Mike van der Vijver

Mike van der Vijver is a Meeting Designer who designs effective meeting programmes for a wide variety of international clients through his companies Orange Gibbon and MindMeeting. In addition, he is an advisor, trainer and coach in Intercultural Management.

He regularly works as an event moderator or facilitator and provides content as a professional speaker during events. He trains people on topics such as meeting design, meeting effectiveness and innovative meeting formats, meeting facilitation, and cultural differences.

Mike co-authored Into the Heart of Meetings (2013), the first book on Meeting Design, and Meetings, by Default or by Design (2022), both together with Eric de Groot. He is a native of the Netherlands, lived in Italy for many years, but his main base now is in Taipei (Taiwan).

Q1: For which meeting would you like to design the program?

Peace negotiation talks.

Q2: What was your proudest moment as a meeting designer or trainer?

Each time a meeting organiser realises that thanks to good design, their meeting is achieving so much more. And as a second answer, I’m quite proud of the moment when Eric and I held the first copy of “Into the Heart of Meetings” in our hands - straight off the printing press!

Q3: What is something most people don’t know about you?

And that I am willing to share in public, ha, ha! Possibly my two biggest fears: heights and spiders – particularly the big hairy ones.

Q4: Poor meetings are the cause of what, exactly?

A humongous waste of resources, especially human, networking and relationship resources. And a lot of unnecessary ugliness and negative energy in people’s lives.

Q5: Who is the person you learned the most from?

From my mother Dini and my daughter Maria. And intellectually from Oliver Kahnemann, the author of “Thinking Fast and Slow”.

Q6: Describe a meeting during which (or after which) you witnessed a profound change.

After one of our training courses, a young woman came to me and said that she wanted to become a meeting designer. In fact, with great perseverance, she did. Several years later she told me that the training had changed her life entirely.

Where Mike has planted seeds of change

Government/Public
Ministry of Health, the Netherlands; Municipality of Triest, Italy; Municipality of Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Municipality of Utrecht, the Netherlands; Ministry of Environment, Taiwan; Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), Taiwan; Spanish Tourism Authority

Corporate
Unilever; Cisco Spain; Bayer; Volkswagen Financial Services; Otto Group; IMEX; FIEXPO; Foseco; Vesuvius; ITT Motion Technologies; Invesco; DSM; Royal Bank of Scotland; Hamilton Sundstrand; Ascendis; PDA; Westland Cheese; Connections; Pangea Law Firm Alliance

NGO
Greenpeace; Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF); Plant for the Planet; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI)

Association
International Union for the Fight Against Cancer; International Association of Dredging Companies; Dubai Chamber of Commerce; Central European Dredging Association; SIAV, Entrepreneurs Union, Veneto, Italy; Platform Event Managers, the Netherlands; Naples Convention Bureau; Catalunya Convention Bureau; Madrid Convention Bureau; Viparis; Best Cities Alliance; Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau (MYCEB), Malaysia; Meeting Professionals International (MPI); Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA); International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA); International Association of Conference Centres (IACC)

Supranational
European Central Bank; European Training Foundation; European Space Agency; International Chamber of Commerce; EU Leonardo Projects