White Paper 2 – Get Your Green On

GetYourGreenOn

How incredible to create an experience that not only provided so many infromational posts and engagement among live and remote participants, but also generated TWO white papers! The first on the meeting design of ECV11 is just below this post, and the second by Judy Laine and Shawna McKinley along with our partner QuickMobile can be found here.

White Paper on ECV11 Meeting Design

When we began this experiment we call Event Camp Vancouver, we had many objectives, and we achieved much as a group. We learned lessons from the seven Event Camps that had taken place before us, learned from their innovations and experiments, and built on some and added some new twists. There was so much thought, time, effort and energy put into what was a highly successful experience, and so many learnings along the way we simply had to share these.

In this paper we will walk you through the intentional meeting design elements we incorporated and how we began with low-tech, high-touch sessions to build trust among participants and then evolved into a high-tech, high-touch hybrid event on the second and third day.  Incorporating best practices in sustainability, social gaming and event technology we were able to create a meaningful experience and introduced a number of elements that meeting and event professionals could experiment with and may be able to include into their own events.

Going through the process of re-examining why we did what we did clarified what worked well, what we can improve and how we can grow from this experience.We hope you find this useful and welcome your comments.

ECV11 White Paper

Mobile – Your Event Planning Advantage

What does mobile mean for events now? QuickMobile’s specialist in event app solutions, TrevorRoald, shared his perspective at Event Camp.

Mobile in its many forms means as the Organizer, you have more ways to connect with face to face and remote participants before, during and after the event.  For the participants this is from the comfort of anywhere they and their mobile device are.

Mobile increases engagement as you now have additional channels for discussion.  Mobile discussions can work to bring together groups or individuals that may not connect face to face, even if they happen to be at the same meeting – particularly larger meetings where participants can get quite spread out.

Should you add in gamification elements created using your mobile app, as an organizer you can develop content in a way in which it enhances learning and deepens understanding of the information you are sharing.

Mobile is not the future, it is now. The majority of participants across all sectors and from most of the world has access to mobile devices and it is now an expectation that when you attend a meeting you can be connected not only to home but also to where you are.  We want to connect to the people we are meeting (and could meet IRL if we know they are there) and mobile adds to this experience.

You also have the opportunity to significantly cut your paper production as all the detailed information required can now be uploaded via the mobile devices (native app or web based programs) and you can save money on this as well as be more flexible in your programming as the deadlines for updating print vs updating mobile are very different.  During an event you have the ability to adapt rapidly to the changes that inevitably happen as you can immediately update your program – speaker or room changes as examples – and push the information out to participants.

Mobile builds community. Pathable is an excellent example of a tool to do this and their systems allow integration across many platforms, making it very user friendly for your events.  If you are considering mobile – now is the time to delve into it!

For more info, you can also check out the presentation from EventCamp Vancouver.

Links to ECV11 AWESOME info

So many people involved with Event Camp Vancouver shared and continue to share great information, so here are some more great links for all #eventprofs and meeting professionals.

The learning continues

Ruud Janssen of The New Objective Collective gave a thoughtful and thought provoking presentation on Collaboration and his slides are available here.

Liz King was integral as our remote host, joining us from New York, and collected the twitter highlights for us here.

Sarah Vining of the NCC has a great comparison (as well as similarities) between ECDC and ECV here

MediaSite by Sonic Foundry made it possible for this event to be hybrid, and their thoughts as well as quick links can be found here

We hope you find these as useful as we do!

VCC – Brain Friendly Food and More

Quite honestly, this innovative and thoughtful menu was too good not to share.

Chef Blair Plates lunch

To be able to put into practice what we are talking about with meeting design and brain friendly foods, and to see and hear about the tangible results was an Event Camp win for all.

Often as meeting planners we will choose from existing menus which may not entirely inspire with their flavours.  More importantly though, the approach often means that we are feeding our delegates high-fat breakfasts, breaks that have many baked goods full of white flour and white sugar leading to carb and sugar loads that have a negative impact on learning and engagement as your body struggles with the chemicals they release in the brain which leads to the “rush” and then the crash, rather than a stable release of blood sugars that allow for maximum meeting energy.

 With Event Camp Vancouver we worked with the Chef to try a fresh approach and the snacks below were available always through the day, so participants could go out at any time and re-energize on their own schedule.

