That’s what I was thinking on day three of Collaborate Marketplace in Portland, Oregon, in June when Spellos, an event tech expert and longtime speaker at Collinson events, got up in front of an audience to close out our first-ever Flashpoint session with a brief 10-minute talk, a la TED. Three fantastic speakers preceded him, but as he consistently does, Spellos left the audience thinking long after they packed their bags and headed to the next session. What are the two words that define where you’re headed and what’s driving change within your organizations and at your meetings?
He offered a few examples. Google Glass. Social media. Disruptive technology. As an event tech teacher and the student himself, Spellos defers to tech when talking about how events are changing. Of course, budgets are changing. Event logistics are changing. Event marketing is changing. But for Spellos, technology is at the core of how meetings and events have been upended in the past decade. Technology is fundamentally changing the way we plan and experience conferences and events.
Take Collaborate Marketplace, for example. This was our fourth Collaborate Marketplace—the fourth one I’ve attended and the fourth for several attendees. How it’s changed in the past four years is subtle but natural. This year, we included a first-ever social lounge in the registration area, invited attendees to shoot their first-ever Vine videos, and helped them participate in a first-ever Collaborate Marketplace InstaHunt. That’s a lot of first-ever initiatives, all driven by social media and technology.
After I’d arrived home while watching an episode of “Breaking Bad,” of all things, my two words came to me later. I’m midway through season two of the acclaimed show, and I’m watching the transformation of the lead character, who delivered a stunning revelation that once he’d abandoned fear, he felt liberated. “What I realized is that fear, that’s the worst of it. That’s the real enemy,” he says.
Abandon fear. Those are my two words. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t be scared to say, “We’re not going just to do it this way because we’ve always done it like that.” Those two words will help us deliver new resources, better features, and more content to help you plan better events. What are your two words?
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