Victoria: I am very pleased to welcome Rosa Garriga Mora, the first ever Meeting Architect who has kindly agreed to share her experience with Matey Events’ readers. Rosa, when I was preparing for the interview I realized it might be many more questions than planned initially because it is an amazing field and also because I’m myself very much interested in what you are  doing. It was hard to select questions!

 

Well, you are the first ever Meeting Architect in the world. Nobody else is officially doing the job that you are doing.  There is no really set rules or procedures in this particular profession. You basically are creating it yourself, right? So my first question would be: how do you do that?)

 

Rosa: Yes this is a good question! Well, first of all there are other people that are doing what I am doing. The difference with me is that I am appointed just to do THIS, and I am one of the few that really have got very strong background in both what Maarten does, what the book describes; and measurement of ROI.

 

I started working with Maarten and Elling Hamso. They were my first mentors and employers. I’ve done lots of trainings, so it’s really ingrained, that pyramid and so on.

 

On the one hand I do use these tools a lot – that pyramid from ROI methodology and other tools Elling has got (like sheets) and Maarten as well.

 

Victoria: Do you see more positive attitude from the clients when they first hear about your role or MA in general, or is it a little bit that they are more reluctant to do anything in this sphere, how do you feel?

 

Rosa:  First of all I have to say that right now I am just working with medical associations which is a particular type of clients. And then it depends. In general I find that most of them get it immediately. When you speak about the main concept they immediately understand it and they see it’s important, but then it depends on if they have other priorities as well.

 

Some of them wanna see something more urgent to start doing right now, and for others it’s like ‘oh it’s nice but maybe you know in the future’. I think many prefer to work on specific content cause that’s what they mostly do. But others are eager to innovate. So you see both kinds of concepts and I think it’s in general, not only with medical.

 

Victoria: As far as we are talking about the clients, how do you work on that first stage of identifying objectives of a particular event: are there any specific techniques for that? Of course we can discuss and try to recognise more precise goals, but how do you know these are ALL the goals/objectives of the event and how do you know where to stop looking for more?

 

Rosa: Very good question, and I must say I may give you a different answer in a few years. Also, it’s challenging in my case because most of the time I can’t meet the client in person. Most of the times the client is abroad, it’s a committee of 10 doctors spread all over the world, and we discuss it during the conference call for a 1/2 hour. This is all I can get. So I find that when I can meet someone in person it makes a big difference.

 

What I do is an interview but I follow the pyramid: looking first at the long-term [objectives]. In this case it’s easier than let’s say with corporate, because I think that medical associations are more thinking about mission statement and then it’s much easier to say ‘well we want to improve treatment of this disease’ (so the behaviour objective) so that doctors after the conference must use the new techniques and so on. So they have to learn about this and it’s easier.

 

In that case most objectives are quite similar, it’s about networking, education, motivation. They apply what they learnt, and so on. So in this case it’s easier, but often I find if I speak with someone face to face and we have more time then you can get something more specific like.. I’llI give you an example.

 

There was an opening ceremony of a medical congress. In previous year it was boring and long, most people left half way through the session and the president was quite upset. So this year he was like ‘I want people to stay and engage them, I want to make it a bit less informal’. He gave me this kind of messages.

 

Basically, what I find if you can only get a few objectives and they are more generic you gonna get a generic design, if that makes sense. I gonna say ‘Let’s have an MC, let’s have some voting etc’. But if I go into more detail then I can also offer a more tailored design. In this case I found an MC and we really went through each objective, what we could do to really achieve it –  and the result was amazing. At the opening ceremony this year everyone stayed until the end, and the feedback was amazing.

 

So again, I think when I get a generic response I can get something with it and offer some standard solutions, and in many times it’s the only thing can get because of the situation with medical associations. But if I can meet face to face then I can do something more tailored and special and impactful.

 

And then another example. Now I am also involved in internal meetings. My company also has a lot of meetings and they say ‘since you are here why don’t you help us design our meetings’. In this case what I’ve done is I interviewed the participants, and this is something I learnt from MindMeetings, from Eric de Groot and Mike, to really interview the participants about what they want to learn, what are they looking for in terms of format, about barriers to learning, things like that and it makes a big difference as well.

 

Victoria: I see. I was also going to ask you about your routine, for example, how was your first day in your new role as Meeting Architect?

 

Rosa: Ah, ok!) I don’t remember much though, because I work remotely. I think the first day was practical stuff like setting up email address, HR stuff. On my second week I travelled to the headquarters of my company and I spent 2 weeks there doing trainings and meeting everyone. I was giving  lots of presentations about what I was going to do.

 

Victoria: Sure, I think it’s important so that everybody understands what you do, right?

 

Rosa: Yes, and it’s a slow process.

 

Victoria: I think it might be a slow process cause a lot of people when I tell somebody what I am doing as an event /meeting planner people still don’t get it straight away; sometimes they don’t understand. They may feel like it’s an organisation of birthday party or something like that. In Russia the industry is really young, and business events are a young sector. So of course that influences how ordinary public perceives the profession itself.

 

I can perfectly see what you are talking about – even within the professional organisation it might be a problem that people don’t really understand the details of the role, and it’s quite new. But in this regard, do you think that Meeting Architect will be the profession that will replace the profession of the meeting planner in some long-term future probably?

 

Rosa: I don’t think there would be a replacement because you always need a meeting planner.  You may know that Maarten asks that question whether you should do both – like Meeting Architecture and also taking care of operations – or not.

 

I think that personally I would rather not, because I used to work more on the operational side and for me that was too stressful, you know. And I like this because it’s much more creative and not so stressful because it’s more about planning. So in my company luckily because we have teams in place the operations are taking care by them, and I am happy about that [laughs]. In a small company one may have to do both things.

