I recently became a fan of podcasts

Having never been a big fan of audiobooks and the like, I resisted it for a long time. The initial driving force for me was that I have not been able to read much over the last couple of months, and I have been traveling more. So, I decided to try podcasts – and since then became hooked. 

There is a sea of different shows, hosts, and topics, and one must learn to swim in it. Just like in the sea, there is a lot of garbage and one needs to sort through it to find those pearls that would bring joy. In short, podcasts are great sources of knowledge, inspiration, and fun – and now I am enjoying them. I will share my favorites at the end of this post. I like that they aren’t too narrow or highly specialized to discuss specific topics. There are so many things to be interested in in life, and if I can learn and laugh at the same time, or learn about one field and apply it to my own – that is what I am looking for. 

Then, how does that relate to the blog title? Read on.

Now that IMEX America 2019 is over, I want to tell you about what it was like (Spoiler: it was awesome 🙂 )

Talking Event Psychology

First and foremost – I got to speak about #eventpsychology! Having already been excited about sharing insights on applying psychology and neuroscience to events with fellow eventprofs, I got even more excited when I saw a packed seminar room with people standing around. This feeling is hard to describe, but it gave me goosebumps! It is clear that the event community is becoming more interested in the topic. The evidence I have comes from the feedback I have received online, my own session experience, and looking at the IMEX agenda, which has a number of similar topics (e.g. the measurement of emotions; how to improve learning and networking experiences with science-backed methods). 

Three ways to improve engagement

Secondly, I’d like to share three cool things I experienced firsthand at IMEX that have a lot to do with my favorite subject above and in particular, the concept of engagement I discussed during my presentation. Here are these three things.

“On average, 1 in 7 have met a significant other at an event“. This is quite a romantic stats I learnt from a 2018 Cvent/Edelman research ‘Inside the Mind of Event Attendees’ that surveyed 3 000 event participants from the US, UK and Germany. I guess, ‘When we meet we change the world’ gets one more meaning now 🙂

Well, there are some more, equally amazing, numbers (read the full report here).

I decided to pick up a few most interesting conclusions and add practical ideas to transform these insights into practice. On the picture below you can see “inside my mind” by the way – my ‘ink thoughts’ pictured by the Braintone Art device on AE&ES stand in Las Vegas – amazing experience!).

Instead of ‘event industry trends for 2019’-style post, this time I’d like to talk about something that goes timeless. I think now it is just the right moment: we talked a lot about ‘event experience’ in 2017 and partly in 2018. This year we’ve had much many conversations about event industry legacy and its scope of impact. This means to me that we are finally approaching that state of affairs where majority of industry professionals are getting aware about true value events hold. And this is why we start hearing ‘strategic events’ more often.

Below is my take on what makes up strategic events – the post was originally published on MeetingMeanBusiness blog in July 2018. I do believe what we need  for 2019 is to talk in more detail what strategic level is and how you get your event there.

5 Pillars of Strategic Events