Meetings matter and should be encouraged

This article offers the opinion that meetings matter and should be encouraged.

Originally intending to report on the Training 2010 Conference and Expo taking place in San Diego, CA., this Examiner’s experience at the conference has, however, pushed me in another direction.

This is the second conference this Examiner has attended, and presented at, in January 2010. What I have noticed, both at IAL and at Training 2010 is a lack of attendance.

IAL was small and intimate. Training 2010 is larger, but still on the small size. The Training 2010 Expo hall was supposed to feature 79 vendors, for instance, but I counted only 35.

I place the blame that both of these stellar events were under attended at the feet of the government in Washington, DC.

It’s not a political statement on my part. Rather, it’s a realization that meetings have been given a bad name by the current administration. When President Obama critized conventions last year, it placed businesses in a very bad situation that continues to ripple through the economy today.

Why should a business, especially one with any public profile, risk a meeting where individual expenditure items could become front-page publicity? Better to play it safe and not spend the money.

But meetings matter. Here’s some reason why.

Meetings help people make a living. They pump up the economies of the locations in which they occur. Because organizations and people meet, servers, taxi drivers, housekeepers, and security guards make a living. When those meetings dry up, the service workers, often scrapping day to day to get by, are the ones who suffer.

Meetings help people socialize. People are social. They need to meet face to face. New technologies for virtual meetings are all the rage. It reminds me of the introduction of the microwave. That gadget would revolutionize the kitchen. Gone would be the conventional stoves. The microwave would cook, bake, do the laundry, and take the kids to school.

But it didn’t turn out that way. The microwave was just another tool, a very good tool, but just another tool. So too are the virtual meeting technologies. They have their place, but cannot replace the face-to-face encounter only possible at a convention.

Meetings get business done. This face-to-face aspect of meetings allows businesses, organizations, and individuals to size up their competitors, identify partners they can work with, and facilitate making deals that enrich all of us. It is more difficult, sometimes impossible, to make judgments as solid on line.

Meetings produce knowledge. There is no experience like listening to and meeting an expert. Books take you part of the way there. So do virtual events. But, shaking hands and looking the expert in the eye, makes all the difference.

Meetings reward high achievers and motivate low achievers. A convention, especially one in a fun city like San Diego, Orlando, or Las Vegas provides a reward all by itself. It’ a chance to escape from the office, to get away, to have a little fun. Golfing, fine food, evening parties, and entertainment, all make a meeting so much more than a meeting. People look forward to them and return home energized and motivated.

For all these reasons, meetings are critical to the lifeblood of America. And yet, Washington has bashed meetings as a frivolous waste to taxpayer dollars. Tell that to the servers, taxi drivers, housekeepers, and security guards. And, oh by the way, tell that to them while you are meeting in Washington, DC or from Copenhagen, Tampa, Indonesia, or wherever else the President happens to be while meeting on the taxpayer’ dime.

Disclaimer – the President has the right to meet wherever he needs to be. This article rather wishes that everyone would recognize that businesses, organizations, associations and the current administration, needs to meet.