 

I think though tasks will be more and more automated. It’s already been changed. Now they have to spend less time doing same tasks. What’s happening in my company is that the same person does more events than they used to because now they have to spend less time on each task. But I don’t think there will be a replacement because you always need to do it. The execution needs to be there. But, I think every time there will be more people working on the content, on the format.

 

Victoria: You mentioned you don’t have cases but maybe you can give some brief example of the task you’ve done as the Meeting Architect, just so that it would illustrate your work.

 

Rosa: Yes. One example is the one I told you about, the opening ceremony. That used to be very traditional and people would leave and found it something boring.

What we did mostly is we worked with an MC; we replaced furniture, some videos etc. So on the stage instead of lectern and a head table we had sofas and lamps and coffee tables like in a living room. Then instead of having presentations and lectures all the speakers sat on the sofas and they were interviewed by the MC. We made sure there was sort of rhythm. We had musicians playing a little bit of music all the time, and also the MC at some point asked the audience to stand up, do this, do that; made a few jokes, and this was the first time they had the MC by the way! And it was huge difference and everyone stayed until the end and was really happy. This is one little example.

 

The other case study is about the measurement part which is let’s say, the other part of the job.

 

I have a few congresses where what I do is I use spreadsheet with different items. Things like how are the presentation skills of the speakers, what is the session flow, how were the slides, does they communicate clear key messages, is there a storyline: things that we know help thesession to be effective. I go to as many sessions as possible and I rank them. So every speaker has a ranking.

 

Then I do a report. For one congress I also looked at all data [available]. In my company we do lots of technology stuff as well, we send a survey, we use an app, we have a voting system, we have what they call e-posters (in medical conferences they always have poster presentations, so people who do research they present their findings in a poster. It used to be in paper, and now many conferences have it on the screen. Then you can track everything that happens, how often people look at them etc.) Well, we have all that data but there is no anyone who pulls everything together and makes conclusions. So I did that.

 

I took, on the one hand, more qualitative data from what I observed. I also observe what sessions may look. I look how many people are actually watching or if they are on their phones; if there is a voting, then how many are really participating; if there is Q&A –  some say ‘Time!’ and then I say ‘well, there was interactivity of 10% for a session’.

 

For this client I prepared a huge report. I started with objectives. Then for each of the objectives I used all the data available, whether that was what I observed, or the data from the surveys/app/voting system etc. I even compared that to some congresses of similar sizes or to previous editions of the same congress. So I could say whether that was good or not. At the end I offered conclusions and recommendations.

 

Victoria: Ok. I can see from what you are talking about that there is a lot research of course required and that actually means a person in this role needs research skills of high level, right?

 

Rosa: Yes. On the one hand, in my MSc (I did MSc in Event Management), we did all sorts of research, we were doing proper scientific research and I found that was very useful. What I think is important is that you also have to do research for the design part. I’ll give you an example now. They’ve asked me to come up with a concept for a conference on a new technology. Now, I don’t know anything about this new technology, and I have to go and look what is going on in this field, and so on, there is also that.

 

Victoria: You are kind of becoming a specialist in a particular field, right?

 

Rosa: Yes, you need to know a little bit.

 

Victoria: But when it comes to planning a content, creating the programme and using different formats, you definitely need to come up with something probably new, or maybe not new but specifically designed for this particular event. How do you do that? Do you make it up yourself? Or do you read a lot, and in this case what do you read? Where do you find this inspiration?

 

Rosa: Very good question. It depends. Every time it’s a different process. In the cases when I can really have a good interview with a client, I get inspired quite quickly. E.g. maybe I am sitting in a cafe (I like to leave my office and go outside) and just get an idea, just talking with a client I just think ‘yes, they would love it’, it happens like that.

 

Other times I read books or look into other events, for example. I always try to attend events that are not related to my field but that are very innovative. I get ideas, I may take pictures or write notes and one day I go back. I keep them on a spreadsheet of ideas. Books that I can recommend, for example for this internal meeting I used a book which is very good for a training – that’s called Accelerative training. And then it gives you a lot of ideas.

 

Victoria: Would you recommend any resources for those wishing to study/develop this field? I’ve recently had a meeting with a bunch of students from the local University. In Russia we don’t have any formal University courses on events management in the first place, let alone conference or meeting management. At present what I am watching in the industry is that there are some short term courses appearing. But they are not from the Unis, they are provided by some corporate companies, some agencies and they lack the level in my opinion. What books would you recommend?

 

 

Rosa: Yes, I can recommend some [see Rosa’s list below]. The are not many book around actually. But then I can recommend you some blogs and magazines, too. I think they are great source of inspiration. E.g. BizBash, it’s amazing what they speak about. I would say that besides books it’s mostly education in different ways, like blogs, webinars, going to conferences. For me it’s going to events that I know are very innovative; and luckily I live in Barcelona and we have lots of events here.

 

1. Reynolds, G. (2008). Presentation zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub.
2. Vanneste, M. (2009). Meeting architecture: A manifesto. Tournhout: Meeting Support Institute.
3. Vijver, M. V., & Groot, E. D. (2013). Into the heart of meetings: Basic principles of meeting design. Leeuwarden: MindMeeting BV.
4. Wit, S. D. (2009). Secrets of effective meetings & events. S.l.: Barranco.

 

 

Victoria: Thank you Rosa for so fruitful conversation. Well, it’s definitely not all the questions I’ve got for you! But we will keep some for future and I hope I would be able to ask you more next time. I really thank you for giving us opportunity to have some kind of sneak peek into the profession of Meeting Architect) and for sharing your thoughts – I am sure it would be inspiring for many. Thank you again  Rosa and speak soon!

 

 

From: http://matey.events/en/day-meeting-architect/