Meeting Futures will be part of what I’ve called EMEC “Manic Monday” where there’s a lot going on so follow this journey and to paraphrase Prince it’ll be your “fun day.” It will be run as a hosted live workshop to imagine the meeting space of the near future. Meetings fit for our new creator culture world of events. I really don’t know what will happen, but as a creative, I’m OK with that.
Thanks to the Brighton Dome we’ll even have surprises too. A sneaky-secret-whistle-stop tour of the venue which is a treat. It is an unmissable architectural and cultural icon originally designed to house the Prince Regents Horses in 1804, celebrated for its lightness, elegance, and boldness. Plus, as we’ll be in the stunning Dome bar so just maybe a bold glass or two of elegant wine should you feel your missing out on the vineyard trip.
Back to the session “Meeting Futures.”
It will be a working session. Messy-thinking-out-loud and experimental. Unleashing the power of meetings with the power of us. We’ll workshop the power of purpose--and crowdsource how to build community, flexibility, identity and empathy into the culture and infrastructure of meeting futures.
Community
The human perspective, the evolution of meeting culture. This will embrace human issues of belonging and behavior, the accessibility, sustainability and likability of the meeting futures.
Our infrastructure may look the same, but our audiences and their behaviors have changed and we need to learn how to handle this. Meeting design in the futures may need to focus on the lighter, fluid “inner architecture” of our meeting community’s people rather than the static architectural fabric of a venue.
The experience of work has evolved, work from home, office or mobile has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Domestication of the meeting environment is normality--sets participants at their ease--a meeting can be a space of both comfort and inspiration.
Better sources give better thoughts, better questions lead to better answers, better habits grow better results. Learn more, the edge is in the inputs, the understanding of your communities and being more beautifully human.
Designing to respond to human needs first and allow your participants to build their own sense of belonging.
Flexibility
The infrastructure perspective. The evolution of the physical meeting space and issues of space, elegant formats and maybe even technology design. Now everyone brings their own, is all we need the cloud?
We are already in the cloud. Prompt and response. We live in a world of prompts.
This is increasingly where we live. Text to content, text to visual Ai or voice to Ai--each begins with a human issuing a “prompt” action the “response” action will shape around.
Might this follow as the format for meetings of the future?
What if you thought of your meeting space as a Google homepage. It looks so simple, so elegant. The blank white space, a logo that changes every day hidden in plain sight. A world of complexity hidden beyond the utilitarian simplicity of a single letterbox in anticipation of a human prompt. Then boom, the world is launched into your eyes.
Elevate this stretchy versatility, freedom of movement and ease of expression.
Think Google homepage, uniform lighting, dampened sound, as open or intimate as prompted from moment to moment. A meeting space to deliver pace and performance, a space to learn, turn and earn. A versatile interdisciplinary space blending analogue and digital to support flexible and diverse meeting behaviors.
Identity - by design
The purpose perspective, the evolution of meeting personalization. This will embrace purpose as a reason for the meeting futures.
Consider adding a meeting identity. A host’s products and content in the composition of the meeting space can be transformative and bold in personalization. The spirit and character of the meeting purpose will resonate and be more immediate and engaging for participants.
The meetings industry might learn from the heavy investment in the co-working office space. Evolving strategies around their model of reusing and adapting aging building stock and the creation boutique office space with a strong identity.
Ally these strategies focussing on personalization to design and create original and high-performance meeting spaces.
Articulating your meetings client’s identity is about inputs and knowing your client’s community in detail. Done right, styling your (Google homepage heterogeneous space) meeting to the specific activities required could optimize your space use and often simplify it.
Wellbeing - by design
The listening perspective, the evolution of meeting empathy. Embrace issues of societal change in our belonging and behavior, the accessibility, sustainability and likability of the meeting futures.
Improving the health of a meeting space will improve the wealth of ideas, radically enhancing meeting attendee performance and productivity.
Here we’ll experiment how to reshape meeting-spaces and meeting-practices with empathy. Question everything. Refresh the notion of where and when a meeting should take place and cultivate the wellbeing and creativity of meeting attendees.
It might help if we dismantle stereotypical room layouts and furniture configurations and spatial hierarchies. Maybe incorporate biophilic strategies. Transform rigid meeting environments into a living self-sustainable beautifully human spaces.
Sponsored by Encore.
