the meeting planner

Mickey Schaefer, CAE
Experience Orchestration
Spring 2010

MICKEY SCHAEFER, CAE, is president, Mickey Schaefer & Associates LLC. She has served as Chairman of the Board of the Professional Convention Management Association and is a 2006 inductee into the Convention Industry Council’s Hall of Leaders. Her distinguished career includes twenty years of strategic planning and meetings and conventions experience with the American Academy of Family Physicians.

MPG: Tell us about your mentors and the lessons they shared?
Mickey: First and foremost, my parents. My dad was a dreamer and my mom was a doer so I have the benefit of both of those qualities.

Three people within the industry have served as my primary mentors - David Noonan, the deputy EVP with the American Academy of Opthomology, Charlotte St. Martin with Loews Hotels (now with the League of American Theaters and Producers), and Dr. Robert Graham, MD, my executive VP at the American Academy of Family Physicians.

I watched David and Charlotte’s leadership skills and how they could take an idea, build it and then help people follow them. They were also very skillful at not getting too far out ahead of everyone else. I love the old saying, “lead from the middle.” They would make sure that they were moving the organization but not so rapidly that they were leaving everyone in the dust.

I’ve watched people’s careers in this industry go south because of their style. Their skill sets were excellent, they were intelligent, they had drive and passion but their personal style - how they presented and conducted themselves, not only in a personal but in a professional setting – kept their careers from moving forward. I watched David and Charlotte’s style and have tried to emulate it.

Dr. Graham was excellent at group process. While leading internal meetings and board meetings, he was able to take very complex issues, split them into several issues, then present them one at a time and get the group to reach a consensus and rally around the idea.

MPG* attended your presentation about “building attendance” at the TACVB Conference in Granbury and was impressed with your passion for the subject. Please share the key elements of the presentation.

I really believe that the entire meeting experience, fueling and celebrating the experience, is something that needs to be addressed. The Experience Economy by Pine and Gilmore is an excellent book. I heard a quote, “Eventually, experience orchestration will become as much a part of doing business as product and process design are today.” The concept of experience orchestration
is the next evolution of meetings.

Experience orchestration is a new way of looking at meetings and a new way for planners to show value to their boards and bosses. It’s looking at the total attendee experience from the registration process, the promotional process, during the meeting and following the meeting. It’s an exciting area that I think is just beginning to be tapped.

What’s an example of a group that you feel is using creative techniques to build their attendance?
The National Association of College Stores has been doing some unique things. Experience orchestration is what they did without even realizing it. Also, PCMA did a good job with their social media connectivity. It helped people connect prior to and during the meeting. Not everyone took advantage of it because that’s not yet the norm but it certainly will be for future generations. They also did a video contest prior to the meeting to help promote the attendance.

During your presentation, you showed a video that had been produced to promote a meeting. Can you share the details?
The video was produced by Frank Swoboda of Corner Booth Media with creative help from Daniel Thorpe from Boom Creative, both located in Spokane, WA, for their client, CUNA. If your readers would like to see it, visit YouTube and search “CFOs Gone Wild.” It’s been a bit hit.

People are now seeing the value of social networking as it relates to the meetings industry. Regarding this and technology in general, help us look to the future.

I think we are going to see an evolution of the technology itself.

We are using technology with a connectivity platform versus an educational platform. Some creative entrepreneurs are going to take the structure of Twitter or Facebook and move it into a educational platform that not only helps people connect but helps them connect on the educational content - the speakers and the industry issues - that can get the conversation going even before the meeting. This can help educate the speakers on where the people are and what they need. Based on that need they can shape their presentation then help that conversation continue.

You will see these two different types of social media. They will help build the emotional connections that are so important to build attendance and also develop the emotional connection to the organization which helps with membership recruitment and retention. On the corporate side it also helps because they are bringing new ways to help divisions or franchisees stay current.

There are some really fun things happening now. Ryan George recently talked about a technology called spotme.com that helps you, through RFID barcoding, find people. You put in a profile of your interests and who you are interested in meeting and it matches you like a dating service. In a sea of 3,000 it’s hard to run into people. A man was sitting at lunch at a table for 10 and realized, through spotme, that one of the people he wanted to see was sitting across the table from him. Eventually, experience orchestration will become as much a part of doing business
as products and process.

The whole key to all of this will be the adoption of the new technology by the attendees. Are they going to use it? How can we make it so compelling that they want to use it? Then we need to celebrate that use.

I’m confident that the future of the meetings industry is bright. People are always going to want to get together – face to face. That will never change.

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