World Education Congress (WEC) is quickly approaching, and it’s one of the meeting and event industry’s can’t miss events. Why, you ask? Well, here are just a few reasons.

1. The meeting and event industry’s best education—presented the way YOU want to learn. 
2. General Keynote and Flash Point speakers who will share transformative takeaways you will be able to put into action immediately. 
3. Save up to $300 if you register before rates increase on June 14 
4. Or, you can attend for FREE by participating as a hosted buyer planner 
5. Once, you’ve registered, you can take advantage of low summer airfares and MPI airfare discounts 
6. If you’re earning or maintaining your CMP designation, WEC offers the ability to earn clock hours for your CMP. 
7. And don’t forget about the networking—RendezVoo, RISE Awards Luncheon, The Big Deal—just a few of the great opportunities we’re offering for you to meet and interact with industry colleagues. Look who’s coming!

Visit the WEC page to learn more about sessions, speakers and the great networking events we have planned for you. 

See you in Las Vegas!

Andragogy is the art and science of helping adults learn, and for most people, education continues throughout their lives. How they learn, though, is key to internalizing content and letting it transform the person.

Consider the classroom. I’m sure many of you grew up being lectured to by a teacher, who gave you assignments that were graded on a point or letter scale. Some of you may have excelled with this method. Others, however, may have wanted a more hands-on approach. I have plenty of friends who found more success in woodshop compared to world history class for just this reason. Then you have the people who seem to only learn by being part of a group where ideas and thoughts can tumble around the circle. 

Discovering what style works best for you is a personal journey as well as an organizational goal, and in an effort to be more inclusive and sensitive to your individual learning needs, we’re introducing sessions in three distinct learning styles at WEC this year. 

“Over the years, we have adjusted our tagging strategy to assist our participants in making the best educational choice for them,” said Miranda van Brück, MPI’s team leader of professional development. “We learned a lot, and the biggest learning of them all is that in the past we have often used tracks and novice/all/advanced level distinctions. While they made absolute sense in the planning process, for the actual participant they were more confusing than helpful. In talking to members and learning from other industries we moved towards our current approach which focusses on how you prefer to learn at a conference.”

The three styles are:

• Lecture (listen and learn)—If you like to listen to a speaker deliver a lecture and just absorb the information, then these sessions will definitely resonate with you. These sessions will be presented in lecture style, with a low level of interactivity. 
• Interactive (learn from experts and practice)—Hands-on learning with expert guidance—listening, moving, touching, doing and discussing. A selection of our educational sessions is designed to provide a medium to a high level of interaction. If you like to learn from experts, but also have the opportunity to discuss how this can be applied to your world, then these are not-to-miss sessions for you. If you like learning this way, also make sure to check out the WEC learning labs, which will provide a hands-on approach that allows attendees to learn, get up, touch and do, which will enhance retention of information. 
• Peer-to-Peer (learn from each other)—Participant-led sessions, with the highest level of interactivity. These are sessions where you learn from your peers through discussions and sharing of your own experiences. A facilitator will drive the process, but not the content.

We’re also providing a tag that lets you know if session content is specific to the meeting and event industry or if it comes from an outside source. 

• Inside Industry (topics specific to the meeting and event industry)—Most of the times these sessions qualify for continuing education credit on the CMP application or recertification and really provide industry specific education. 
• Outside Industry (general business topics from outside our industry, delivered by non-industry experts)—These topics and experts are selected as they bring valuable knowledge from outside into our world and have been coached on how their knowledge can be made relevant for a meeting and event professionals. 

“We still use the ‘level’ distinctions, but in line with the advice of our members, we will only point out the novice sessions and the truly advanced ones, in order to level expectations for participants,” van Brück said.

Now that you know more about the ways we’re providing education at WEC, check out the sessions, speakers and entertainment and make plans to join us in Las Vegas, July 20-23, for a truly transformational event.

Melissa Greenwood, SmartBrief’s senior education editor, recently wrote about five educational trends she saw at last week’s SXSWedu Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas.

Two trends, though, stuck out to me as immediately relevant to our industry: “let learning be iffy,” and “bring students in as curriculum designers.” 

“Learning should be iffy in the sense that students don’t always know the outcome when starting out, [Dale Dougherty, president and CEO of Maker Media] explained, adding that makers need three things: projects, process and practice, and space to create,” Greenwood wrote. 

