05/03/2021

How Leaders Can Transform the New In-Person Meeting

Associations still need to limit their goals when it comes to in-person meetings

The face of meetings is changing, which means leaders have to think more about what they’re having meetings for.

In the spring issue of Associations Now, I wrote about the outlook for in-person meetings in 2021. To sum it up in one word: Better. But it’s also more complicated than that. Associations can’t completely reject virtual meetings, because they often opened the door to new audiences in 2020. And economic constraints mean that meetings may be shorter this year, or co-located with a related association, or simply smaller. As we reported in March, one poll of scientists found that a large majority (74 percent) wanted virtual meetings, while 69 percent lamented the lack of in-person networking.

So while virtual meetings are unlikely to disappear soon, some kind of in-person meeting is increasingly seen as essential. As Graham Kirk, director of sales and marketing at the Audio Engineering Society (AES), said of their decision to meet in person this October: “So much business is done in person, and so much information is passed along that way, so we made the decision that it was vital that we be present again in some form.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.