ReConEx 2021 Agenda

Click on gold plus sign next to session title to view session description

Attire: Business and/or Business Casual

Time	Activity
8:00am - 9:00am	Registration and Breakfast with Exhibitors
9:00am - 10:30am	Opening General Session: Think Like an Inventor: The Mindset & Motivation to spot Opportunities, Take Initiative and Embrace Change
Description “It’s not my problem.” “It’s not my job.” “I wouldn’t know where to start.” “I can’t.” “I won’t.” “I quit.” Imagine inventors saying these kinds of phrases. What if those inventors STOPPED thinking, creating and solving? Terrifying, right?! But this is exactly what’s happening in YOUR teams, organization and maybe even in your own mind every single day. Results: Personal initiative will soar when you learn the secret to spotting any problem or opportunity waiting to be solved Increase that sense of ownership by understanding how invention is fun, easy and (almost always) free Inspire an unlimited supply of ideas and opportunities when you see the world through inventors’ eyes An audience that is eager to learn for the rest of the day and the rest of their lives Sponsored by: Speakers Julie Holmes
10:30am - 11:00am	Morning Break with Exhibitors
11:00am - 12:00pm	Breakout Session 1A: Communicating without Words
Description People have learned to trust their experiences in this world of visual and data overload, but only if you can create effective experiential environments. This approach to discovering and communicating what is really important about your brand story to designers of graphics, exhibits, florals, furniture, stages and more has been honed over the years by creatives and now you can put it to work for you. Key Take Aways: Finding the most important thing to communicate without words about your event. Communicating with left and right brained people. How to touch guests hearts with all the elements of your event. Speakers Hilary Howes
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Breakout Session 1B: Talking the C Suite Lingo
Description The struggles of a meeting professional (planner & supplier) include project management.You will be called upon to make various presentations to your Executive Team.Not all presentations are created equal. Speaking and presentations to executives is different than communicating meeting information to peers. Key Take Aways: Learn to focus on results and not the process. Anticipate the questions to weave the solutions into your presentation. Infuse your personality into your presentation guaranteeing uniqueness and interactivity Speakers Jamie Cook
11:00 AM- 12:00 PM	Breakout Session 1C: Emotional Intelligence: The Key to Successful Leadership
Description Long after others have quit, leaders keep plugging on, until the job gets done. They build that mental toughness, to work through the knots, to lift others, and to leave people, places, and jobs, better than they found them. Leadership is less about position, more about disposition. Look at your staff, your organization, or your nonprofit. Do you need more dividers or do you need more connectors? Do you need more people to destroy or boost employee morale? Leaders connect, and boost others. They build bridges and strong partnerships. Their majestic online and offline presence create positive ripple effects that lifts the image of your organization. They practice healthy emotional intelligence and demonstrate excellent people skills. Leaders have an unwavering focus, from start to finish. Key Take Aways: How to build effective teams and get everyone on the same page How to practice emotional intelligence as a leader How to turn problems into opportunities and handle crisis situations effectively How to engage in thoughtful disagreement and to get everyone to work together, even though everyone may not agree with each other Speakers Preethi Fernando
11:00 AM- 12:00 PM	Breakout Session 1D: Little Big Bangs for Meeting and Event Planners
Description Increase the Value and Support Your Attendees, Exhibitors, Partners, and Teams with (Almost) No Effort You know it’s expensive to replace a lost customer and that it damages your team’s moral every time it happens. Empower your people to become creative service superstars. Key Take-Aways: • Find painful gaps and powerful opportunities in your event when you master the Customer Emotion Map™ • Add revenue when you spot up-sell and up-serve opportunities • Evaluate and implement your next great event ideas when you use the bootstrap approach to innovation Speakers Julie Holmes
12:00pm - 1:45pm	Lunch with Keynote: How Designing for Business Goals Can Lead to Better Guest Experiences
Description A recent study found that global spend on business events last year exceeded $1 Trillion impacting 1.5 Billion people globally. We know organizations around the globe continue to invest significant sums of money annually to gather their people … but why? What are organizations hoping to gain from their large investments? What outcomes are they looking to achieve? Join Steve O’ Malley, President of Maritz Travel, as he shares findings from a review of 400+ client business objectives to understand what companies really need their events to do. In this session, you’ll learn the six primary business outcomes and explore ways to help your clients elevate the impact of their events. Key Take Aways: Discover the top 6 most common business objectives in events and how to apply them to your event strategy Gain insight into what clients are hoping to achieve through face-to-face event investments Learn how to align your brand’s purpose and values to the “why” of your event to transform your business and people Speakers Steve O'Malley, HMCC, CITP
1:45pm - 2:10pm	Dessert with Exhibitors
2:15pm - 3:15pm	Breakout Session 2A: Shhhhh! The Meeting Professional's Secret Weapon - Improv!
