Meeting Design Training Courses from MindMeeting

Introduction

Meeting Design is a relatively new profession. A Meeting Designer works with meetings as a specific means of communication, just like newspapers or television. The work of a Meeting Designer is to bring content, objectives and participants’ expectations together and to design the programme in a way that makes it effective, engaging and conducive towards the organizational objectives. He works for the Meeting Owner and cooperates with PCO’s, AV companies, Speakers and Facilitators. His final consumers are the meeting participants, and his clients’ wishes are the design compass by which he sails.

The Course

The course will focus on the main basics of designing meeting programmes. Topics covered include: use the venue and the room lay-out to influence participant behaviour, give shape to the decisive first 5 minutes of the programme, optimize content and format, and others. In addition, course participants will learn how to cure major meeting headaches like: long personal introduction rounds, boring content, official formalities and poor speakers. The course is designed for meeting professionals who want to exert greater influence on meeting outcomes; communication experts who want to improve their understanding of the medium; change agents and consultants who want to use meetings effectively. The course will, of course, be highly interactive. The programme is built around a whole series of design assignments, close cooperation with fellow learners and some surprises.

Endorsements

ICCA’s CEO Martin Sirk is a firm believer in the vital importance of Meeting Design for any company, organisation or individual striving to be successful in tomorrow’s meetings industry:  “Mike and Eric’s book, “Into the Heart of Meetings”, is quite simply the most stimulating book on meetings that I’ve come across in two and a half decades in the meetings industry, and is the reason why ICCA invited them to collaborate on many of the design elements in our own annual Congress, significantly increasing our levels of innovation and delegate engagement. I can unreservedly recommend attending their Meeting Design course, and believe their ideas have the power to transform traditional thinking about our business, and can make your meetings dramatically more effective and enjoyable.”

The Dutch Chapter of Meeting Professionals International (MPI) offered this course to its members in early 2014. It received the highest-ever ratings of all MPI Netherlands educationals.

Participants said about this course:

“ Meeting Design is about creating the perfect event; one during which you will reach your goals“.

“ After this training, I have realised that just about everything we have been doing in the Meeting & Event Industry in the past is wrong!“

In January 2015, the first international edition was given in Malmö, Sweden. The participants said about this course:

“ The training was the perfect mix of theory and practice with quite challenging group exercises in real world scenarios which really had an impact on the way we will approach events in future. With Mike we had a very experienced expert and mind-set changer and learned a lot about maximizing meeting effectiveness by better activating the bodies and souls who are present”.

“ To actually make each meeting count is important to me – and meeting design is a wonderful approach to make that happen. The course gave me new angles on- for example – how to make the content stick, on the influence of the togetherness environment, on how to make speakers see their role in the meeting and on how to design an end of a meeting that gives a direction ahead”.

For 2 years in a row, MindMeeting conducted Meeting Design Trainings in India in close collaboration with IdentCITY. Participants said about this course:

” The workshop is a combination of conference frameworks, case studies, practical ideas and thoughtful suggestions, Into the Heart of Meetings can help us design successful meeting experiences and ensure desired outcomes”

” A must attend workshop for the meeting industry professionals and all service providers. It’s an eye opener to me, and I will surely implement the ideas that I learned in this workshop”.

The Methodology

Meeting Design provides the methodology that allows you to move from believing in ROI to actually achieving measurable outcomes. To produce outcomes that cause behaviour change, you need an in-depth understanding of meeting processes and how to influence them. This course will offer exactly that.

Into the Heart of Meetings

Naturally, much of the course content is based on the book “Into the Heart of Meetings”, written by Eric de Groot and Mike van der Vijver. This first-ever book on Meeting Design has received world-wide attention and acclaim.