For more information on Chef Blair Rasmussen’s philosophy and approach to creating nutritious and delicious food in the Vancouver Convention Centre’s scratch kitchen can be found here  

The Menu

 Morning Energy Bar

Low Fat Yoghurt Mango Banana Shots

Build Your Own Granola 

Gluten-free Chocolate Almond Loaf

Smoked Oceanwise Salmon, Emmenthal and Free-Range Egg Popovers

Fruit Energy Shot Blocks

Whole Fruit Basket 

Espresso Drink Bar with a Range of Espresso Drinks with Skim, 2% and Soy Milks, Matcha Tea Lattes, Vancouver Convention Centre Wildflower Honey 

Raspberry Smoothie and Watermelon, Organic Orange, Grapefruit and Carrot Juices

Pitchers of Water

Lunches at meetings are often heavy, or multi-course or buffet, and often are also high carb, leading every speaker to ask to not have that post lunch spot! Chef Blair and his team presented an incredible, light, fresh lunch full of local ingredients, and the participants really appreciated having something different. 

Lunch was presented with family style platters for the salad skewers and mini-dessert pops with the main presented in a “bento box” format shown above.

Platters of Caprese Salad Skewers

Spot Prawn Cucumber Sunomono, Micro Greens, Oceanwise Albacore Tuna Tataki and Avocado Tartar on Grilled Papadum,Vegetable Tofu Crepe Roll, Aldersmoked Free range Chicken, Chanterelles and du Puy Lentils

Platters of Double Chocolate and Lemon Cake Pops, Light Raspberry Ricotta Cakes, Apple Kuchen 

Afternoon Energy Bar

Build Your Own Trail Mix 

Garden Vegetable Crudités,

Gluten-free Crisps, Yogurt Dip and Hummus

Cranberry Oat Bites, Kamut Shortbread

and again the Fruit Energy Shot Blocks, Espresso Drink Bar,  Hydration Station were again available.

We knew we were providing the nutritional basis for keeping the attendees alert, so we added small details, a sand trough to play in, playdoh and markers at the lunch table, and an amazing environment to ensure that all the senses were engaged, each piece leading to greater retention of learnings and more “connecting the dots” which leads to greater future application of learning.

Thank you to the Vancouver Convention Centre and Centerplate Catering for understanding and working with us to deliver this innovative menu.

Collaboration – Key to Success

Collaboration in Action

From the time we decided to host an Event Camp in Vancouver, the committee knew that this was going to be about bringing the right people together to collaborate on creating an experience that would truly envelop the learners in an environment that engaged and delivered on learning objectives.  As we looked at the diversity of our group and extrapolated that to the people that would potentially attend and participate would have a similar diversity we chose to keep the topics broad so that we would be able to adapt to specific needs within these broader categories during Camp. To set the stage for the most effective working together as a group we began Saturday morning with a session on collaboration that looked at the bigger picture of how we can work together better. Based on the relationship building that happened throughout the weekend and continues today,  we can look back and be comfortable this was the right choice.

If you would like to hear the session on Collaboration presented by Ruud Janssen and Glenn Thayer you can check it out here

One of the tools we used during this session that included both the face-to-face and remote attendees sharing their ideas on collaboration is called Pirate Pad and you can link to our ideas here.

 

Bell… the possibilities

Technology for meetings has evolved exponentially in the last decade.  Our clients’ expectations and our guests spoken and unspoken requirements have changed as well. We are so fortunate that when groups are hosting meetings at the Vancouver Convention Centre, that with some advance planning there are many cool ways that you can meet and exceed the new needs of the guests.  Here are some of the ways we enhanced Event Camp Vancouver with the existing technology in the building. ECV11 used one specific space within the Centre and Bell was able to isolate the monitors in this space.

One of the check in points - infomation uploads to the Bell Leaderboard

1. Collaborators could all be recognized on the existing monitors so no additional standard sintra or coreplast signage was required
2. The program of what was happening was tim
3. ed to change outside of the room on the digital signage, handy as we relied on this with no paper program printed
4. The internet bandwidth allowed us to host a seamless hybrid meeting where we not only worked with MediaSite to stream out the meeting live, we also skyped in presenters and the Montreal pod in real time (they also have amazing video conference capabilities, we just didn’t have anyone on another end to test this out with)
5. The wifi, now expected by many has capabilities to serve even the largest meeting and its needs and we had people tweeting, gaming, blogging and all their normal use without issue for the duration
6. The digital signage at the entrance of each room we were using could also show the twitter stream (which we chose not to have distracting inside the room so having in the foyers worked well)
7. The leaderboard for the Get Your Green On game integrated into the overall program was updated from the mobile app and sent automatically to specific screens set to track this
8. Kiosks throughout can also be branded and be used as a tool for a variety of functions from surveys to sponsorship
9. BONUS – Bell set up a QR code on the screen that uploaded an EventCamp Vancouver postcard that could be sent from any smartphone with a scanner app – really how cool is that!?

More importantly though, as the planner we found the team at Bell to be both thoughtful and proactive throughout the process, offering suggestions on the best way to use the technology to enhance the guest experience.

