If you really want to rile meeting professionals, I find that the label “party planners” does the trick. The epithet has patronising overtones and hints that what they do is not entirely serious or important.
But we shouldn’t be too dismissive of party planning skills. Aside from the fact that many MPI members discovered their latent organisational talents running school proms and office celebrations, the social elements of a meeting (a.k.a. the parties) contribute, fundamentally, to its success. We ignore this at our peril.
In fact, experience tells me that social functions are often the only bit of the meeting that anyone can recall a few weeks later. But perhaps I’m being cynical.
Today, globalisation makes party planning more important than ever. Function organisers really earn crossed cocktail sticks when event are multinational and span a range of ages. Such challenges demand creativity of the highest order.
Which is why I was so impressed by the social programme staged for us by the Danish host committee at MPI’s Professional Education Conference-Europe (PEC-E) in Copenhagen this past March. To please representatives from 29 countries (and that means at least 20 languages and about 35 cultures) is no mean feat.
One of the keys to a successful social function is the choice of entertainment. I have suffered through interminable evenings of Chinese opera and Russian folk theatre (unable even to comprehend the plot, let alone the dialogue). I have endured the long-winded political cabarets beloved by Germans and an evening of Portuguese fado that reduced me to tears—for all the wrong reasons. Even the boisterous mariachi bands of Mexico would be hard to stomach without the accompanying tequila.
Conversely, Italian operatic arias inspire most people, and it is impossible to be unmoved by a display of Hungarian czardas, Irish reels or Spanish flamenco. But music should be carefully chosen.
It was interesting to see, at the January Professional Education Conference-North America in New Orleans, how everyone threw themselves into the fun of a Mardi Gras evening: an occasion when the entertainment is traditionally provided by participants. (My attempts to remain anonymous behind a sexy mask were slightly spoiled by having—for security reasons—to wear my name badge, but I digress.)
Successful meeting (party) planners assess the cultures, languages, levels of sophistication, age and gender of the participants before booking an act. But, if the spread of background and interest is diverse, then choice is limited and, sadly, few of us can afford to hire the Chinese State Circus or Cirque du Soleil—two organisations that have found the perfect recipe for international audiences.
But the real challenge comes when you introduce humour to a multinational function.
Humour is universal—everyone likes a laugh. Unfortunately, we all find different things funny. The one exception, in my experience, is that special form of non-verbal, character-based comedy epitomised by Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati and, most recently, Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. This genre has a universal, ageless appeal that tickles every funny bone.
In the end, the choice of food, music, entertainment and ambience will depend on the organiser’s objectives and the needs of the participants. So the clever “party planner” is one who understands that there are some of us who just want to sit somewhere quiet and chat. What? … Who’s a grumpy old man?
