Unlock Joy: The Secret to Unforgettable Event Experiences!

All right, Tahara. So nice to have you here. Nice to be here. Excellent. So, uh, this session is all about deconstructing what makes business events great and the human experience. Something you've talked a little bit about a little bit. >> Who who knows here in the room? Can you raise your hand? Okay. A few people know. If you don't know to hear, she's been working at events for over 30 years. Um, started at two, of course. Right. Exactly. Um, but what I think is super interesting is you've been working for the last few years running events like this one, events for event people. Yes. >> Right. At sites and now at IMIX. Yes. >> That's a tough crowd. >> So you guys we hear you right. >> And you're also a two times author, right? You have um >> event design book, intentional event design, >> the only kind of events to design. Intentional. >> Exactly. Which I have like a tiny mention in one of the sections. Yes. Very good. and ARPI is joy is your latest book. Um, but this session is kind of a preession to the keynote listener session as well and we want to kind of talk a little bit about >> let's talk about what a good idea that is. >> Oh, thank you. Thank you. Wasn't my idea, but I'm glad we I'm glad we're trying to make it work. >> We're going to hear from the keynote listeners in a little bit, but let's talk about listening for a second.

>> Okay. >> Are we listening enough in the industry? >> I don't think anyone in the world is listening enough. And most of the time when we are listening to something, we're listening to respond. >> Mhm. >> So we're not listening quite often with empathy and curiosity and we're distracted because something else is dinging and notice, you know, things are going off. And so there was some really good examples today where people said, you know, I talked about something where I I saw something at the event I thought should be improved and then they saw that it was improved. That's when listening works. So I think we need to be all doing a better job of listening. >> And do you think that's going to happen? Do you see a movement in that direction? >> I don't know. Yes. Let's go with yes. >> We start a listening today. That's good. Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Okay. Good. Let's talk a little bit

about your book. Our KPI is joy. You make this case for joy being what we should be measuring, right? >> Yeah. Well, the sub the subtext of that is how do we use live events to catalyze happiness, productivity, and trust. >> Okay. And so we all in this room have this incredible power because we convene people to come together to share ideas. And when people share ideas, sometimes you're doing that with some vulnerability. Sometimes you're doing it with some empathy. Sometimes we are doing it um to make a point and get people to provoke some thought and think differently and to shift how people are acting and reacting. Um, and we need to use that power and and we need to use it with intention. So the thing about joy is that joy is if if we lived in a permanent state of joy, it would be terrible. >> That doesn't sound so bad. Why would it be terrible? >> It would be terrible because we're human. So we can't know joy if we haven't known sorrow. And we can't learn from an event if we don't have peak end moments and highlights and things that we uh learn from. And the thing other

thing about events is that there's two people that attend two of us that attend every event. >> So each of us has >> each of us has two people. We have the experiencing self. The person that was excited about coming here today that finally found the door to City Winery. Anyone um that came in that were greeted so kindly by you and your team um got to come around to this beautiful sunshine and there's been, you know, nice food and conversations and things all day. So we've had a very nice experience and it's been it will go from about probably 8 in the morning until 6:00 or 7 or 8. >> We like that person. So what what's the other person? >> The remembering self. >> Okay. >> So how much of that of today are you going to remember? Not very much because we have this thing called the forgetting curve. So what we want to do as event designers is we want to make sure that what we're giving people is that the remembering self leaves with the best parts of the day. That they leave with I had the best piece of cheese. I had the best conversation. the best hug, heard the most interesting thing that I can apply to my work. So, happiness, productivity, and trust.

>> And how do we do that? >> We do that by designing days like today where there's lots of lots Well, no, it's true. I mean, there's lots of space for conversations. It's a smaller group. Um, you had roundts where people had intimate conversations. You had one-to-one coaching where people could have really focused conversations. A lot of serendipity. I introduced lots of people. I got to meet Alisandra today. We were introduced on by somebody last week and realized we we actually realized we opened up I opened up the MP MPI magazine at an event last week and there was me and there was Alisandro. I was like obviously we need to meet. Um that's a moment of joy for me because we were both going to be here. So, but it's about building in all of those little things, making sure we have enough hydration, enough food, and enough moments to connect so that when we leave, we've left not only having heard something that's interesting, and there's been many interesting things today, um, but we've probably had an opportunity to assimilate it because we've probably had a conversation with somebody that anchored that um, feeling that I learned something. So, there's But how many of us attend other events that are a bit more vanilla, right? create a bit more a little bit more one note couple hands go up brave soldiers. >> It may happen from time to time.

