Generation Y

Folks, 2012, like the other 2,011 years that came before it, brings in a new year. New goals, new expectations, and most importantly new ideas. Thus, as we celebrate new beginnings, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Ryan, I am 30 years old and I represent the next big thing in the event business. And that statement is only one quarter ego.

What I mean is that I am among the first forming the line of a new generation checking themselves in at the registration desk of the meeting and event industry. Now what are you going to do with us?

We represent some 76 million worker bees — with a trillion dollars at our disposal — who are just beginning to make our impact felt in the workforce. Over the next 10 years, we’ll significantly change the way work is being done in the office — and by extension, the way meetings and events will need to be held. In the coming years, you will see us infiltrate meetings in growing numbers and, for the most part, we have no interest in sitting in ballrooms, classroom style, listening to your talking heads.

Gone are coming the days of the CEO’s “State of the State” while a passive audience watches. Even if that CEO presentation is done by holograph or takes place in Second Life. Because Gen Y is a group conditioned to participate! From birth we have been raised in a media-saturated environment, constantly bombarded and entertained while parents, teachers and coaches successively booked our calendars with teamwork, homework and activities both interactive and independent. Beyond the, we are the tech-literate generation; a population better conditioned to multitask than any other. The result: creatures adept at and working toward trying to build the best “life experience” for ourselves. The other result – we feel entitled to share our opinions, we want to sit at the board table with tell the CEO, we want constant feedback, we want to be on the ‘team’ and we want to do it however and whenever we want.

Why does any of this matter to meeting and event planners? It matters because Gen Y-ers will not feel bad about walking out of your next program if they do not feel personally engaged. The greatest coming struggle I think for planners will be around engagement. If planners do not create programs which engage and empower our generation, we will most likely walk away from the program because we will find it not worth our time. That may sound harsher than I intend, but we are a generation for whom work is not intended to be our life, just one part. And if that part is unenergizing, uneducational, or just plain boring, we will find something else that is.



What I am not advocating here is the pair of traps I feel planners sometimes step into when trying to address the issue of engaging this audience. I am not talking in this piece about meetings and events which will become downgraded to what I like to call edu-tainment First on edu-tainment – I believe there is an assumption that the MTV2 generation means they need to be entertained in order to educate them. But entertainment is not engagement. Do you need to gain our attention? Yes. But we really are smarter than we appear on television. Proper engagement means creating events to meet our generation where they are at as you plan programs for them. Work towards their strengths. Create opportunities for team work. Allow us to brainstorm and voice our thoughts with leaders who can implement those ideas. Create opportunities to learn based on visuals and hands on exploratory experiences. Create connection opportunities with the greater global society so that we may embrace a diversity of ideas and people.

Second, I am not advocating that technology is the solution to engaging this generation. While we were raised online, technology and its toys are not in themselves the solution to make us more engaged in meetings - though they may be tools. Often I feel planners consider jumping on the bandwagon of the next emerging technology and implementing its application into their meetings and events because it is cool, hip, interesting, or trendy rather than because it facilitates the function of the program. The assumption seems to be if we give a tech tech-savvy 20 something a PDA to play with, an RFID tag which geo-positions him and his friends at the event or hold the meeting in Second Life, somehow she will be engaged (maybe you mean entertained.) The danger I fret is that we loose the real jewel of our programs – the face to face interaction of people with one another. It is not that I am against technology – live texting, for example, is one of the most interesting installations in events I have seen lately. It is that never want to see a planner or a program stray away from its purpose or plan for the sake of a tech gadget. I personally gain far more from sitting in a boardroom with fellow creatives and a flip chart than I do out of the flashiest PowerPoint presentation.

So what is planner to do? In my opinion, the battle cry of Gen Y is “experience” and “opportunity.” While that first word is not new to our industry, least we not forget it when we think about the second. Meetings and events in my opinion are evolving creatures which in the coming years may push beyond the group experience of today into completely personalized opportunities. Future learning may take not one, but several forms. For the same material and meetings and events will need to serve a vast diversity of populations and desires not in one place but in many. A program on social responsibility may take the form of a group of creatives sitting in a boardroom in New York conceptualizing solutions, while tactile learners simultaneously visit a factory in China. Still, others may head online into a global classroom for a year long discussion on all facets of the topic, while their colleague in the cube next door plays a virtual video game with a built-in learning module. This is about delivering content in the format of choice for the attendee, not the attendee adapting to the delivery of the content.

Many I know think that as a generation we are entitled, and while there is always truth in every perception, I wish to caution that blanket assumption. It is not entirely ego that leads us to such a belief, but rather that we grew up learning in environments which worked to our strengths and where we constantly received positive feedback, giving us a very high perception of our own value and abilities. We really do have the idea that we know things, that we have the right to ask questions and to challenge, and that people should listen to our ideas. We are a generation adept at flexibility, tapped into creative thinking, able to navigate and process vast amounts of information while tapping into a larger diversity of resources and ideas quickly, all the while honestly believing we can make a difference.



That, in short is the greatest asset of Generation Y as I know it. We are a group of experience-driven individuals who see themselves as capable of changing the world. We believe in our potential with an optimism that really can cause change. Harnessing this talent is, I believe, the challenge before the meeting industry as our events morph to meet this new attendee profile. It will mean getting out of the comfortable ballroom and into engaging environments which foster innovation and conversation. It will demand that we intermix the generations and embrace diversity in everything from how work is done to where and how the meeting is held to help find solutions for the betterment of organizations and society alike.

