Project Meeting Architecture

Successful Meetings:  Conference centers are remarkably effective environments for meetings. But an innovative concept known as “meeting architecture,” which encompasses much more than physical architecture, can improve upon the experience at a center, turning a good meeting into a great one.

Meeting architecture is the process of creating meetings from the inside out, says veteran planner Terri Breining, principal of Encinitas, CA-based Breining Group, a consortium focusing on the development and production of effective meetings. “This approach looks beyond logistics management to a much wider experience that creates results, and then assesses those results afterwards and makes course corrections for the next meeting,” she says. “It is about creating something that has a much longer impact than a typical meeting.”

According to Breining, it starts with identifying the change, motivation, knowledge, skills, and connections you will want participants to take away from the meeting, and then translates that information into clear and measurable objectives for the event. “In the execution of the meeting, it’s integrating the best practices from other professions, such as environmental design, to enhance learning and retention,” adds Breining.

Conference centers have begun embracing the concept of meeting architecture, and the result has been facilities that feature uniquely designed settings, technical sophistication, and specialized services geared toward gatherings of all types. Here’s how it’s impacting the way meetings are executed.

Environmental ROI
John Potterton, president of Potterton & Associates, a business-impact consulting firm, facilitated a Thought Leaders Summit that explored best practices in meeting architecture at the International Association of Conference Centers’ (IACC) annual conference earlier this year. Participants concluded that planners and facility managers should place more emphasis on creating environments that are conducive to executing measurable, compelling meeting experiences.

“A successful meeting should have some kind of business impact, such as an improvement in revenue or efficiency,” says Potterton. “This drives what the physical space, content, and education will be; it creates a system for what happens after the meeting.”

According to the attendees at the Summit, it is now more important than ever for planners and facility managers to be attuned to outcomes that are expected and use them to create an appropriate experience together. The key is for both parties to be strategic partners who ask insightful questions and listen intently. It’s much more involved than just providing the physical environment and the food and beverage.

But when it does come to the physical meeting site, Joan Eisenstodt, meetings industry consultant, trainer, and facilitator, and chief strategist at Washington, DC-based Eisenstodt Associates, is especially bullish on conference centers.

“As far as creating an environment that can have a measurable impact on the success of a meeting, I believe conference centers are better positioned to achieve that than other types of venues,” Eisenstodt says. “They are interested in who the client is, why they are meeting, and what they can provide to help make the meeting even more successful. Conference centers continue to excel at adaptability. There is the atmosphere of, ‘Yes, we can, and here is how we can do it.’ ”

Potterton says much of that adaptability comes from the fact that 35 of the 39 criteria for IACC certification focus on the physical environment of the facility. “These universal criteria ensure each member center employs the best practices of the conference center industry,” he explains.

When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of the space itself, Jeff Vredevoogd, director of education for Herman Miller, a global provider of furniture and office services based in Zeeland, MI, says there are six characteristics of effective learning/meeting spaces. They are adaptability, socialness, resourcefulness, healthfulness, sustainability, and stimulation.

“These six elements are important, and if you can get all six, hallelujah,” says Breining, adding, “It’s the responsibility of the planner to determine which of these six are most important for her particular group.” She notes that how the space is used will depend on the overall meeting objective, the objective of a particular session, the makeup of the audience (demographic, psychographic), the length of the session and overall meeting, and the format of the session.

The Six in Action
Here is a look at the six characteristics of effective meeting space and how they come into play at conference centers.


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