During the first half of 2023, MindMeeting & Partners will hold a series of small-scale book launches, to celebrate the publication of “Meetings, by Default or by Design.” These book launches will examine the new role of face-to-face meetings in light of the post-pandemic balance of meeting delivery channels.
Almost ten years after the publication of their first book “Into the Heart of Meetings,” Mike van der Vijver and Eric de Groot are back with a new title on Meeting Design: “Meetings, by Default or by Design”. This workbook offers improvement suggestions for meetings and events on forty different topics, ranging from meeting objectives to openings and closings, and from dealing with elephants in the room to spicing up content.
To give a broader meaning to their new publication, the authors are setting up a “World Tour” of small-scale book launches. Each of these gatherings will investigate the added value of face-to-face meetings in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, together with groups of participants from different countries. Their hypothesis is that f2f meetings will require clearer objectives and well-designed programmes to live up to their specific strengths in a new balance with hybrid and online. But how exactly? This applies in particular to providing the “human glue” in and between organisations. In addition, Mike and Eric believe that this added value is perceived differently in different parts of the world – a hunch they will flesh out, thanks to the format of their launch events.
The Tour consists of a series of small-scale, purpose-designed gatherings, held in cooperation with local partners in at least four European countries, three in East Asia, two in the Middle East and two in the Americas. Together with their “crash-tester” Martin Sirk, during the IMEX trade show in Frankfurt in May 2023 the authors will report back on their findings, as well as in subsequent other international events.
Order a copy of the book here.