Description What if you could create more engaging meetings, deal better with last-minute changes, and generate more innovative ideas without spending a dime? Surprisingly, the techniques improv comedians use can equip you do this and more. Much more. All it takes is a simple shift in mindset and replacing two words in your vocabulary. Come to this cutting-edge program to find out what these words are. This session delivers practical, evidence-based tips served up in an interactive format to help you unlock and embrace the natural gifts you already possess as a meeting professional. By attending this program, you’ll learn how to help your colleagues and partners feel more valued and included. And when they do, they’ll be more invested and loyal to you and your goals. Key Take Aways: Think better on your feet. Be more resilient and improve your ability to deal with change. Increase collaboration among your team, vendors, and partners. Come up with better ideas more often. Speakers Steve Hughes MBA, CSP
2:15pm - 3:15pm	Breakout Session 2B: #Money: Sponsorship in the Age of New Social Media Tools
Description Whether you’re planning a conference, trade show, or event, there’s a good chance that, in order to be profitable, you’ll have to get sponsors. Your sponsors are your customers and it’s important to make sure you’re selling them the best products. In 2020, social media marketing is valuable because it allows companies to directly engage with their customers, build brand presence, and ultimately sell more products. Learn what options you have to develop killer social media sponsorship packages that mutually benefit both your sponsors and your organization. Now, more than ever before, social media enables core business objectives and provides so many different metrics and new data streams on customers and their behavior. With the rise in new social media features like Instagram Stories and new live streaming capabilities, authenticity and shareability have new clout. Learn how to create innovative sponsorships that will appeal to your attendees and show an increase in ROI to your sponsors. Key Take Aways: Identify new ideas for hashtag use, how to create one and how to use it. Discover how to price social media sponsorship packages. Explain how social media analytics can help you achieve your sponsor’s and your company’s business goals. Speakers Alex Plaxen
2:15pm - 3:15pm	Breakout Session 2C: Relational Communications
Description This breakout session is an interactive experience focused on both interpersonal and intrapersonal Communication. Guests will gain a greater understanding of how body language, non-verbals, verbals, intention cues and psychology influence and shape human behavior. These soft skills are invaluable. Key Take Aways: Identify body-language cues for particular behavior Understand psychological influences of behavior Gain insights to human behavior cues to assist in business relationships Speakers Rory Wheeler
2:15pm - 3:15pm	Breakout Session 2D: MACE 2020 Hackathon
Description Hackathons are quickly becoming the most talked about conference experiences, as they deliver on two key attendee expectations for events: Learning and Networking. In this session, I’ll open my playbook to share proven techniques for tapping the collective wisdom at your event/chapter to create potential solutions for all. From creating the right mindset and environment for more fruitful ideation, to engaging a diverse set of perspectives in constructive debate and creating a new, exciting sponsorship opportunity, I’ll cover the full hackathon spectrum. Participants will emerge from this session with tools and tips to design hackathons that reveal breakthrough ideas to address industry challenges, while igniting cross-disciplinary, collaborative conversations that advance learning and nurture relationships. While hackathons typically span a day or more, participants will experience a mini-version where they will flesh out new ideas with peers, but experience this interactive model first-hand. In this fun, interactive and competitive session, teams will be given a challenge to help advance the impact of the MACE conference. Key Take-Aways: Understand how key components can be orchestrated to create a richer hackathon experience Develop two techniques that can be applied to jumpstart, enhance and accelerate team hacking exchanges Identify the essentials for designing a successful hackathon experience Please note: The Hackathon will run from 2:15-4:45pm. Breaks will be determined by the team/presenter. Teams will be determined by our presenter and told to participants upon arrival. Teams will present their proposals at the beginning of the closing session (5:00pm) to the full MACE audience and a prestigious panel of judges. Winners will be announced at the end of the closing session. This session is limited to 30 participants. Speakers Jamie Murdock
2:15pm - 3:15pm	Breakout Session 2E: Stop Talking to Yourselves - Thinking Strategically About Reaching New Audiences
Description A deeper dive to the January e2: What Business are YOU Really In The art of strategic event design is viewing your organization holistically and leveraging your story to draw in new audiences. Learn the secrets for developing perceptive profiles, which are useful in creating campaigns for audiences that you can’t currently collect data on because they are not engaged with your association. Discover the process—which involves research, interviews and working through simple design thinking—to generate tangible profiles that your association can use immediately. Key Take-Aways: Five simple ways to get started in thinking strategically about your events Learn a methodology to approach the difficult task of talking to new audiences outside of your association’s current reach. Create a journey map and audience profiles. Speakers Bill Zimmer Beth Surmont
