in their 20's yet, they are in no position to introduce or use seriously the 3D virtual environment in work situations (except geeky companies with a young and internet savvy workforce)
 
5. Business application of 3D virtual environment (like second life) will become part of daily work life when the gaming generation comes of age.

I don’t know if Second Life will continue to develop as a business platform, and this is not the point, online 3D communities is the point. I know Second Life took a dip when gaming was banned and I recently heard someone say that it has become too seedy (apparently our avatars don’t have the usual sexual inhibitions), but this is also beside the point.

I just read that in January this year, residents spent 41.5 million hours in Second Life compared with 28.3 million in January, 2008 and the number of active users has risen 25% since September, 2008, now more than 15 mill., doesn’t seem like dying.

Elling

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Dr. E. Hamso
Managing Partner
European Event ROI Institute
E-mail: Elling.Hamso@eventroi.org
Telephone: +47 90 12 24 18
Website: www.eventroi.org
Blog: www.elling.no/blog
"Making Meetings and Events more profitable"
Check out 25 one-day ROI courses in Europe and Middle East: www.eventroi.org

If you are giving a presentation in the near future, postpone it! Please read first Garr Reynolds’ book Presentation Zen.

You think you are an expert presenter? I thought so, until I read this book. Now I am getting closer.

Reynolds doesn’t just explain why some presentations are good and most are bad, he really makes you realize why this is so and gives you a fundamental insight into how you prepare and deliver messages which the audience will understand and remember.

This is a very practical and easy to read book, he explains and illustrates the power of simplicity and white spaces, simplify to amplify, good design principles, how to use pictures and where to place the text, contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity.

And when you have made your presentation, he tells you how to deliver it, how to connect with the audience and be completely present. Your presentation will never be the same. Read more on www.presentationzen.com