There is naturally a cost for the services required and if a planner starts early in the planning process to identify the opportunities and to budget appropriately you may find that you can save in other areas.  This may include reducing some of the traditional paper products (signage, programs) and may also give you added benefits such as the use of QR codes, you may not have considered before. You may find there are layers of benefits to your meeting, including sustainability initiatives matching those of your own organizations. The opportunities are interesting.

Check out this video too.

Paperless meetings… possible?

As it has been clear throughout, we planned EventCamp with sustainability front of mind. Is it possible to plan an event with (almost) no paper? YES!

The paper we printed and the places we saved are below

A game checkpoint

* one sign – used for the commercial and at registration.  The Bell technology in house at the Vancouver Convention Centre allowed us to provide an incredible amount of information without using any paper

* all the registration was electronic – no paper (all the marketing was electronic too!)

* we had three handouts – these were the only on-site items printed – 280 sheets total

* there were a few game checkpoint signs produced by the venues – many of the tasks were over the app though

* the session signage for the design Genius Bars were done on plantable seed paper – and the paper was sent home with one of the techs who has a daycare in their home for the kids to plant

* the planning for all the elements was done through email, limited meetings, skype and phone  calls – all limiting carbon footprints as well as meeting notes / agendas etc.

* the post event information will all be via this blog – again, very friendly

* we used old name badge stock not used at previous events, and corn based plastic holders, also leftovers from a previous event (Bonus – most people brought their own lanyards)

* the app, the game and the structure of the meeting taking place in predefined spaces meant also that we had no printed program

So can we have no paper? Probably not – but we can cut it immensely and we urge you to rethink too.

Food fit for Circus Camp

At the beginning of the planning process for EventCamp Vancouver, Culinary Capers came on board to serve up delicious fare for our Saturday night event at the Underground Circus rehearsal space. This was to be an evening where “Fear is Just a Word” and where we could play with our food as well as the apparatus.   It was also important for us to stay with the sustainability we had woven through the balance of EventCamp Vancouver, and Culinary Capers is a major proponent of using local, fresh, seasonal ingredients, and in constantly innovating and reinventing food presentation, and they definitely delivered!

The Cream Puff Cart ready for action

ECV11 Saturday Evening Menu is here for your perusal and enjoyment.  We thought it was fabulous – every single bite!

Then there was the circus – and what a lot of fun this was.  Campers could climb the skyladder, take a turn on the triceau, watch performances including crazy contortion, learn how to fall, talk to the owners of Culinary Capers Vancouver and Beijing via Skype, have a chat with a California green event planner, Joella of Mumtaz Events who kindly joined into the party, make a shadow in the shadow box, swing around on any of the moving platforms hung at sitting level, and enjoy simply fantastic food with a glass of wine poured by a wine fairy.  This was a night unlike any other experience that our guests had participated in – and one that won rave reviews.  We are still grateful to Peter, Ninon and the acrobats for welcoming us and making this a simply great party!

Corinne Kessel of Greenscape Decor is up the ladder!

Not to be tried at home!

Challenges & Solutions – Small Business

On Saturday morning we deep dove into challenges the industry in general and the people in the room needed to address.  You can watch here, and the recap is below.

http://hosted.mediasite.com/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=6fe3d0914138407fa5c976f0ca4fb1161d

(the full catalog of sessions is here) http://hosted.mediasite.com/Mediasite/Catalog/catalogs/EventCampVancouver.aspx

EVENT  CAMP WORKING SESSION SMALL BUSINESS CHALLENGES CORE CHALLENGES DISCUSSED Time challenges; Value  challenges; Cost and expense challenges

Our industry is full of small businesses, often collaborating, often on their own to deal with challenges. This session saw more than 15 small business owners enjoying a frank discussion with others in similar positions about where we are now and how we can move forward together.

Challenge or Problem Discussed	Solutions Discussed
IT Challenges – Not enough time to up-keep systems – Not enough time to train all staff on systems and properly implement systems –  Expense of adding systems and then up-keeping exorbitant –  How to hand learning from person to person year to year	– Breakdown challenge of tech and information to CHAMPIONS.  Have individuals hold small detailed elements of information rather than everyone knowing everything – Work collaboratively with other business’ to share resources – eg:  share a tech or IT guy –
Value Challenges –  How do we differentiate ourselves in an ever increasingly competitive market place where companies are overlapping in skill sets – Timelines shrinking so lowest common denominator thinking and acting takes hold –  Ideas migrate and become same – market ever fickle	– Focus business on relationships and building relationships –  Increased competition almost means you need to work MORE closely with competitors.  Share knowledge of marketplace and plan strategically.  Share resources at cross over points
– Differentiation of Small business’ vs independent operators.  Ie: challenges of business’ with 5 – 10 employees are very different from those with 1 or 2.	– Smaller companies can pick and choose.  Can focus on being more specialized.  Don’t have to do RFP’s – Larger small business’ with larger overhead are forced to go after and scramble for more work.
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