another interesting take on PowerPoint
http://blog.cvent.com/blog/executiveoasis/whats-behind-the-backlash-against-powerpoint?&utm_source=ME-NENewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ME-NENewsletterApril12

……the opening without the conference MC was a bit flat and i don’t think people felt connected together or thought wow i’m really looking forward to the next few days but that’s just my opinion.
……what was with that session Open Your Mind to New Forms of Connectivity by Liesl Capper, talking and having relationships with robots? Really this is everything that MEA does not stand for. The future of MEA should be all about meeting and  connecting with humans. MEA should really scene this sort of crap out, thank god it only went for 10-15minutes, but its still 10-15minutes i will never get back.
……its a shame that David Astle got lost in his words and trapped in a Creative Trance live on stage.
……would have been nice to open our minds and have a session or two outside in Darling Harbour, , just thinking ‘outside’ the square.

Overall i thought the content was very good but it would be great for full delegates to in someway watch videos of or get notes of the sessions they could not attend as they picked a different session.

Food was great, coffee was great too, which helps after having too many dodgy ice cubes the night before.

The closing session was great.

The gala awards dinner was hands down the best ever, well done to everyone involved. Not sure how you keep a crowd quite these days and i suppose that’s a tricky one to solve but the format and techniques used for the gala dinner were fanstastic. If anyone has any ideas on how to keep people quite i have a 5year old and a 3year old that i would love to test those technique on.

Andrew Howard
Howard & Sons Pyrotechnics

These opinions are my own…….blar blar blar insert legal protection statement here blar blar blar

For example MEA 2011 was best known as the “friendly” conference as networking was seen as a priority and the “silent rave party” knocked everyone’s socks off—which will be extremely hard to top in future
years.

MEA 2012 themed “Open your mind” did very well in program content and the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre did a superb job on catering and presentation.

Why do I attend? For me, the MEA conference is essential for a few reasons: to support MEA, who I consider the meetings and events industry peak body and who are very important to help mould the future of the industry; to learn some new tricks (no old dog jokes); and to meet both the old and young Turks—to see where the industry is going and who the players are. I would not miss it!

Ray Shaw, Managing
Director, MCI Australia
 

Everything about this conference ‘opened my mind.’ The
sessions I went to were incredibly inspiring, and I developed many new and
creative ideas for both my organisation and my clients.

The limitation on
PowerPoint—one of my favourites! This really assisted in the speakers
developing creative and participatory sessions.

I have taken on so much advice
as to the best way to present, and to inspire future event managers. This
conference allowed me to further develop existing relationships, and I also met
a significant number of incredible people, who I have since contacted and will
certainly keep in contact with in the future.

The best piece of advice I can
give anyone new to the industry is…go to the MEA Conference! Learn, Grow and
Play!

Becci Reid, MCI Australia

MEA/USI Young Professional Scholarship 2011 (Queensland)
 

Bands would not work for hundreds of dollars and other entertainment would not as well.

It could work but you’d have to sell more to cover the cost of exhibiting.

Yes because there is a market for it, but then again the cost of exhibiting makes you need to charge the end client more than private parties would be willing to pay, They would blow their budget on the venue.

I have writen an article below on the subject

This article is the Trade show v’s Online directory argument in order
to understand this, I will start with a parallel topic Online shops v’s
brick and mortar shops

The core of this article is based on the premise of Author John
Naisbitt. with regards to his book Megatrends and a quote inside that
book.

In the Book (actually there have been a few Megatrends but the one I am referring to is the 1982 version) I will paraphrase a quote:

In a world of High Tech- people will respond to
high touch, the more people rely on technology to communicate and
experience the world- the more they value human experiences

end paraphrase

But the reverse is also true

The more people experience bad “high touch” experiences the more they turn to high tech alternatives.

The big retailers are asking the question: Why are customers turning to online shops?
easy comparing and easy & fast ordering potentially better prices,
and normally lots of information on the product is a good reason, in our
time poor environment.

the other problem is the retail shops are providing poor human
experience at the actual shops- poor customer service, poor product
knowledge are everywhere, there is no positive human experience which
cannot be beaten by the online shops, so why get disappointed with the
retail experience when you can get a less personal but no negativity
buying online.