3:15pm - 3:45pm	Afternoon Break
3:45pm - 4:45pm	Breakout Session 3A: Creating Wellbeing in Events
Description Everyone seems to be talking about adding mindfulness, wellness and wellbeing to their events. This session will define what this means and identify why it’s important to consider how to positively impact your participants’ well being. Key Take Aways: Ideas on how to fuel and power your guests How to reduce anxiety and make them feel emotionally centered for your meetings. How to implement positive impact at meeting for participants’ well being. Speakers Melissa Milione
3:45pm - 4:45pm	Breakout Session 3B: Using Big Data to Tell a Better Story
Description With all of the emerging technologies, we are inundated with so much data at our events. But, do you really have time to sift through it all? This session will focus on how we can make sense of big data to understand exactly how and what is impacting our events. In this session, you will learn how to use your data to tell a better story. We’re talking everything from online registration and marketing, to on-site logistics, attendee demographics, AI for conversations, on-site tracking and interest pools. We will review all of these topics in greater detail, and learn how we can aggregate all of this data together to paint a bigger picture of your event, and share it with your stakeholders, attendees, and exhibitors. Key Take Aways: Ensure the right data is there to help answer questions How do you consume all the data from various sources of event tech? How to apply this for your marketing, finance and operations group. Tools that can help you consolidate data. Speakers Dharmesh Dayabhai
3:45pm - 4:45pm	Breakout Session 3C: Getting Hotels to say "YES!" to Your Business
Description A behind the scenes look at how hotels make selling decisions. This session will help guide planners as to how to create more attractive RFPs and help better position their business in a thriving seller’s market. We will provide new understandings of business review, concessions, meeting space, and address the most common misconceptions plaguing planners today. We will also dig deep and take a look at where the market is headed and how things will change when the market shifts, and oh yes, it is already shifting… Key Take Aways: Better understanding how hotels make selling decisions Strategic ways to craft RFPs to elicit better proposals Understand what does and doesn’t influence a hotel proposal Speakers Brett Sterenson
3:45pm - 4:45pm	Breakout Session 3D: MACE 2020 Hackathon (continued)
Description Hackathons are quickly becoming the most talked about conference experiences, as they deliver on two key attendee expectations for events: Learning and Networking. In this session, I’ll open my playbook to share proven techniques for tapping the collective wisdom at your event/chapter to create potential solutions for all. From creating the right mindset and environment for more fruitful ideation, to engaging a diverse set of perspectives in constructive debate and creating a new, exciting sponsorship opportunity, I’ll cover the full hackathon spectrum. Participants will emerge from this session with tools and tips to design hackathons that reveal breakthrough ideas to address industry challenges, while igniting cross-disciplinary, collaborative conversations that advance learning and nurture relationships. While hackathons typically span a day or more, participants will experience a mini-version where they will flesh out new ideas with peers, but experience this interactive model first-hand. In this fun, interactive and competitive session, teams will be given a challenge to help advance the impact of the MACE conference. Key Take-Aways: Understand how key components can be orchestrated to create a richer hackathon experience Develop two techniques that can be applied to jumpstart, enhance and accelerate team hacking exchanges Identify the essentials for designing a successful hackathon experience Please note: The Hackathon will run from 2:25-4:45pm. Breaks will be determined by the team/presenter. Teams will be determined by our presenter and told to participants upon arrival. Teams will present their proposals at the beginning of the closing session (5:00pm) to the full MACE audience and a prestigious panel of judges. Winners will be announced at the end of the closing session. This session is limited to 30 participants. Speakers Jamie Murdock
5:00pm - 6:30pm	Closing General Session: Rock Your Pitch: Storytelling with Numbers
Description You have to pitch for money for your business or project. You have to tell your boss you deserve a raise. You have to explain why your project is going to be successful. In order to get to X (numbers), you’ve got to explain Y (why). This talk speaks to the humans who believe numbers tell the story AND to the humans who believe stories tell the numbers. Looking at both sides to ensure everyone gets the information they need, you’ll be able to craft a presentation from the story the numbers tell in a succinct, simple, and manageable way. You’ll walk away with things you can change immediately in your current presentation or just what you needed to create the one that’s in your head. You’ve got to make your pitch by making an impact. Key Take Aways: Finding out how the numbers can tell a story Getting tips on how to tell the story without boring people Finding ways to get your audience to feel something Seeing how the story AND the numbers make the impact It’s up to YOU to rock your pitch! Sponsored by: Speakers Melanie Spring
6:30pm - 7:30pm	Closing Reception with Exhibitors
Description