In March 2011 at South by Southwest #SXSW, I found myself overwhelmed with 40 session choices at each time slot and 25 parties to choose from at night. As a solo and a newby, how do you choose? You can just guess, but that’s an unfruitful, “unmaximized” way to go.

The regulars know what they are doing. When I was meeting people who I liked and I felt they had common interests, I was advised from others to follow them using Plancast.  It’s like apprenticing. You see one of the pros and you shadow them, but not quite because you don’t really know them and you are not necessarily in their space, just at the same event.

Plancast is great for massive, multi-track conferences, but it also great for when you are at home planning out your activities to attend. I use Plancast to share public events that I found out from other sources. Plus, I look for events to go through Plancast. It’s good for inbound and outbound events.

Meetings that bring results!

What if all of your meetings started on schedule, finished on time and you were able to stay on topic?  What if all your meetings produced a set of clear action items assigned and scheduled before adjourning?  Would these changes impact your organization’s effectiveness?

Experience a highly interactive presentation about how to conduct effective and efficient meetings. Through engaging demonstrations, discover ways to host productive meetings.

The following common problems will be discussed:

• Latecomers
• No Clear Agenda
• Didn’t Read Agenda
• People Not Being Prepared
• Not Being Engaged In Meeting
• Off Topic Conversations
• Re-Hashing Old Meeting Topics
• Conversation Hogs

You will have methods to keep your meetings on time, on topic and on task.

About Jolene Jang:

Jolene is a Seattle native and a former Seattle Chinese Princess 1997. She stands out from other entrepreneurs because of her quest of fun. After years of painstaking participation in mundane, uninspiring meetings, Jolene Jang decided it was time to become The Meeting Maximizer. Jolene’s Meeting Maximizer Methodology identifies and solves most standard meeting challenges with flair and fun.

The Meeting Maximizer focuses on the meeting participants, the most important part of the equation; make it easy for them to participate at the meeting or event and you will see a boost productivity. Time Is Precious. No one wants to waste it at a meeting that doesn’t involve them, bores them, or dumps data on their head. Employees get angry with resentment for the meetings that backlog their daily workload. The Meeting Maximizer, knows how to set up your event and learning environment to achieve your goals, maximizing the meeting impact. Your meeting will run more smoothly and effectively and it will be enjoyable for your participants. You will have a methodically engineered mechanics of the meeting, but humanized, energized and slightly even “humorized” atmosphere of the meeting; the best of both worlds.

Friday, Nov. 4th
11:30 AM to 1:30 PM

New Hong Kong Restaurant, 900 South Jackson St # 203
Seattle (Map)

Register for the luncheon

Karaoke Psychology

All stage performers want to have an audience.  When you are dealing with amateur performers who are techies by day and, after four drinks, are able to eke out a song on stage, they absolutely need a nurturing  audience’s love. Everyone will have more fun if she has more fun. We need to hoot, howl, clap and smile to cheer on everyone participating in the fun. If you cheer and feed that ego, she is going to dish out more personality, more flair, more dance moves and a bigger dose of expression.

Definition of Audience

In this case an audience would be people watching within 15 feet of the singer. When you have a small crowd and yet those folks are 25 feet back in the corner, this does not constitute an audience; these are just people sitting in the same room.  When people get the courage to sing, it’s customary to support them by listening, singing, tapping toes and maybe even “roboting” or “ballerina-ing” to their song.

Let’s take a look at this floor plan and see how this floor plan hampers the goal of connecting the singer and audience.

Case Study: Obstacles – Scenario 1

If you want to support your friend or stranger on stage, your only option is to stand with this floor plan.  You must get up and move to a cocktail table in front of the stage. With only 2 cocktail tables, this a small handful of audience members facing the stage. The third cocktail table nearby, has another table in front of it hindering the view of the performer. This is a little clump that is part of the audience, the rest are spots of people sitting around the windows.

What happens to the people who want to rest their feet and relax from a hard work week? Well, they can’t see the singer while sitting. Have you seen a photo shoot where the photographer puts the tallest people in the front and the shortest in the back? No, that would be silly. This was the Scenario 1 floor plan. The tall, cocktail tables are in the front row blocking the view of people sitting at lower coffee tables.

