[MD2] Meeting Design x Science

Course Description

AMA's basic course in Meeting Design starts from the absolute beginning. It addresses — stripped to the barest essentials — what meetings and events are for.
 
Next, it gives you the criteria to distinguish good meetings from poor ones. It focuses on purpose and objectives, it reveals some first glimpses of how well-designed meeting programmes engage participants and the role of scientific knowledge in achieving that.
 
Participants will leave this introductory training with their convictions about meetings and events firmly shaken (and stirred).

Three Highlights

1. Allow yourself to strip meetings down to the bare minimum and then build them up again.
2. Value the importance of creating meetings with a purpose and of the science underlying the methodology.
3. Enjoy the notion of meeting programmes that are #Seriousfun.

Modules

In this training, we cover:

• What is a meeting?
• Good and poor meetings
• Working with the three Es
• The Six Reasons for Having Meetings
• The tasks of a meeting designer
• Designing Experience

Course Objectives

1. Learn the importance of the three Es, the yardstick that distinguishes good from poor meetings.
2. Obtain an oversight of the six main reasons for having meetings.
3. Design some first program elements, based on the criteria of #Seriousfun.

Who is it for? Who is it NOT for?

This is a training for the curious.

Allow yourself to experience what meetings can be like if you let go of your default expectations and go beyond mere content and hospitality or logistics. If you have always known intuitively that meetings can be much more than just a series of presentations, this is for you! The training will demonstrate that your intuition is right.
 
It is also for those who are curious about the impact of science on the behaviour of meeting participants and what this means for good meeting programmes.

It is not for those who think that audience participation is useless. Or for those who are good with meeting programmes focusing exclusively on expert speakers. Or for those who think that essentially repeating last year's programme is good enough.

Professional and Organisational Impact

Come with an open mind and your view of meetings, and events will never be the same again. You will acquire insights that will not allow you to tolerate the classical meeting programmes where participants spend much time on their phones (or worse…), with their minds drifting out of the meeting room.
 
This training inevitably has an impact on how people in organisations feel that meetings should go: less top-down; less information push; more meaningful conversations; and more reliance on knowledge from participants.

What are we going to do in class?

The training offers a mix of insightful experiences, the introduction of new principles, large and small group exercises and the constant opportunity to interact with the guide.

There will be no slides. Instead, we will create a training room where content and expectations, roles and responsibilities are constantly changing.

Don't expect to sit all day - you won't!

Reading List

Let's limit this to the following book for now. If you want to learn more with us, we will also give you more to read.

"Meetings by Default or by Design, a workbook with 100+ upgrades and enhancements for all those who desire better meetings & events," by Mike van Der Vijver and Eric de Groot, revised and crash-tested by Martin Sirk.