Put a meeting architect in your event

You still haven’t heard of Meeting Architects? This professional figure will soon be essential to ensure success when organizing an event or meeting. The roles of Meeting Architects are similar to the Event Designer ones, but they go a step further. The difference? Meeting Architects measure the ROI and quantify if the investment in an event has been profitable.

The M&E sector is expanding; the organization of Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events is becoming more complex and, as in any industry that is constantly evolving, new needs and professional profiles arise.

The demand for more creative and effective events, which aim at attracting the maximum number of delegates possible is increasing and, subsequently, strategic planning has become essential for success when organizing a conference or meeting.

In this progressively complex scenario and in response to the growing professionalization of this industry, a new profile has emerged: the Meeting Architect. The first professional that named this specialization was Maarten Vanneste in his book “Meeting Architecture. A manifesto” in 2008. But it has only been a short time ago that this role has started to appear within agencies.

Years ago, organizing a meeting was basically about receiving visitors, designing an agenda with a detailed schedule, and ensuring defined logistics.

Today we know that this is a primitive approach. Now a more comprehensive view is needed, ranging from defining the objectives of the meeting, to the format, design, content, implementation, and measuring the investment return of the event.

All of this in order to achieve a useful impact significant to participants

How does a Meeting Architect contribute to the creation of an event?

Meeting Architecture is about designing the content and format of an event in order to achieve the desired objectives for attendees. The architect can’t start his work if the goals are not set, for which in many cases they participates in their definition.

The Meeting Architect uses a wide range of tools and skills before, during and after the event to ensure that participants have the information, networking opportunities, and motivation necessary to influence their behavior. The proper combination of all of these characteristics, aim to create an event that will go above and beyond expectations.

To do this, when planning a meeting the Architect must understand aspects of behavioral psychology in order to design a physical and emotional environment that prepares delegates for a relevant learning experience.

A Meeting Architect knows how to measure the effectiveness of the meeting, i.e. he quantifies the learning curve of participants, if they remember the information provided and whether or not they have established new relationships at the event through networking.

With this information, he reviews how these factors have influenced the behavior of the participants. The promoters of the event use this knowledge in order to establish whether organizing the event has been effective or not.

In short, a meeting architect is focused on:

• Setting objectives and creating the content, the format and the atmosphere of the event.
• Designing a meeting that is relevant and provides qualitative knowledge for the attendees, applying behavioral psychology practice.
• Applying ROI (Return of investment) methodology to measure the effectiveness of an event.

It won’t be long until the M&E sector appreciates how the organization of events develops in wealth of content and meaning, thanks to the emergence of new profiles such as the Meeting Architect.