What Drives You to Succeed?
What drives people to succeed? What prompts people to do what they do – and try to do it better over time? And to compete and do it better than others? Try searching online and you’ll find that it’s the kind of question that prompts a lot of inquiries; depending on how you look, it […]
Controlling the Tone = You Being Leader
A colleague from my past was a bit of a con man. By that, I mean he frequently pitched new schemes with little-to-no thought about what was needed to deliver on the promises he was making. The story was good, but the details on achieving the goal were lacking. Making promises that he couldn’t keep […]
The Era of Pushback
People would prefer to engage in activity that preserves the status quo rather than pursue something new because the status quo is safer and proven. One can expend as little effort as is needed, and try to extract the biggest benefit from what’s been done previously, taking comfort and security in knowing there’s an established […]
An Open Letter From A Decision-Maker Attendee To A Show Organizer
To open the New Year, I am thrilled to get Michelle Bruno’s perspective on the experience of a decision-maker attendee. She’s a good friend and straight talker, so with pleasure, here’s her open letter to all of us: Dear Show Organizer: You’ve convinced me to register. When I Googled your event website, […]
Success Requires Getting Burned
Although my business is now successful, in December of 2005 I was at a crossroads. After six months of R&R that had followed the end of a difficult events job, it was time to get back to work. I chose to open my own event consulting company, a perilous decision given that 8 of every […]
Transcending the “Culture of No”
Recently, I was thinking about two different types of change that I’ve observed in the world: progress and innovation. Both forms of change represent advancement, but in very different ways. Progress typically happens in a linear fashion, where the new is often an extension of what already exists. It represents advancement, but advancement that is […]
Warning: Event Launch Disaster Ahead
I recently read an article in Convene which captured the mistakes that were made during a two-year effort to launch a content marketing event in Europe. For those who have not read the story, the conference manager of LavaCon – a successful, though relatively niche, US-based event – had been urged by a number […]
Does Your Event Have a Dark Side?
The recent revelations of misbehavior by different individuals and organizations has got me thinking about human nature more broadly. For each of us there’s a public side that we want others to see. It reflects our positive attributes and generates favorable responses from those around us, both personally and professionally. But there’s also another side […]
Your Event Marketing. Is it Charming, Creepy, or Clueless?
Like many others, as a consumer I’ve come to pay attention to my email inbox in terms of what attracts me to open a message versus ignore/delete it. I’ve also begun to notice those messages that are too familiar in their tone or are too presumptuous in the way they direct me to take some […]
Are You Your Job Title?
Many people tend to consider the respect – perhaps even deference – that’s given to them as part of their job to be attributable to them personally, rather than connected to their role within a business. That belief often only lasts until they leave their position, perhaps due to a layoff or a decision to […]