FRESH13
 

This one page story tells you what you will experience during three exciting days at the FRESH Conference.

 

We participate @ FRESH13

Changing meeting formats may be one of the toughest but most important objectives meeting designers face. FRESH13 will offer the knowledge and arguments to achieve just that. Change the concept, changing the shape.

FRESH is our forum to learn from experts and other participants, both inside and outside the industry; and this year at FRESH13, we will be focussing on meeting formats: the concept, the script, the layout, the process...

Our journey through the FRESH conference program – “shape change” – will begin by reminding ourselves of our principles:we will briefly review the fundamentals of meeting design, the taxonomy of Meeting Architecture and its CHATTY Toolbox.

Then we will look at what we mean by a ‘meeting format’: we will explore meeting formats, session formats and presentation formats, tools and techniques. Using cases and stories we will look at the whole inventory of building blocks and also experience them for ourselves. The FRESH13 adventure is not just theory, but thorough practical experience.During FRESH13,we will be totally immersed in many different formats and we will emerge FRESH and knowledgeable. We will have a map to engage our clients with confidence and embark on the next stage.

Our clients are corporate and association meeting owners. To flourish, they need to embrace innovation and their meetings need FRESH thinking. We will learn how to sell change and to make them lose the fear of changing their event.

As they open up their mind and let us into their space, we have to take them forward into change. We will learn how to facilitate the change process: we will learn from examples how to shape change successfully.

 

FRESH13 will show us how to help clients to identify clear meeting objectives using a standardised process.

Now we are nearly ready to start the design work.We will investigate the raw ingredients of meeting formats so we can cook our own meeting formats, tailoring the length, size, movement, interaction, game, transfer style, variation, etc. to our projects’ objectives.

Once we have identified the objectives we go to our drawing table, open our toolbox with conceptual tools and startdesigning the coming event. The meeting format is a complex plan composed of several puzzle pieces. At FRESH13 we will explore ‘work versus play’ or how Gamification and smart entertainment can be used to achieve group objectives. Even if scope for ‘play’ or ‘fun’ is limited, interaction may be fundamental. FRESH will look outside, into the world of Interaction Designers, who will help us with FRESH insights into meaningful interaction. We understand that crowd-sourcing is one powerful form of interaction. And again, outside of our space lives an entire community involved in crowd-sourcing. We will take a FRESH dive into their world and learn from them.

At the same time that we are learning to design the meeting format, we will consider the needs of on-line participants. How and when do we connect the on-site and the on-line? How does the on-line component affect our meeting formats and the experience for our on-site participants?

Finally at FRESH13 is about meeting formats, so we will look at coordinating and managing the speakers and experts, the facilitators, the presentation designers and all the other specialists we need in order to deliver the meeting. We will explore how to work with the venue for ever-changing room setups; with production and AV for their support; with catering for smart cooking; and how we apply sustainability and integrate the city, the surroundings. We even include a little detour throughsciences such as psychology, neurology and cognitive science to help us develop convincing arguments. The FRESH Program will share stories and cases to convincingly demonstrate this valuable knowledge to our clients.

And to close the circle: FRESH13 includes measurement: what impact will our meeting have on our participants and how much value will we create by tweaking the meeting concept?

At the end of FRESH13 we are ready to shape change for our coming meetings and events.

We just became the go-to person for meeting design: the Meeting Architect, the meeting designer.

We start 2013 refreshed!

Schedule Sunday, January 13 to Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Sunday 17:00 (5pm) Opening and evening activities + dinner
Monday All day: Education + Networking and walking/gamification formats + dinner
Tuesday All day: Education + Networking and closing - until 16:00 (4pm)
Wednesday All day: Optional Adrian Segar Masterclass - until 16:00 (4pm)