By Penny Zenker, aka The Focusologist In 2013, over the course of 55 days, an estimated 120 million people attended the Kumbh Mela festival in India. That’s the population of California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania – the five most populous states –...

WHAHC 2023 in Barcelona featured 74 specialized talks in 31 sessions with 94 expert speakers. Of the many rapid-fire changes the health-care field experienced during the pandemic, perhaps some of the quickest to evolve were health-care delivery models and services...

We asked event planners what event sacred cows they think need to go away or change. (Illustrations by Dale Crosby Close) The pandemic served as a wake-up call to the meetings industry, but perhaps we’ve hit the snooze button. Rendered impossible by COVID,...

In the July-August Convene issue, editors asked event professionals from around the world to share their sacred cows — those event practices or traditions that they think are out-of-date and need to be overhauled or replaced — and their solutions. Here we share the...

Huddles offer participants a chance to brainstorm challenges, provide a sounding board for future opportunities, and empower idea generation. When explaining Huddles, John Schlaefli starts off by saying what the concept is not: “What we absolutely don’t do is we don’t...

We’ve all sat through awkward and boring presentations. The speaker probably was making at least one of these common mistakes.