Space to create is right in line with what MPI’s Future of Meetings research shows. Convention center managers and architects should keep in mind space in which to play, as it’s tantamount to engagement and innovation.

“Architect [Robert] Hopkins sees new concepts emerging in educational buildings based on new social and scientific knowledge,” Jackie Mulligan wrote in “From the Outside In: Meeting Distribution.” “He says that in large schools, he’s working on creating communities of approximately 120 pupils who have their own spaces to look after. Then, there are collaboration spaces for small groups, large working spaces and open plan designs.”

If they’re not already, convention center managers should be seeking to provide spaces (indoor and outdoor) for multi-sized groups in order to accommodate the varied teaching and learning styles of presenters and attendees. 

And now that we’re talking about presenters, amend “bring students in as curriculum designers” to “bring attendees in as curriculum designers.” This already happens during un-conferences, at which participants lead or facilitate discussions. What I’m talking about, however, is offering space to attendees to create their own content outside of what your event may be focused on. Perhaps an attendee can see a link in content that you don’t see. Encourage that type of spontaneous or off-the-cuff creation and engagement.

Once again, adaptable space is needed for such activities. 

“…impromptu meetings will need to be catered for, according to Chris Sanderson, a co-founder of The Future Laboratory,” Mulligan wrote. “Spaces will be designed to enable facilitation of rapid meetings, or at least ad-hoc meetings.”

By keeping track of educational trends, we can know better the trends in our industry. Because, when it comes down to it, the best meeting professionals are educators at heart. 

What kind of trends from other industries do you see affecting meetings and events?

Thinking about attending GBTA's 2013 Masters Program, February 20-21 at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington, D.C.? 

GBTA, as part of it's partnership with MPI, is now offering an MPI-member exclusive discount of US$600 on registration to attend this program that brings together some of the greatest minds in the business travel community for unparalleled networking and education. The event will focus on strategic leadership, global thinking and technology, and will provide a unique opportunity to gain access and critical insights from some of the most innovative, world-class business leaders of our time.

To register as an MPI member and receive the discounted registration rate, simply visit http://www.gbta.org/masters/Pages/default.aspx and enter promo code: MPI.

Not an MPI member and want to join today so you can take advantage of this great offer as well as all of the benefits that come with being part of the MPI community? Visit http://www.mpiweb.org/joinmpi to learn more.

Our own knowledge manager, Miranda van Bruck, was recently interviewed at EIBTM where she gave a great look into creating education for live events. She specifically spoke to Ruud Janssen about our upcoming European Meetings & Events Conference in Montreux, Switzerland, Jan. 27-29, 2013. Please watch the video below to learn more.  

Miranda van Bruck, MPI EIBTM 2012 from Meeting Support Institute on Vimeo.

Hands-on learning and delegate-led sessions are much discussed in our industry when it comes to figuring how best to structure a meeting. We know that education from these types of sessions sticks more with attendees after the session is over, but what we don't know is why. Why is self-directed learning more beneficial to participants?

In an article published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, researchers Todd Gureckis and Douglas Markant of New York University address this gap in understanding by examining the issue of self-directed learning from a cognitive and a computational perspective.

Gureckis and Markant say that cognitive research offers many explanations that support the advantages of self-directed learning. For example, self-directed learning helps us optimize our educational experience, allowing us to focus effort on useful information that we don’t already possess and exposing us to information that we don’t have access to through passive observation. The active nature of self-directed learning also helps us in encoding information and retaining it over time.

But we’re not always optimal self-directed learners. The many cognitive biases and heuristics that we rely on to help us make decisions can also influence what information we pay attention to and, ultimately, learn.

Gureckis and Markant note that computational models commonly used in machine learning research can provide a framework for studying how people evaluate different sources of information and decide about the information they seek out and attend to. Work in machine learning can also help identify the benefits—and weaknesses—of independent exploration and the situations in which such exploration will confer the greatest benefit for learners.

Drawing together research from cognitive and computational perspectives will provide researchers with a better understanding of the processes that underlie self-directed learning and can help bridge the gap between basic cognitive research and applied educational research. Gureckis and Markant hope that this integration will help researchers to develop assistive training methods that can be used to tailor learning experiences that account for the specific demands of the situation and characteristics of the individual learner.

