It is a nice summer morning, the kids are out of school, a perfect day to go to the pool. The problem? My wife called National Grid, our utility company, to schedule our annual air conditioner tune-up. “We’ll be there sometime between 8:00 and 12:00,” they told her. And so they sit and wait, and wait, and wait, watching the sun move higher in the sky from the living room window, all sunscreened up and dressed in their swimsuits.
Yesterday, I wrote that time is the new currency for competitive differentiation. With all the technology available today—routing and scheduling solutions, mobile resource management, and so on—there’s no reason why four-hour time windows should still exist.
Look, storm clouds.
***
After 11 years of attending and speaking at conferences, I have accumulated more than 100 conference bags (not counting the ones I’ve purposely left in hotel rooms). I’m all bagged out. When I visited my family in Cuba back in 2004, I brought a few of them with me to give to my cousins and kids in the neighborhood. Like everything else, there’s a scarcity of bags in Cuba. Somewhere in Aguada de Pasajeros, there’s a kid walking around with a bag embroidered with the logo of a dotcom company long forgotten.
Here’s an idea to conference organizers: when someone registers for the event, ask them if they want a bag or if they want the bag’s sponsor to make a donation to a specified charity. I’m willing to bet that at least half of the attendees would opt for the donation. The world needs fewer bags piled up in cubicles, tossed in attics, buried in landfills, or placed neatly like an oversized chocolate on a hotel pillow.
***
Last year, I tried to go PowerPoint free. It was one of my New Year’s resolutions. But one week into 2009, I was sending off a 15 MB presentation to a conference organizer. I didn’t even bother to try again this year.
The conference model, so dependent on PowerPoint presentations, is broken. Everyone always wants a copy of the presentation after the event, when in reality it would be more valuable and productive if attendees had the content before the conference.
Here is my fix: Speakers would prepare a short (1,500 word maximum) report on their topic, using a standard template provided by the conference organizer, which would be sent out to attendees two weeks before the event. The attendees would read the report, think about the topic, and come up with questions to ask the speaker. At the conference, the speaker would spend 15-20 minutes reviewing the 3-5 takeaways that he wants to share with the audience. The rest of the time is spent answering questions from the audience, and because the attendees have presumably come prepared and know they are expected to participate, the conversation ought to be more insightful and productive than what occurs today, where the presenter asks for questions at the end, an awkward silence ensues for what seems like an eternity until the moderator steps in and asks a token question to break the tension.
A downside of this approach, of course, is the sad reality that many business professionals are terrible writers. Maybe this proposed conference model would serve as a catalyst for folks to polish their writing skills (as well as their presentation skills, since speaking without slides would be a whole new experience). Or maybe this model would scare them away. Is this even a battle worth fighting?
***
If Beethoven had been Cuban, his 5th Symphony would have sounded like this:
This is just a musical example of how innovation is not always about creating something new, but sometimes it’s just taking a different spin on something that already exists. We often consume a lot of time, money, and resources trying to invent a first-of-its-kind, when the real opportunity is improving or reinterpreting what’s already in front of us.
I love this post….especially the one about innovation. Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.
To paraphrase, one who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past should be commended.
Kate VItasek
Adrian,
I think your idea about providing topic reports to attendees prior to an event is great. There are times when my expectation of a session (based upon the title of the session in the program) is somewhat different than the actual presentation. Providing a synopsis a week or two before the event could have the intended effect of stirring up thoughts, comments, and questions. Of course, the speakers could still use their PowerPoint slides (making sure their notes and the report correspond to each other) if they need that comfort zone and the visuals.
As far as the bags handed out at conferences – couldn’t agree with you more.
Thank you for the music video too. I enjoy music tremendously and like hearing different interpretations. I agree that it’s a good thing to look at what already exists and to see how we can put a different spin on it. Sometimes the outcome can be quite remarkable.
Kathy B