Just Add Water...

If you were in Cancun for MeetDifferent, monitoring the Twitter feeds remotely, or just randomly super in tuned to weather trends in Mexico - you know that last night we received a bit of rain that did its best to dampen our efforts at an amazing TradeDifferent experience.  But in a heroic showing from both MPI and Moon Palace staff, the show went on and went on in a phenomenal way.  The set up was fabulous, the new concept wowed attendees.  Sponsors are thrilled by the traffic and quality connection experience they had. 

But let's talk a bit about that uncertain time from about 5:30-7:00pm.  What were MPI and Moon Palace staff up to then?  Sitting at the bar waiting on the rain to pass?  Nope!  Last night proved to be an amazing experience as MPI managers - we could not be more proud of our staff and elated to have partnered with the Moon Palace. 

Here is a first-hand account from our Director of Events, Bridget Sypolt:

"The Moon Palace staff, plus the vendors involved - J&S, PSAV, and Sarao were marvelous.  Teams of Moon Palace staff used tools to remove all of the water and carried mountains of towels to dry off all of the seats.  Catering teams rushed out the food, and it was all piping hot and delicious.  Bartenders made sure the bars were ready for the crowds in record time and audio visual teams re-hooked up all of the many plasmas, speakers, lighting and other electronic displays.  Juan Carlos and Enrique were in the middle of it, leading their teams.

MPI Staff - I knew you were a great team, but yet again you stepped up when the rain started falling.  You all helped to get the word out to worried sponsors and attendees.  You emailed and tweeted and used Pathable.  Then you went and helped the sponsors get up and running, and helped ease their nervousness.  I saw a lot of you with towels in your hands to dry the seats in each area.   Then you grabbed them all from the lobby bar and helped to march them outside.

The recovery of the night was because of you.  We hope you then had a chance to enjoy a great event – TradeDifferent, the first of its kind, was a success thanks to all."

Brooke Dillier

Processing Failure: MeetDifferent 2010

The last day of an event always brings with it pre-mature self-evaluation of the event experience, which is followed by that evening's post-partum period (the polarized combination of elation, relief and grief over knowing the event is over now and your baby has been birthed.)  All good meeting professionals' brains instantaneously process successes and failures, turning them into new ideas and valuable lessons learned.

The culture at MPI is not only far from risk-averse; I would say it's closer to risk-dependent.  Our leadership and membership consistently rely on us to bring the 'different, cool and innovative' to everything we do, with MeetDifferent as the showcase for many of these new concepts.  This year's MeetDifferent attendees, live and virtual, have experienced these risky ventures with us and through instantaneous feedback channels like Twitter, helped us learn our lessons... quickly.

Most of my blogs this week have and will continue to focus on the phenomenal success stories from MeetDifferent.  For a brief moment, I want to openly discuss failure.

So how do we process failures especially when some are broadcast live over the internet and tweeted globally?  Despite the natural initial reaction - minor heart beat stoppage and some nausea - passes, our team kicks it up and finds solutions.  Many examples of this surfaced including quick fixes to spotty internet connections, updates to content presentation formats, event schedules and Twitter updates to sooth the crowds.  For those lessons learned from things that might have missed the mark, and couldn't be fixed onsite, we grow and learn.  But by no means do we allow event hiccups to slow our pace of innovation.  To the contrary, true revolution leaders and visionaries thrive on failures.  They make our hearts beat stronger and toughen our skins - enabling us to take on the next challenge with more vigor and confidence than we possessed pre-failure.

Kudos to all of our risk-takers, innovators and quick-fixers on staff at MeetDifferent 2010!  Viva le Revolution and keep up the trail blazing!

