Join in here to read and share our most excruciatingly boring-AND our most fantastically ROARING-meeting experiences.

It's easy to submit your "stories from the meeting trenches." Email us at Info@NoMoreBoringMeetings.com.

YOU help build the Storyboard. After all, collaboration is the best means of solving our most challenging problems.

So....be succinct, be specific. And have fun. We look forward to hearing from you! And thanks for participating.

[We'll review each submission before posting it life, and yours may be edited for space and content.] 

I attended a conference with 5000 business people. The keynote topic was related to the importance and power of collaboration. What amazed and BORED me was that after the compelling speech, there was no opportunity built into the agenda to COLLABORATE with others in the room. What a missed chance! 
- Meeting Professional, Montreal

"The meeting was so boring that the person in front of me pulled out literature she had received from a funeral home and began to plan her funeral. ..."

Contributed by A Goodman, a communications consulting firm that helps public interest groups, foundations, and progressive businesses reach more people more effectively.

- Andy Goodman

I first met my wife when she sat through a week long sales training course I delivered.  (She was in Marketing at our company, not Sales, but it was important for her to know what the Salespeople were learning for her to perform her job.) Other than saying hello the first day, we hadn't yet had a conversation. On the second day, I delivered what was, without a doubt, the most boring section of the otherwise very fun curriculum.

Due to the dry nature of that portion of training - and the fact that it was right after lunch - there were two times I felt the need to have everyone stand up and stretch. The second time, there was one participant with her head down on the table-sleeping!--as everyone else stood up. 

During the next break I asked her if everything was okay, and she sheepishly said she was just dealing with some challenges and that it had ‘nothing to do with my presentation.'  How very kind and gracious! I decided to ask her out, seeing how nice she was in a difficult situation...and also because it was almost as if she'd already slept with me, so to speak.  (BTW, we completely re-tooled that section of training to be almost completely interactive, to avoid any other sleeping participants or impromptu engagements.)

- Steve Mason

 A couple of my Biggest Meeting Pet Peeves:

  • Everyone shows up and looks at each other - "So, what are we doing today?" No plan, no agenda. Just a lot of wasted time.
  • Death by Powerpoint.  Everyone's seated, the lights are dimmed, and the PowerPoint begins.  The presenter explains he has about 75 slides, and you find he's filled every slide with words, words and more words.  After the first or second slide, you notice he's READING the slides WORD FOR WORD. This is about the time that you look around to see people finding better, more engaging ways to pass the time-email, voicemail, doodling, sleeping....
- S. Abel
As a season subscriber, I recently attended a National Geographic LIVE event in Seattle. A testament to a truly engaging speaker: film maker Michael Davie held the attention of over 1000 people. After some of his captivating clips, you could have heard a pin drop. The audience was transfixed by his delivery and message. No fancy staging .... just a great person on stage. Cool!
- Nat'l Geographic fan
Better by Design, New Zealand

Tom Peters opened this New Zealand design conference with his usual brand of high energy pull-out-all-stops presentations. Yet, if you have every tried to figure out his presentation based on his PowerPoint presentations (which he freely allows people to download), it is most challenging. He uses many slides with only a few words on each. This conference took post conference presentation to a new level by producing a written report that summarized each element of the conference, and then offered the presentations for downloading. It is much more like an on-line text book of the content. This allowed participants to get a powerful summary of the event, and also allowed non-participants to get a much more in-depth perspective of the presentations--a great way to sell the next conference.

http://www.betterbydesign.org.nz/ ,  http://www.tompeters.com/, http://www.wowgreatidea.com/  

- Ed Bernacki, The Idea Factory
 

Reversed content - meet the experts

This is ideal for any association conference or a way to further involve your speakers.

The National Speakers Association and the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers include a "meet the experts" workshop in their design. This involves about 30 or more conference participants creating a 20-25 minute presentation on a broad range of topics. They are expected to deliver this session three times over a 90 minute workshop.

The setting is a large room full of round tables with about 8 chairs around each. An expert is seated at each round table, and there's room for another 7 or so people at each table.

People pick up tickets for the 3 experts they want to visit on a first come, first served basis. An MC rings a bell to start the session, and people move to the first ‘expert.' The bell rings again to end the session, and to prompt people to move to their next ‘expert.' This process is repeated until people have moved to participate in three mini ­workshops.

This is a highly effective way for people to meet and learn from a range of experts.

- Ed Bernacki, The Idea Factory