Humans are – well …alive and we want to be treated nicely, we want to
feel special, as a result when we don’t experience that special feeling
when we are in contact with other humans we go to the alternative-
——online with no human experience.

It comes down to expectations

Peoples expectations of shopping in a real shop are high, we want to
be made special, we want great knowledge of products and we want great
service, Our expectation of online are not as high because chances are
we are dealing with a web script as apposed to a human and we know it.

The online business will continue to grow, especially for daily
goods, specialized goods can still have great businesses in real shops
if their is a demand for their products/services
Real shops will however continue to decline if the human experience continues to diminish.

What has this got to do with Trade show exhibiting?

There has been articles on the decline of the exhibition industry and
the rise of the online directory, and as a Marketing expert in Trade
shows I have seen it- It is due to exhibitors not putting an experience
on at their stands.

In many many cases the experience of exhibiting is a negative
experience for the company because they man their staff with new sales
reps who don’t have good product knowledge, who are keen to have a day
off work, and they act like it at the stand. The human experience is
nil, and it has a negative experience with the customer- it’s better to
be listed in an online directory where you can hide poor customer
service replace it with big classy photos and video demo’s.

One other problem is that people set their trade show stands up like
it’s a website- Visual, color, banners and signage but no human
connection, or rather a poor negative human experience.

The rule is If it does not add, it subtracts, there is no middle or
neutral, so if your stand experience is not positive it will be
negative, this does form the core benefit of trade show infotainment, it
is the human experience that is what attracts visitors who are starved
of that human to human experience not just at the trade show but in life
in general.

Understanding not just your target market but the trade show visitor in general
This article is not about getting people to come into the exhibition
itself, but more on getting people into your stand, in General 70% of
visitors know who they want to see before thy walk in, so if your not
one of those suppliers on the list, your in an uphill battle to start
with.

The visitor has probably been in a seminar for 1 hour which has been a
boring as hell powerpoint presentation, they are walking around a trade
show which has cement floors and the carpet is carboard thin so their
feet are hurting which forms the foundation for the rest of their body.

In my studies of Memory, we as humans are bombarded with over 1500
forms of advertising a day- more when we go to a trade show, we don’t
have systems set up to take in more information- we develop systems to
cut through and cut out the noise of information so by the time the
visotr has walked into the seminar, gone to the cafe for a coffee they
have been bombarded with information and they are in cut out mode, their
feet hurt, they have a list of stands to see and are time poor.

With this negative mindset:

It’s hard to get their attentionTheir mind is not receptive to more informationanything that blends in with other exhibitors will be glossed over.

Will trade shows die?I was considering advertising in the qantas magazine and one of the angles was Trade shows are not been killed off by online directories, face to face will always kill over screen to screen, if they don’t belive me- then what are they doing on a plane? when they could call up or skype or video conference. no, they are visiting face to face.

Trade shows will die if the exhibitors do not put on an engaging experience at the stand, I am surprised that many of the organisers DON’T put on pre event training seminars anymore.

A Big problem however is that organisers are doing anything to get visitors into the expo- as an exhibitor I don’t want visitors in the expo- I want them at my stand or at least walking past my stand, Trade shows with back to back seminars bring people into the expo- but not to the stands which is why exhibitions who have back to back seminars will fail, why exhibit if you only have 2 hours of each day to conduct business and the rest of the time your waiting for the food breaks.

Responsibility is on the Exhibitors to create an engaging level, organisers also need to take responisbility in educating exhibitors and giving exhibitors a fair go as apposed to getting them to exhibit and then putting back to back seminars on

Will Melbourne Event showcase be back?I think so, there is a market for it- maby it’s held once every 2 years- I don’t know, but whatever the new format- your exhibitors need to know how to put on an experience and you can’t have back to back seminars which is just wasting exhibitors time and money. Organisers need to know the difference between getting people in the door and getting people to walk around the expo.