Wednesday Buzz: Design Your Meetings to Delight

The last thing an event professional wants to do is throw a dud of a meeting. But that might happen if you plan your meetings around lectures instead of memorable experiences.

“We are a culture thirsty for experiences,” writes Megan Denhardt in a recent post for Association Success  (opens in a new tab). “These real-life experiences are gold, which is why people take time away from work and family—and often money out of their own pocket—to travel to and participate at a conference.”

How can you make your conference stand out? By giving your attendees ways to make a human connection with others and scheduling segments that will delight and surprise.

One way to do that is to provide “trending now” sessions throughout the conference to address relevant issues that have arisen in the previous week or two. Attendees are used to hearing about evergreen topics; keep them engaged with newly relevant discussions. “Are there policies recently enforced, global issues, or new mergers and acquisitions affecting your industry?” asks Denhardt. “Save space for these hot-off-the-press conversations.”

The post also recommends providing outdoor time for attendees, hiring local musicians to entertain during downtime, and delivering short “sound-bite” learning opportunities.

Beefier Tweets

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu  (opens in a new tab)

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017  (opens in a new tab)

Twitter is testing a platform-defining change. Yesterday, the social giant announced it was expanding its 140-character limit by testing 280-character tweets on a small group of users.

Twitter hopes the larger character limit will encourage people to tweet more, Recode reports  (opens in a new tab).

“Twitter executives have discussed the idea of expanding the product’s character limit for years,” writes Kurt Wagner. “In early 2016, Twitter seriously considered expanding the limit to 10,000 characters, but CEO Jack Dorsey ultimately pulled the plug on that update before it was ever rolled out.”

Other Links of Note

Does nonprofit status change the way people think about cultural organizations? Know Your Own Bone looks at the data  (opens in a new tab).

What are your members thinking? Your organization’s employee engagement  (opens in a new tab) can tell you a lot, says CMSWire.

Have you lost this leadership skill? Inc. shares one trait that may be key to success  (opens in a new tab).

(g-stockstudio/iStock/Getty Images Plus)