Having gotten my VISA on the day of travel, I didn’t have much time to set expectations before landing in the beautiful city of Barcelona for my first visit to the Iberian peninsula. Most of my expectation setting happened at 34000 feet above ground and despite being closer to the heavens, it was like a […]
Fourteen adults from 8 different countries are standing in the four corners of a sandbox in a children’s playground. Coloured sheets of paper are strewn all over the sand, kept down by little hillocks because the wind is strong and chilly. At the command of a fifteenth colleague, they all run around until they have […]
Last year, we visited the Indian cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore, introducing Meeting Design to this vast and impressive country. It was an exhilarating and inspiring experience, generating fun and new insights. During one of our workshops, we presented participants with a design assignment. They had to show a format design for a situation which […]
Not long ago, Meeting Association MPI held its annual EMEC Conference, this year in delightful Kracow, Poland. I had the rare opportunity there to conduct a session under the title “The Meeting Lab”. It involved a number of experiments about the behaviours of meeting participants and how to influence these behaviours. The experiments were real, […]
Not so long ago, I paid a visit to a lamp manufacturer’s site. Not simple light bulbs or the run-of-the-mill ceiling tubers you can find in any home, no: the spectacular design stuff that makes your mouth water. From the outside, the building presented itself as a quirky, black cube with some unpredictable lighter lines. […]
As a designer of meeting programmes, it is vitally important to capture the messages that buildings whisper in your ears. I introduced the notion in a previous blog. How does this work? Imagine wearing a kind of huge butterfly net on your head that allows you to capture elusive stuff from out of thin air. […]
At times straightforward and up-front, at others modest and demure; sometimes distant and aloof, but on occasion flashy and flamboyant. As a designer of meetings, I listen to the messages expressed by buildings. What buildings say is important because it influences the behaviours of meeting participants. And in turn, those behaviours can make meetings more […]
On Sunday January the 11th, a sad thing occurred: the hugely popular Neapolitan songwriter and singer Pino Daniele was hit by a major heart attack and died a few hours later. The city of Naples lost one of the most loved icons of its identity at the age of only 59 years. The next day […]
… Sanpu’s huis staat midden in het regenwoud van Ecuador. Van zijn uitzicht over de Pastaza-rivier krijg je tranen in je ogen. Zijn kleinzoon Napoleon is onze gids en hij heeft het bezoek bij de oude Shamaan geregeld.