And so, if I or any of my cohorts end up your next dinner meeting, just seat us next to the CEO. I am certain we will have a few ideas to share.

Photo References:
http://www.commentsyard.com/cy/01/6874/happy-new-year-graphics-09.jpg
http://blogging4jobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/geny.jpg
http://www.thesocialleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ego.jpg

On Collaboration

In honor of the focus on rethinking events, this post diverts a little from the specific focus on design to an emerging trend in how events are being designed: by collaborative teams of clients and vendors. Specifically for those clients looking to change up how they have always done things or in need of an infusion of creative thoughts, a collaborative team approach to the design of your event can bring fresh ideas and better results in the end.


The Collaborative Pitch
In the last year or so I have been pleasantly surprised at the number of conversations I have had with industry colleagues who have told me the same story: “We lost a pitch because the client wanted one thing we didn’t offer in house.” “Who won the pitch?” I’d ask. Without fail, the same response, “Another company who brought in a partner(s) to do that one other part.”

In our current economy and climate there is a palpable yearning for new ideas and big thinking for clients tired of holding back and wanting to do something. (That doesn’t mean they are spending more, just that they are ready for something else.) And at the same time there is a tremendous amount of great talent in small businesses or with very target business focuses in our industry. So the best thing a producer or designer can do on their next big pitch: harness that talent.


We have to stop the myth that one person or one company can successfully be all things to all of their clients. Maybe you can be all things for one of your clients, but you will never be all things to all of your clients. And the more you try to be all things, the more it seem you loose in the game because the margins are low or competition is stiff or because there will always be someone with another idea. Clients want to pay for value and clients will pay big if you can offer them a unique competitive advantage. But your unique advantage will always be specific, never general. So the opportunities in our industry are prime to partner and to collaborate to win that next piece of business.



How do you do that? By establishing relationships with the best talent you can at a variety of price points and personalities. Then when you are offered that next bid, create the right team to execute the best solution for the client and pitch that team, not just yourself. Let each expert shine in their capabilities and by default your chances for success will greatly increase.


The Collaborative Team
Do you remember that scene in the movie “A Beautiful Mind” from several years back when the PhD students are standing in a bar trying to compete for the attention of a beautiful woman who has just entered the bar with her friends. Then, being graduate mathematics students, they derive that if they stop competing for the one woman but each turns their attention to one of her friends, all win. That idea would go on to help the real life John Nash win a Nobel Prize in economics, but its core idea has something to say about creating events.



I have been involved in too many projects in which vendors compete to be the best client partner in order to be in control of biggest share of the client’s budget. Vendors want to be the one to own the biggest piece (or the whole pie) and disseminate the money as they see most fit. Or the more logistical application of the scenario is that most vendors do not know the other vendors involved in the project and so all show up on site with their own crews, their own lifts, their own production schedules and game plans and then conflict ensues when the décor company wants to attach a fabric swag over the productions companies speaker. Time is wasted and more importantly money is wasted.

But what if you take another approach and focus on the fact that a successfully designed and executed event is a win for you client and therefore for each of the vendors involved. As no one company can do it all, all of the time, for every client, multiple vendors will most likely always be involved. So why not build a collaborative team of vendors focused on collectively executing the best event for your client? A savvy producer or designer upon being awarded a piece of business should be able to determine the personality of their client and bring to the table the right collection of design, technical and event execution partners to meet that clients specific needs. I am making a call her for more boutique collaborative work to generate new and interesting solutions and ideas rather than general event houses who try to do everything themselves. While there is nothing wrong with one-stop event shops, I will say the most successful events I have been a part of are the ones in which the best players from a diverse range of industries or parts of the event industry come to the table to make a new thing happen.

The other component to a collaborative partnership of vendors that is crucial is for those vendors to widen their perspective beyond themselves. Too often onsite there is a mentality of “this is my job”, or a focus on only doing your piece without recognizing how their part of the event affects the other vendor partners involved. Instead installations would flow more effectively with a team approach in which all vendors understand the bigger picture and how their part relates to all of the other moving pieces. Then lines of communication can be opened. Then the decorators can help distribute the lighting equipment so they can set the dance floor or the technical team can maximize the value of the union labor call by incorporating the designers hang points into the rigging plot.



The Client’s Responsibility
Most of the issues that arise among vendors onsite at events happen because vendors are not permitted or empowered to communicate in advance of the event. Clients: introduce your vendor partners to each other and let them communicate! Doing so will only save you time, money, and aspirin onsite.

The collaborative team approach is a fun opportunity for the client to be more engaged in the process of putting together an event and the creative design elements. When you start with a collaborative team, there is more opportunity for dialogue and discussion and more chances for the client team to have input (and if your clients are like mine, I am seeing more of them wanting to be involved in the process and give a LOT of input!). However, the client must realize that a collaborative process can be a more messy process: more time is spent meeting and discussing and creating on the front end, time for idea generation and evolution is required as more players are involved, education of the goals and objectives of the event to a larger audience is required and potentially a larger audience needs the opportunity for buy in and feedback. The best thing a client can do in this situation is be a leader or empower your event designer or producer to be a leader on your behalf and manage that process, keep the team on track and the ideas driving forward to a successful event, one which will be better in the end than any one individual on the team could have created on their own.

Photo References:
http://www.thelifeworkstrategies.com/images/team.jpg
http://www.free-press-release.com/members/members_pic/200911/img/1259258333.jpg
http://androidguide.ru/img/19/194/A_Beautiful_Mind_John_Nash_Game_Theory_Scene.jpg