Take a look at the big honeydew-colored shape in the diagram. This is a long distance between the people at the tables and the singer on the stage.  As a professional speaker, this is an unreasonable distance to be so far away. The energy and excitement can generate rapidly if the singer and audience were in closer proximity.

Imagine, you get the courage to sing your favorite song, “People” by Streisand. You get up to the lighted stage and you see no people. Everyone is at a perimeter table 20-35 feet away and you can’t see their faces. It can be a lonely place. That’s not the karaoke spirit. Let’s help “Karaoke Virgins” get their training wheels with audience love.

What if people are cutting it up on the dance floor? Your only option is to get out of your chair and walk to the dance floor to see the dancers. You have a wall of cocktail tables and people that block your view. My friend is a fantastic dancer and I wanted my mother to see us “lindy hop dancing. All the tables are on the perimeter by the window, so she couldn’t see. She could leave her table companions mid-conversation to see, which she did later.

If you arrive late and all the chairs and tables are occupied, there isn’t a good place to stand. You are going to feel awkward. When you walk in, you walk in front of the words on the monitor (in blue). Essentially, you are just right of the spotlight. If you walk in further, you will be in the middle of the room. You cannot slip into the background nonchalantly, wherever you stand in the honeydew area, you will be blocking someone’s view. If people wanted to pop in and see what’s going on, this setup was not welcoming.

At this event, fortunately, people turned up. Unfortunately, they didn’t have sufficient seating. If people are going to be hanging in this kind of atmosphere for 2-4 hours, chairs are a must.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqddf8upXeg

To be able to succeed with this set up, the singers need to be able to command the crowd and get people out of their seats. The audience needs to know how to give courteous, supportive behavior.  Luckily, this was the case. Had there not been a couple of people who could entertain, it would’ve been a relatively flat, dull event.  What do you do to ensure and maximize your next event? Read about the Maximized Scenario 2

Create the Karaoke Spirit – Maximized Scenario 2

You can encourage a happy crowd and persuade more peeps to get on the microphone and the dance floor. How? It’s simple. Make the seating arrangement more compact and give as many people as possible a good sight line to the stage.  Let everyone have a chair and get comfortable. Let people enter the venue without walking into the spotlight or blocking the screen.

Look at the 2^nd diagram

Notice all the tables can see the stage with no tall cocktail tables with people standing at them blocking their view.

Have you been to a campfire? Everyone is gathered around the fire. Its cozy. Fun. Family.Essentially we want to bring this feeling to our karaoke party.  Even if there were a big number of nine people, if they all sat in front on the couches, your singer is going to feel supported and is going to give the audience more feeling, more oomph. Having the nine people in a “U-shape” is more impactful than then standing in a small clump. The layout looks crowded, but that is because the scaling is a bit off. However, the idea of a good party is to be close enough to lean over to another table to say “Whatsup?” Walking twelve feet to another table is a more purposeful move and may take more guts to give a line to the hunk or hottie at the table.

Get fancy feet on the dance floor

Having the sofas close to the stage also means that there are people almost on the dance floor, so when “Margaritaville”,” Mickey” or “Eye of the Tiger” comes up, they can hit the floor in one step. If you can hire a swing dance team or appropriate dancers, they can get the dance floor warmed up and inspire dancing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT77LKt2qEo

Entice the Looky Loos

When “looky loos” wander in, they can park at one of the five cocktail tables that are close to the entrance.  They won’t have to walk into the spotlight  or walk in front of the karaoke screen. Making this a comfortable place will encourage more people to settle in.

Reward your singers and audience

The food table is out of the way and isn’t taking up valuable real estate away from good audience members. Plus, if it is tasty food, it is good to keep it for the people at the party, not the people in the lobby who walk in ten feet to snag free fixings.

Attendance

Plan for both extremes 10-100 attendees. I figured there would be a minimum of 15, since I invited and received 15 RSVPs. However, I had no idea who else might be attending.

In the table below, see how the different scenarios compare.

Karaoke Spirit

It’s not about good voices, it is about good times. It’s about people feeling free and singing their hearts out to happy times associated to songs.  Arrange the room appropriately and you can maximize your event.

Jolene Jang, The Meeting Maximizer

President, NSA Northwest, National Speakers Association

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UELi-mSpsQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDBDxpetqN4