In the Monday education at MPI’s World Education Congress in St. Louis titled WEC 2013: Designing the Meeting You Want to Attend, presenter John Nawn, Founder/CEO of The Perfect Meeting asked attendees "What if you could design the conference you want to attend? What would it look like?" Key MPI staff Brad Shanklin, Senior Director of Membership and Chapters; Junior Tauvaa, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketplace; and Danya Casey, Vice President of Events and Certification were on hand to relay their overall goals and objectives. Based on these, Nawn then led the attendees to come up with their own strategies and tactics to recommend to MPI for designing next year’s conference. All ideas generated during this session will be shared with MPI membership at large to gain further input into the adoption of this session’s outcomes and the ultimate design of WEC 2013.

Some comments and suggestions from the attendees were that suppliers need relationships with buyers and need education about the supplier and buyer roles. This is certainly something MPI considers when planning all its conferences and members can also find out more in the Personas report found here.

Attendees want to be challenged to do things different, to be energized, sit back and learn from others. Nawn quoted MPI's Knowledge Manager Miranda van Bruck from an earlier WEC session, "If we build it for you, you might come, but if we build it together with you are already there." This sentiment was echoed by attendees.

Other suggestions were to provide useful, usable, applicable, hands on sessions with good teachers. Nawn finished the session by sharing meeting design concepts and taxonomies.

What suggestions would you have about designing WEC 2013? Content, logistics, location, purpose?

Be looking for the Meeting Design study, due out in Fall 2012.