Five Ways to Add Fun and Energy to Your Meeting or Convention

Are you staring another boring convention in the face and don’t know how to liven up the meeting? Below are five ways to add fun and energy to your meeting or annual convention. If you’ve been drafted to organize your next team meeting or convention, you have both a fantastic opportunity and a potential minefield. So, we organized these simple tips to help you navigate through the obstacles and be the hero of your next meeting. 

Keep the following ideas in mind when you organize your convention or meeting! First, less is more. Secondly, establish a common theme. Next, scrutinize every speaker and activity. Organize the agenda based on the time of day. And finally, add something unexpected and fun to boost morale for the entire team!

1. Less is More

Meeting planners and organizers often want to make sure that they maximize the content of the convention so that there is no wasted time. This is a BIG mistake. In fact, there is a code that you will sometimes receive in your exit surveys. If you understand this code, it will help you better organize the agenda later.

For instance, if you see comments like, “Let’s do something outside next year,” that is actually code for, “We love the location of the meeting, but we were trapped in the banquet hall all day.” Frequent breaks and free time for participants to explore the venue are key to convention satisfaction.

For additional reading on this topic, you might take a look at “Developing More Efficient Meetings“.

2. Establish a Common Theme to Add Fun and Energy to Your Meeting

Even first-time event organizers will typically establish a theme for the meeting. However, the theme has to be something that your attendees will be enthused about. For instance, “Change You Can Believe In” doesn’t really mean a whole lot to the attendees. It’s vague and doesn’t get the audience excited about the meeting. In fact, some attendees may be resistant to change and now walk into the meeting with a negative attitude. 

However, let’s change it up to a more fun, upbeat, and targeted theme. “Beat (Your Biggest Competitor)” is something that your attendees will get behind. It also brings out the competitive nature of the attendees and gives them drive. Whatever theme you end up with, make sure, and focus a lot on the next tip.

3. Scrutinize Every Speaker and Activity

Make sure that every speaker and activity in every, single, slot on the agenda focuses the group on your theme. You will often be pulled by different executives who want to add their own big idea to the agenda. However, once you get off-topic, it will become much more difficult to keep the main idea clear to the audience.

Let’s take a company rebranding themselves with a new logo, new design, and new company structure. They could make the theme of their event something along the lines of rebranding. Coming up with creative ways to get people excited is extremely beneficial to the success of the meeting.

For example:

• “The Rebrand Awakens”, a play on Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its focus on a fresh era and new concepts. 

• “Rebrand Reloaded”, a play on The Matrix Reloaded and its nod toward total system changes and upgrades.

• “Same Band, New Sound”, a play on a musical artist reinventing their style and their image in a new era. 

If you know the theme, you’re able to alter the activities and the delivery of the event. This is crucial for the company to roll-out a successful and profitable rebranding. Little touches like that will also make your convention more memorable for the employees attending.

4. Organize the Convention Agenda Based on the Time of Day

A good rule of thumb for organizing the agenda is that as the day progresses, you want to gravitate toward entertainment versus data. It is always good to start with an energetic speaker or keynote. This will help you to set an enthusiastic agenda. However, if you have dry or less enthusiastic content during the day, make sure to place those speakers in the morning. 

Afternoon meetings typically work well with breakout sessions boost engagement so that there are more interactions. Late in the afternoon, panels of speakers and question and answer sessions work better. However, once you get past 4 PM in the day you want to organize something more fun.

Some good event planners have started their last afternoon session with a panel of “old-timers” (seasoned employees) in a more chill environment. This panel usually spends the time relaying war stories from their experience.

5. Add Something Unexpected and Fun

Team building activities work so well at conventions because they make your team members work together on something totally unrelated to work. Coworkers get to see each other in a unique way and engage with people they may not even see at work. In addition, there is always a lot of energy and laughter along the way. These activities are an easy way to allow your attendees to learn something while they are being entertained. So, they work really well — especially late in the day.

So, if you want to add fun and energy to your annual meeting, or even a monthly team meeting, keep these five simple things in mind. First, less is more. Secondly, establish a common theme. Next, scrutinize every speaker and activity. Organize the agenda based on the time of day. And finally, add something unexpected and exciting! Fun activities, like a team building exercise, are a great way to get the whole team involved, boost team morale, and add a fun factor to a dull meeting!