The Meetings Show shakes up its education programme

The Meetings Show prepares to open its doors for the seventh year, the show is shaking up its education programme to deliver more than 40 hours of learning in a variety of exciting new formats.

The theme of the education programme will be ‘The Planner Journey’, covering the seven key stages of event planning: Sharpening Your Event Skills, Creating and Communicating the Vision, Textbook Planning, Making Your Events Memorable, Getting People There, The Bigger Picture and The Pat on the Back.

To optimise engagement and keep the content fresh, sessions won’t just be delivered as lectures or panel debates – attendees will be able to get hands on and fully immersed with the innovative new programme.

On Wednesday 26 June, 9.50-10.50, the session ‘Sustainability on Trial’ will feature a dynamic courtroom debate, where the prosecution will present the case that event organisers need to step up and make their events more sustainable, while the defence will argue that the responsibility should fall to suppliers, venues and destinations. The audience will be able to interact, before a panel of judges make the final judgement on the case.

Later in the day (13.50-14.50), Take the Mike will be exploring the burning issue of staff retention through the medium of drama – professional actors will be presenting scenarios around retention and exploring situations which can encourage your best talent to stay and keep them engaged with your organization and its values.

On Thursday 27 June, ‘Brief. Process. Pitch’ (12.30-13.30) will be an interactive session where attendees can work as a team on a real brief, coming up with a workable concept and budget outline, before pitching the idea – all the while learning what makes a successful proposal and pitch.

Other session to look forward to include the LEGO Serious Play method, a high-energy moving chairs session and a ‘Recipes for Success’ cooking class, all aimed at inspiring attendees when planning their next event.

The Meetings Show’s conference organiser Erica Keogan said: “The Meetings Show is encouraging event planners to shake up their events for the year ahead, so we wanted to make sure we were leading by example with our own education programme. This year’s speakers and facilitators were challenged with coming up with new formats and ways of delivering the key topics that form the event planning journey, and we think they’ve done a great job – this will be industry education like you’ve never seen it before!”

Taking place on Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 June at Olympia London, The Meetings Show will bring together more than 4,500 industry professionals for two days of meeting, networking and learning. For more information visit www.themeetingsshow.com.