Thanks for stopping by and leaving your comments. I appreciate it.

You have some great points and feedback. A good meeting, event, conference planner should begin with the end in mind, focused on the goals for that meeting. Because education is a passion of mine, I focus on the education design of a meeting and how to engage you as a learner as much as possible. If you came to an event that I planned and didn’t get your learning needs met, then I failed! That monkey would rest on my back!

I do think some meeting planners are incorporating more Web 2.0 concepts into their events with Peer2Peer table discussions, unmeetings and unsessions, Really Live Chats and such. Let’s hope more read your comments here and begin to think of how they know what their attendees want.

I am glad that my post has generated conversation because although I did want to make a point and give a perspective I did want to cause a little controversy and get people thinking and talking about how social media is impacting face to face meetings.

I am stunned that you were stunned that I asked if the purpose of face to face meetings has changed. From my experience the reason for the existence of most face to face association meetings is top-notch education. Yes there are always good networking opps at association conferences and conventions but in many ways this is a tangential benefit or a “bonus” of being at the event.

Historically the majority of people decide to attend a meeting based on what they will learn there, not on how good the networking possibilities may be. This is not true for everyone and that is why I say “the majority of people.” There are people that do go to meetings based on who will be in attendance and how many opps they will have to meet these people but from my experience those people were not the norm.

I think that some of this is due to the way events have been, and continue to be, marketed. When you hear about a seminar or a conference the number one thing you hear about is how much you will learn. In many ways we have been trained to accept paying a large sum of money because we know that we will benefit through access to knowledge and information provided by speakers. For most people it is now ingrained in us to make attendance decisions based on that.

Personally my reason for attending is now mixed. I do go to meetings based on the education and am very frustrated if the level of education, and type of education, I receive at an event does not meet my expectations. That said I am starting to realize that much of the value I receive at meetings is through the connections I make at the meeting in the hallway, at receptions at tables in session rooms before speakers start to present, etc. The bigger question to me is do meeting organizers know what their audience is looking for and if more and more people are coming for the connections and the networking do they know how to tweak their meetings and their marketing to take advantage of that (i.e. Networking opps are almost always over a meal when you only get access to the people sitting at your table when your mouth is full or at the end of the day over drinks when many people are exhausted from sitting in sessions all day yet there is almost always a full slate of sessions every day of the conference during the 9-5 time period Are they willing to make networking events more prominent and in times that some might consider may “prime time?”). If they don’t now, or don’t know that soon, will social media fill more of the knowledge flow that people are now coming to face to face meetings to get. I think that in many ways it already has so meeting organizers really need to figure out their business model and tweak their face to face meeting strategies accordingly.