>> They happen from time to time. So, but we we have this incredible power in convening and um and to understand and how to explain to our stakeholders that it's okay for people to leave having felt joy in your event because frankly if you didn't you're not going to come back next year. So, if your metric is registration revenue, tank it. Um but you can right but you can build >> it's kind of important though registration revenue >> registration revenue is very important but the easiest way to get registration revenue is to take a model where is this mini still here with TED where you're mostly sold out before people leave the year before because they had so many good experiences. >> Yeah. >> Anybody else have events that are sold out before people leave for the next year? I mean it's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah. >> You know I work at one of the biggest events in the world and it's it's not the same people that come. A lot of the same people come because it's a place of joy. >> Absolutely. The the thousands of TED videos online may help with that as well and the uh image of the event, etc. >> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. >> You talked about peak and moments.

>> Yes. >> Can you just define what those are and how do we create those? >> Yeah. So, basically everything needs to Okay, I'm going to equate it to a fairy tale. Little Red Riding Hood. Everybody's familiar with Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood, she's got to make some muffins for grandma because grandma doesn't feel good. Great. She makes the muffins. She goes through the woods. She drops the muffins off. She gives grandma a hug. She goes home. Nothing happens. >> No peak end moments. >> Yep. >> So, you need to create something where there is a sense of anticipation, a sense of interest, um a little sense of openness or vulnerability. Sometimes sometimes that's through fear. That's not always the best way um in events, but um something that creates a sense of something's going to happen. Um, and when you finish today, as you're finishing with your keynote listeners, that's a great end moment because now we're taking all the things we heard all day and reinforcing them. It's actually kind of a genius ending. My other favorite genius ending I ever did was at my last site global event, we created a pub on the stage. And so the host from the destination and the president of this that came out and they were in their aprons. We had a bar set up. We invited up our key sponsors. We found stories from people that we didn't yet know from the people who were the participants. We had them come up and tell their stories. Um, we had Greg Offner playing the piano. Everybody had a big sing along and that was our closing session. Massive great end moment. >> Well, I hope the keynote listeners can, you know, live up to that to some that sounds to beat. I like I like the sound of that. >> You mentioned, I think, also embracing

kind of failure and imperfection. >> Why is that important? Well, because if everything was always perfect, life again would be on that, you know, peak all the time. Um, humans are human and so as much as we don't like failing at things and we certainly don't always like admitting failure or apologizing for things, the reality is those are the things that we all grow from. >> And the but the great thing about events is because we don't like those as humans, we don't want to have those moments at work. But if we can create places and events to try things um and that could be some of the things we saw at C2, you know. So it's like when Anak talked this morning, she showed the pictures of the people going up and having a meeting 32 feet in the air. Well, what do you do when you're 32 feet in the air? You focus on the people right across from you. That's all you're down. You don't look down. And they put a mirror down there, too, by the way. So you don't look down. Um but that's the moments where you have those different kinds of conversations. And you know if you can create spaces where people can try you know when we do things like Lego serious play where you're building in storytelling when we do things where you sit down and you you know when you when you try to face a challenge in a simulation at an event >> and you can succeed or learn in that space and then take those learnings back to work. Now you're going to be more successful at work because you've had that that practice at failing in a safe environment and that is a much nicer place to try out an idea that >> than events >> in front of your boss >> risky to do these to to to try and fail. Right? Going sticking with that point a little bit, you know, in our teams, in our companies that are running events, how do we make it so that our teams can fail or at least have positive conversations around failure? Because you said it's hard at work to admit to failure or to say that, you know, that didn't work. How do we make it easier for us to have those conversations?