(Story materials via the Association for Psychological Science.)

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA)—the voice of the global business travel industry—and Meeting Professionals International (MPI)—the meetings and events industry’s largest and most vibrant global community—are pleased to announce a new joint venture. The two organizations will work together to co-create new industry-leading education and training opportunities.

“This is the first and only broad association partnership that GBTA has entered into since forming the GBTA Academy. GBTA believes MPI is the right partner to reach the meetings management industry and marketplace,” said GBTA executive director and COO, Michael W. McCormick. “Our collective members will be reaping the benefits of this partnership for years to come.”

An LLC is being formed with an executive steering committee to operate and manage the new curriculum, which is expected to be available in 2013. Both organizations are bringing together their expertise and research prowess to develop and deliver these new educational and training offerings.

“We continually hear from the community that they want associations to work together and provide opportunities for improving their career skills. The collaboration with GBTA will deliver the single most essential management training program in the industry, creating a new standard for excellence,” said Cindy D’Aoust, COO and interim CEO for MPI. “The result is enhanced value for both our members and the industry.”

The new senior level education will be available to both MPI and GBTA members. While both current designations will continue to be recognized by MPI and the GBTA Academy, this new educational program is being derived from the best of GBTA’s Strategic Meetings Management Certification (SMMC) and MPI’s Certificate in Meetings Management (CMM) program.

GBTA is the world’s premier business travel and meetings organization whose 5,000-plus members manage over $340 billion of global business travel and meetings expenditures annually. MPI is the meetings and events industry’s largest global community comprised of more than 21,000 members representing 84 countries worldwide.

For more information, please visit gbta.org/academy or www.mpiweb.org/Education/CMM.

Conference has come to a close, but the digital offerings from WEC Live! remain for you to continue learning and connecting to the conference experience. Professional development and education continues through the virtual catalogue where attendees and MPI members can access education sessions, Flash Point and the general sessions on demand. The catalogue of video recordings, housed on the Mediasite player, offers you a unique user-controlled layout where you can watch videos and navigate through speaker presentations. Simply click on the title of the session you wish to watch and you are taken to the full player experience. Other digital features include MPI-TV coverage provided by CNTV, interviews with speakers and subject matter experts,hundreds of photos and unique panoramic views from the conference floor. 

To connect to the online offerings all in one place, go to http://www.mpiweb.org/Events/WEC2012/Live.

Following the successful launch of a global meetings, incentive travel and events industry trade show, IMEX America, last October in Las Vegas, organizers have announced developments to the format and content of "Smart Monday," its pre-show, one-day educational event (Monday Oct. 08).

The free, pre-show day of professional education has been developed to become Smart Monday, “Powered by MPI.” MPI is IMEX America’s strategic partner and premier educational provider. This new name demonstrates MPI’s crucial role in providing the majority of content on Monday, while also signalling the combined involvement and educational contribution of other important and influential associations including: ASAE, ACTE, ISES, ICCA, PCMA, Site and IAEE, who will be holding a CEM program on the day.

Smart Monday, "Powered by MPI,” will include a morning keynote and all day sessions that will cover topics including strategic meetings management, social media, leadership, sustainability, personal development, incentive travel, technology trends and international meetings management.

“We had such a positive response to Smart Monday last year with over 1,200 people attending, which has really inspired us in our planning for this year’s event," said Carina Bauer, CEO of organizers for the IMEX Group. "This year, Smart Monday, “Powered by MPI,” really does offer exceptional value and diversity of education, and there will be something for everyone, regardless of job title or association membership.

“MPI’s 12 educational sessions are a key part of the day—the backbone if you like—but we are also emphasizing the incredible scope and quality of all the education and networking on offer by other participating associations," she continued. "Last year, industry professionals were delighted—and perhaps a little surprised—when they realized how strong the education program was. Now that the concept is well established and we have proven there is strong demand, we are really excited to be planning for 2012 and taking steps to develop it even further."

Alongside innovative and inspiring education from MPI (which will be open to members and non-members), Smart Monday, “Powered by MPI,” will offer specialist education sessions from many other associations. All of it will be provided free of charge to both buyers and suppliers regardless of their association membership or status.