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6 Ways to refresh your annual conference

Posted on 5 Ottobre 201618 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

An annual conference provides the unique opportunity to bond relationships between peers, clients, investors, vendors, and prospective business partners.

It creates a stage where people can come together and reflect on exceptional accomplishments as well as opportunities missed throughout the year, creating a reflective and honest environment.

This atmosphere can act as the perfect catalyst for supercharging your whole company and motivating members to move forward together towards a common objective.

Your annual conference can prove to be productive time well spent if your audience is engaged and people are poised to collaborate. Here are some ways to breathe life into your annual conference:

Change the scenery

Create anticipation for your meeting even before attendees step foot inside the door.

Host your annual conference in a different location from where you do business to give a feeling of a fresh start and unlimited possibilities. For example, if your office setting is typically in an urban industrial area, try hosting your conference at a forested retreat surrounded by wildlife and natural habitat.

A change in scenery can completely alter the way attendees approach issues and transform perceptions.

Plan some functional free time

Try balancing out a lecture-heavy agenda by adding other non-traditional activities to the mix.

Building excursions, recreation opportunities and friendly competitions into the schedule provides an outlet for creative thinking, thus giving attendees the chance to regroup and fully engage during traditional work sessions.

Sample activities can be as simple as furnishing a bike for each attendee to explore a nearby trail system, or simply providing interactive maps for attendees to discover must-see places throughout the host city.

Get to know your peers

With so many great minds in one place, try to make it easier for people to reach out to one another and start meaningful conversations. Ask attendees to fill out a “nametag” that includes not only a name but also lists the one accomplishment he or she is most proud of for the year, or a question he or she is hoping to have answered by the end of the conference.

This is a great way to get individuals interacting to share similar accomplishments and goals.

Break from the classic break

Sitting stationary for long periods of time is not good for the mind or the body.

Intermittent breaks allow attendees to move around and shake off stiff limbs, clear heads, and seek refuge after a morning filled with strong coffee and bran muffins. Take coveted break time to a whole new level by inviting in special relaxation and movement experts to help loosen the tension.

A few easy yoga moves in the fresh air will get people bending and stretching to increase blood flow and brain function, while a visiting chair massage specialist can ease the aches of sitting all day and give attendees a chance to temporarily zone out so they are less likely to do so in the middle of the session.

Interactive food fare

Food relaxes the atmosphere and helps sustain positive energy levels throughout a conference. Instead of opting for the regular ol’ soda and sandwiches theme, change it up a bit for a new spin on snacking.

Rather than one generic buffet, offer diverse lunch stations with different types of cuisine available in each area. There can be an Italian-themed create-your-own-pasta station, a sushi rolling area, or a station offering food distinct to the area in which you are hosting your conference.

Change the furniture

At one time, banquet chairs in meeting rooms were replaced by ergonomic seating. Now ergonomic seating is being replaced by bean bag chairs, overstuffed couches and “living room” areas where groups can meet and talk in a less formal and more comfortable venue.

Whether it’s incorporating aromas to energize the room, or requesting fitness balls and free weights for breaks at association events, the smallest ideas can breathe life into your traditional conference.

Utilize some of these tricks during your next conference for a brand-new approach to the old way of doing business. They will help foster great ideas to propel your business into the future.

The Perfect Agenda

Posted on 4 Luglio 201618 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

Agendas can greatly improve the efficiency and productivity of any decision process.

One good agenda can cut the number of meetings needed to complete a project in half and greatly reduce the tendency for meetings to branch off into discussions that are not useful to goal achievement.

The goal of an agenda is to facilitate the decision-making process among group members.

This may be for a technology upgrade or a budget discussion.

The agenda helps to keep meeting attendees focused on the final decision.

Agendas also make it easier to evaluate the success of the meeting by providing a checklist for follow-up and accountability.

The Role of an Agenda

The first line of the agenda should state the goal and purpose of the meeting.

Some agenda formats prefer to state the goal along with sub-goals after each agenda item. Both formats establish a framework for discussion. Agendas can vary from simple to complex.

They can include attachments and reading material or the agenda from the previous meeting.

The type of format used is generally established by the formality and length of the meeting.

A good rule of thumb is that the format should match the dress of the meeting participants; that is, a meeting full of sandals and shorts can get by with an informal agenda while a room full of suits may require a formal agenda.

Formats

The short or informal meeting can be subsumed into an email or a meeting reminder.

It might contain one line for the goal of the meeting and then three to five short discussion points.

