Not All Talk
Author: Macie Schreibman
November 2009
Quick Quips
Visualize your meetings
It seems that Vanilla Ice had the meetings industry pegged from the start. As he sang his most-famous hit in 1990, he told his listeners to “stop, collaborate and listen”—and, when you think about it, that’s just what meetings are all about.As the fundamental idea behind a face-to-face meeting is interaction and collaboration, it also seems that there’s a new rapper in town: Jay Smethurst, founder and illustrator for Illumination Galleries, a meeting design company that focuses on great interactions across the country. Although Smethurst may not have gotten his ideas from the Ice Man, he has found that attendees get the most out of a meeting with a little bit of conversation, and a few tools to help them initiate those conversations—which is exactly what his organization provides.
For groups of up to 1,000 (or more), the Illumination Galleries’ staff attends a meeting and takes notes on what is being said. During these sessions, they turn their notes into colorful diagrams and charts that capture the ideas, and display them in the main area. “People can walk through the gallery and remind themselves of what they heard, as well as see what they missed in conferences they weren’t able to attend,” Smethurst says. Adding to the experience pre- or post-meeting is what they refer to as the collaboration lounge, which comes equipped with comfortable seating and marker boards so that the participants can have impromptu brainstorming sessions.
As there is more pressure today on face-to-face meetings, and people are expecting more ROI if they are spending money on travel and hotels, the most value comes from meeting your colleagues in a social setting, Smethurst says. “The value for attendees is the interaction with other professionals and their peers. The value for a meeting planner is they are facing pressure to deliver a valuable experience, and that has to be more than a great presentation—it has to be results oriented.”
And that is where Illumination Galleries steps in. “We are helping these peer-to-peer conversations take place and be more productive,” Smethurst says. By bringing these interactions to life through visual aids and a common area, people can see what is being said and learned in every breakout session, ultimately allowing them to understand the meeting’s overall message. “We are always asking ourselves, ‘how can we facilitate the conversation?’”
By asking themselves that question, the organization takes a simple conversation and turns it into something fresh. “We focus on interactions between participants, and the learning is the real juice and excitement that carries into our drawings and people’s experience.” Now that’s a rap everyone can understand. illuminationgalleries.com