Brook Dillier

Monday Blog: Tales from the Front Lines

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Today was Monday - our second full conference day. Our staff can feel the end of the event drawing near but the energy levels of staff and attendees are continuing to escalate. Despite the gorgeous weather and amazing surroundings, our session rooms are packed. I'm proud of our attendees for seizing the value of content consumption and think @speakersue tweeted it best, "Take pp to wonderful destination. Distracted? It's their work ethic! EX: Session room full & we're in Cancun!" Just check out this list of sold out sessions from today: LeadDifferent, Advanced Excel, Mexico’s Great Diversity of Destinations for Int’l meetings, Project Management Tools, Techniques, and Best Practices, 10 Strategies for Becoming Indispensable at Work: Maximizing Your Value.

The day started off with a comprehensive discussion around failure. Sounds like a downer of a topic right? But we wouldn't do that to you - the new innovative format we tried out worked and kept the audience engaged in an entertaining and valuable conversation with Monica Harrington. We've received great feedback on the new format and look forward to debuting another format tomorrow. Monica shared very candidly - sometimes bordering on too candidly for us nervous conference planners - stories from Microsoft and two start up firms, for which she was the CMO. She made several bold statements including "CMO's don't want meeting planners talking direct to CEO's. To break through this stonewalling you need to develop proposals on what you can do to improve the business." Monica tackled other tough topics like using meetings to drive business results, the effects of failure on your psyche, the benefits (and yes there are plenty!) of failure, and how to be innovative within a risk-averse environment.

The VAP user numbers keep going up - so nice to see our members getting the valuable education digitally and interacting so well on our Twitter channels. As a fellow VAP-consumer, it's nice to have such engaged company. All members and attendees will have access to all recordings and other resources such as session news capsules and graphic facilitation files. Check out pictures of these super neat graphical representations of session conversations, on this blog.

Switching gears now to the networking opportunities - Our Director of Events, Bridget Sypolt, touched base with me while out walking the TradeDifferent spaces. She is ecstatic, "Tonight is going to be very cool. All these unique areas and great decor will make a great party." She is not the only one excited about the new networking formats we've debuted this year. Eduardo Chaillo says this hosted buyer experience is the best he's seen and it should always be this format. Many of the planners are bringing RFP's to the hosted buyer appointments - what a dream scenario for our suppliers!

Speaking of networking events, last night's Rendezvous was amazing. So much so that I can't share any detailed stories - I wouldn't do that! But I can tell you the event raised over $50,000 for our Foundation. Partying with a purpose for sure! Since another 'small' event is going on right now in Vancouver, we set up a fabulous Olympic Lounge at MD. The lounge was packed for the US vs. Canada Hockey game. Since our CEO is an avid Canada hockey fan, I will refrain from rubbing in who won that game. I like my job... Vicki Hawarden, our VP of Knowledge, recounts the evening's events, "In the Olympic Lounge, the crowd was about half and half Canadian and US. Lots of cheering and groaning! Rendezvous rocked the house! Every person dancing, happy, amazed by the Vegas-Cirque-Broadway style show. Truly a unique place and perfect for group bonding. Blast had by all. I meant to just make an appearance and leave but got captivated and stayed until the end. Bravo Cancun!

MPI's Marj Atkinson is particularly excited to be outside enjoying the sights around the resort for TradeDifferent. She admits she is tired of being cooped up in the session room areas! I look forward to hearing and sharing more stories after tonight's events. Look for more tomorrow - the last day of our event!

I leave you with my favorite Tweets of the day:

vlaclair: MPI Rocks with new format for #md10 --> can you hear me clapping?

JohnTruran: #MD10 love the interview format with Monica Harrington, helps put the "different" in MD! Nice job Monica and Glenn!

eventgenuity: Gr8 presenter, Gr8 info @ #MD10 on importance of meetings, events & speaking the language of business 2 C-suite #pcma #eventprofs

niesas: @speakersue session is super high energy for last of the day! #md10

dashtonwagner: "Digital Darwinism is alive & well" - Corbin Ball. Does that mean social media will make people obsolete unless they get onboard? #md10 #mpi

miguelseven: Very creative delivery format at Online is on trial. Refreshing!!! #mpi #md10 #eventprofs

Brooke Dillier