Here is Misha Glouberman‘s four-step process for planning events:
have a goal
do things that support that goal
don’t do things that don’t support or undermine your goal
if you are planning a corporate event, periodically stop and ask yourself: “what would you do if you thought your attendees were competent adults?”
Misha Glouberman has been hosting events for over a decade, and now works full-time on making events, like conferences, better.
We recently recorded a podcast episode on how to improve events and how he has built a career around this work. The above video and the videos below are from that podcast episode.
On the small things you can do to improve your events:
During the episode, I asked Misha about how on his website he says: “A few small changes can make an enormous difference.” He response was that conference organizers should put more emphasis on how people meet each other and to bring more intentionality to how they meet each other.
As an example, he shared that if you had 25 minutes in your agenda before lunch to reimagine it, that you could make the first 10 minutes a time when people talk to each other.
Then, you could use the next 15 minutes, having people walking around the venue to find other people that want to talk about the same topic as them (and then doing so).
How does exactly work?
In the podcast episode, Misha shared how you could encourage everyone to write on a large poster board a topic that they want to talk to other people about. These people would then literally raise the poster above their head, making the poster board and topic visible for other people. You then instruct everyone to literally walk over to other people that have a poster board and topic of interest for you two (or more people) to start talking about that topic! Boom!
This sounds so fun and impactful…. I want to try it!!!
On sparking new and intentional conversations:
In the above video clip, Misha talked about the importance of encouraging people to talk to people that they DON’T KNOW to spark new conversations and connections.
You can also put people into small groups and ask them to reflect on and then share with the other people about something meaningful in their work and lives. You ideally want to guide people to talk about something that is connected to the theme of the conference as well. This goes back to designing a conference and programming around your initial goal!
I really enjoyed this conversation. I could nerd out about this stuff for hours!!!
You can dive deeper into this topic by the listening to the podcast episode here!
I think I first learned about Misha on Twitter/X if you want to follow him there. I also really like the Toronto Event Generator newsletter that he writes as well!
If you want to chat about this kind of stuff, reply back! You can also read one of my posts on mini-conferences too!
NYC Gatherings: check out my NYC Gatherings calendar for fun gatherings to attend!
To your next event,
David Nebinski who just got from the gym and whose calf is feeling much better these days after doing a lot of physical therapy type of exercises for the last two months
PS: if you are looking for a new song recommendation, here you go!
PPS: feel free to reply back and say hi!