My Spin on SPINCon

I was really curious how SPINCon would play out for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve known Shawna Suckow, the founder of Senior Planners Industry Network (SPIN) for quite a few years, and have admired her entrepreneurial spirit—she’s not afraid to break out of the box and try sometimes-daring new ideas. And I was wondering what kind of crowd she would draw to this inaugural event—a three-day conference that was intended to “hatch” innovation and inspiration with SPIN members. (SPIN began in 2008 as an online forum for planners with at least 10 years of experience, and has evolved into a networking group of more than 2,000. This was the group’s first in-person conference.)

I was able to attend portions of the conference and was impressed. (That’s impressive because I am the veteran of countless boring conferences over the course of many years, and tend to be a bit cynical.) This was a fresh, Event Camp-type experience. Lots of technology (some good, some not) and engagement activities (some good, some not). About 100 people attended from around the country. Lots of association planners, some indies and some corporate.

I really liked the room set-up in the main ballroom at the St. Paul Crowne Plaza. Lounge furniture was interspersed with traditional rounds of 10, and many people gravitated to the comfy furniture. The stage had a runway that projected into the audience, making the setting more engaging and intimate. Large monitors were set up on each table and in the lounge areas, bringing the action up close to the attendees.

No business cards allowed. We were all issued Pokens (see related story, Top Tips) to exchange contact information, and it worked pretty well. The conference had its own app and I used my iPhone throughout the conference to check on the agenda and speakers.

One piece of tech that we just didn’t get: whooznear, an app that is supposed to show you who is in the room. Just didn’t work, although I checked it every hour or so. I’m not sure what the story was, but I’ll let you know what happened.

You can read about the social activities at http://spincon.spinplanners.com. I did not attend these because of schedule conflicts, but the people I talked to said they came off just fine. A baby shower at the Mall of America and a floating tradeshow on a riverboat added novelty to the event.

The highly anticipated presentation, The Cheater’s Guide to Awesome Hybrid Events, had a great concept: have part of the group break off into another room and become “Canada,” and another group break off into another room and become “home,” plus live-stream the whole thing to a virtual audience. Sam Smith and Erica St. Angel are engaging presenters, but sadly, the hotel’s band-width couldn’t carry off the connectivity. “Canada” had a terrible experience with no slides and bad audio and “home” had to come back to the main group when their computers couldn’t link in. The virtual audience deserted when they couldn’t access the presentation.

But these things happen, especially when you’re experimenting with brave, new ideas.

I thought that, in general, it was a noble effort on SPIN’s part. I appreciated taking part in it, and offer kudos to Shawna and SPIN for taking chances and breaking new ground!

Rethink Forum

You may be surprised to learn that there’s a new group dedicated to promoting the “interactive revolution” – the industry’s shift to participatory meetings that engage attendees through technology, interaction and collaboration. (If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the October/November 2010 issue of Event Solutions for an in-depth story on this new movement.)

Well, the movement is spreading, as I predicted last year. This new group, which was just conceived in December, is called the Rethink Forum, and it consists of groups of like-minded people meeting in various locations and then everyone linking together to create one big, interactive conference. Virtual attendees can join in, too. If this sounds a little like the recent Event Camps hosted by the event profs group, you’re right. In fact, some of the leaders of the ReThink Forum are event profs themselves.

The ReThink Forum’s first meeting was held yesterday morning in New York, with hubs in Paris, Copenhagen and Minneapolis as well as virtual attendees. Sam Smith of Event Camp fame organized and led the Minneapolis group, which I was invited to attend. We had about 20 people there, a nice turnout considering not many people are aware of this group yet, and the meetings are invitation-only. In total, the conference had 297 attendees.

I won’t go into the content in this blog – there will plenty of information available at www.rethink-forum.com after it’s updated. But of course, a lot of it had to do with the changing face of meetings and conferences. Most of us in the Minneapolis group had laptops (provided by Sam) so were able to give our input on ideas several times throughout the conference.

The pacing was a little frenetic. It’s hard to synch different groups in different time zones, engage them as one group, but allow local interaction at the same time. Then there always seems to be technology issues, problems with audio or video, or links. To be honest, I expected that. Nothing ever goes off without a hitch.

And the quality of the video (and audio at times) was distracting. We’re used to hi-def and hi-res, so the grainy, jerky quality of the live images detracted from the message, rather than creating an environment where we truly felt connected. This too, I expected. After all, the conference was free, so budget was a concern, I’m sure.

But it was fun watching Cheryl Kranz and Ryan Hanson use Prezi to give their presentation on a huge interactive event they produced for the local Boston Scientific group – cool stuff.

My overall impression is that we’re still at the crawling stage with this stuff. We have great ideas and creativity when it comes to engaging attendees, but are still pretty much figuring out how to make them work. Events like this are a start and my kudos to the trail blazers who are taking the lead in figuring out what it all means – and how to do it.