>> I think sometimes you just we need to recognize. So I one of my first bosses, she was always angry. >> So >> I've had a boss like that. Yeah. you know, her reaction to something not going quite the way it should during, you know, was always a little bit of uh lashing out. So, I learned in my very first job that it was actually much nicer to just say a lot of please and thank you. Um, bake cookies for the technical crew. They always if they saw my name on a case, they wanted to go work on that show. It was really good. Um, but >> that's a good tip. I like that. We'll put that in the notes afterwards. >> It is a good tip. Um, but it's when something goes wrong, and something will go wrong. If you can surround yourself with people who will find the solution, there was many times I was, you know, we'd come on site and they'd be like, "Oh, the backdrop's missing a panel. Oh, that's but it's okay because we've already come up with the solution. Here's the two things we could do." So, it didn't match my original vision, but I'd already set the stage for people to come with the solution-minded orientation. And then when things really go wrong and you know I've been at the top of Whistler Mountain and there is a lightning storm which means you can't leave the mountain on a gondola unless there is 30 minutes clear with no lightning within 30 kilometers of you. Tell that to your client. That's fun. >> Good information to have if you ever do an >> Right. But it's just those kinds of of things, you know, when you have a client who's ready to work with you. Um and the whole mountain rallied. I mean there was it was pretty insane. Um but we have to be able to have open conversations when things go wrong because things will go wrong in events and with our team you can't set up a place of blame. You have to set up a place of solution-minded orientations and that's a very intentional choice to make. >> Yep. Good. Um you have a little show

coming up in a few weeks that I think a lot of people in the audience >> I know. I saw the hands. Y >> could you uh are there specific moments of joy that you have planned? Could you pick out one that you think is is is something that we should know about? >> I could not pick out just one. Is Dave Stevens still in the room? There's Dave. >> He's doing some push-ups in the back just to keep it. >> Let's not talk about that. So last year, yeah, that's not a moment of joy for me was also a moment of challenge for me when last year Dave had a push-up challenge and in 20 minutes, um about 12 of us did 210 push-ups. I have not done a push-up since last year. >> You learned your lesson, >> right? Um something that we really focus on at IMAX is balancing personal and professional education. Um, and with the personnel, one of the things that we have is a resilience room, which is really set up for the neurode divergent. And then we have the circadian cove, which Dave is building. I'll give him all the credit for this. Um, because he's got three days of programming that are all designed around the circadian rhythms that you're going to um face during the day. And let's face it, anyone who's been to IMAX, it is a marathon, not a sprint. So, if you can take 15 minutes and stretch or breathe or write in a journal or do some push-ups, um you are going to have a different experience because you can just go and have a little 15inute reset. That will be a moment of joy. There's tons of activations in the hallway. There will be lots of moments of joy there. And mostly, you know this, it's the three-minute conversations and the hugs, >> the hundreds of three-minute conversations. >> Hundreds of minute conversations. >> All right. What about practical advice?

you know, yes, you're doing all this at IMX. Maybe we can do all those things at our events, but for for other people running different types of events, maybe they're more formal, maybe they're in different locations. What's like one piece of practical advice you can give to add joy to our events? >> So, just really think about the think about the participants who are coming. So, can I tell you a little story?

>> Of course. >> Okay. I know we're so I have a very good friend who in 2017 um she's my sister friend and um we lost her daughter and she was in her 20s and last year she started a grief camp. So she had 38 parents who came to a grief camp and for three days and it was very intense. it was quite heavy. Um, and she had a foundation that supported them. And that foundation gave her 10 years of funding so that any parent who needed to attend could. And so they just did it this year. She bought my book, which is weird. She owns a moving company. She's not an event planner. Um, and she's they did it last weekend. And she sent me some pictures from it. and she sent me a note that one of the participants said, you know, it's I really last year was really great, but it felt really heavy and this year felt like we had a lot of moments of joy. Thank you for that. And she then said, you know, I think it's because of that book that I read. So, there's so many examples of ways that we can think about the human experience and the people who are coming to our events and what's going to matter to them. And you know they did things like ice cream breaks and yoga and they did craft making and they had quiet time and they had journaling time and you know it was very focused on that. But it just think

about your audience. I mean that's the thing. So think about your audience and what's going to matter for them and think beyond the just the logistics. >> Think about the holes in between the cracks in between the logistics um and how you can make those the best part of the experience. >> Wow. Great story. I think if that event can have moments of joy, then I think we're on the right track. >> Yeah. >> So, here, thank you for sharing that with us. >> Thank you.