The long agenda is usually a full page, which includes a title, meeting location, date and time, goals and topics or points of discussion. Long meetings should also include times for each discussion topic and the name of the presenter.

Both agenda formats should end with a section for “Next Steps” for follow-up. These “Next Steps” will become the basis for agenda topics at the next meeting.

Check the infographic below for some agenda format examples:

7 Tips for better sleep on the road

Posted on 29 Giugno 201619 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

If there’s one thing planners need, it’s a good night’s sleep. But it’s not always easy to do when there are hundreds of event details swirling through your brain at 2 a.m.

Head out on the road, add an unfamiliar bed, a few time zone changes and an over-stuffed schedule, and sleep can become even more elusive. So what’s the solution?

Plan to sleep, as in, put the pieces in place, prep your mind and body and set the stage for sleep success, no matter where in the world you lay your head. Here’s how:

1. Pick your room wisely

Ask for a room that’s a long way from typical hotel noise-makers like guest elevators, room service/housekeeping elevators, ice machines, vending machines or laundry areas. Also steer clear of guestrooms near function rooms, lobby bars or outdoor pools, particularly in ‘party towns’ like Miami, New Orleans, Vegas, etc., where events can be loud, long and impossible to sleep through. In bustling cities, rooms on higher floors will put a bit more distance between you and the din of nearby highways and early morning garbage truck pickups.

2. Embrace the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign – and the security latch

Whether you’re dealing with jet-lag or just need a 20-minute nap, you’ll sleep a lot better if you embrace the power of the Do Not Disturb sign – it’s your first line of defense against the well-intentioned but sleep-disruptive knocks from hotel staff. The second line of defense: flipping the door lock and security latch to prevent intrusions.

3. Wear your sunglasses…at night?

Though it may sound a bit strange, and look a bit odd to the room service guy, wearing ‘blue blockers’ or a pair of sunglasses with amber lenses at night can help you fall asleep more easily, particularly if you go to bed clutching a smartphone or tablet. Why? Because screens blast blue light into your eyes, which the brain interprets as daylight. All that light suppresses the release of our fall-asleep chemicals and triggers the release of daytime-alertness-chemicals, right at the time when we’re trying to drift off.

Don’t have amber shades? Then improvise with your usual sunglasses to reduce the ‘screen-shine’ and always remember to dim screen(s) to the max to prevent those middle of the night texts from lighting up your room and waking your brain.

4. Put the brakes on your brain

You’ll sleep better if you put the brakes on the brainwave activity that can keep you over-revved at night. Start by shutting down the laptop, TV and smartphone at least an hour before you plan to go to sleep. Next, strap on the headphones and tune into a sleep-inducing play list or guided meditation to help you drift off.

You can also try Brainwave Power Music which utilizes ‘binaural beats,’ a therapeutic collection of meditative sound patterns designed to help encourage deep, restful sleep.

5. Wind down your body

The simplest way to prep your body for sleep is with a hot bath. Some tub time will help open the blood vessels and relax muscles, making sleep come more easily. To boost the sleep-promoting effects, some lavender essential oil added to the bath or spritzed around the room can help cut anxiety and insomnia according to a recent British study from the University of Southampton.

6. Deprive your senses

When you’re sleepless in Seattle or wide-awake in Wellington, black-out curtains, earplugs and eyeshades are essential to getting a good night’s rest. Forget to pack the plugs and shades? Then improvise. Try sleeping with a hand towel or spare t-shirt across your eyes to block out light and put bed pillows over your ears to tamp down extraneous noise.

Also—never sleep with the TV on. The constantly flickering light, subtle as it may seem when your eyes are closed, will trick your brain into thinking it’s daytime, making falling asleep and staying asleep more difficult.

7. Ring them bells

When you have an early event to manage or a pre-dawn flight to catch, concerns about sleeping through the alarm can keep you awake and undermine the quality of your sleep once you do finally drift off. Instead of tossing and turning, my strategy is to make it virtually impossible to oversleep – thus the multiple alarm technique, no ‘snooze’ button necessary:
·      Start by setting the alarm on your iPhone and your iPad, placing both well out of arm’s reach.
·      Add to that a wake up call, plus a follow-up call.
·      Top it off with a scheduled-the-night-before room service breakfast delivery, and you’ll be ready for action.
·      Need a bit more backup? Then re-purpose your old, decommissioned Blackberry and use it as an alarm clock. It’s loud, can go for days without charging and never fails.