MEETING DESIGN HOW TO START A MEETING
NEW BEGINNINGS
Meeting designers Mike van der Vijver and Eric de Groot, co-founders of MindMeeting.org, will publish the long-awaited followup to their seminal 2013 book Into the Heart of Meetings later this year – and we’ve secured an exclusive extract towhet your appetite
T he new book, Meetings: by default or by design , sees them working alongside meetings industry veteran Martin Sirk, who has edited the content and contributed a chapter. The book aims to improve the quality of meetings through better design. In it, the authors challenge the status quo of current meeting practices and offer alternatives.
Unlike its more theoretical predecessor, Meetings: by default or by design acts as a reference manual, showing readers how and where they can improve the quality of their meetings. It does so in forty-one short chapters covering everything from who should be attending the meeting to working with suppliers and speakers, sustainability to engagement. Each chapter follows the same format. They start by describing common practice and the
opportunities planners miss when doing things this way (the ‘By default’ section). Next come two pieces of advice to improve things (the ‘By design’ section) – one, a relatively simple change that, in most cases, could be applied to already existing meeting programmes, the other - called “The next level” – altogether more sweeping and drastic. Instead of an introduction, the book begins with a manifesto outlining the twelve principles behind the authors’ design work and an ‘instructions for use’, putting the reader in work mode from the outset. Although it might be tempting to read Meetings: by default or by design from cover to cover, this is not how it works best. This is a book to keep on your desk, ready to be consulted whenever you need a flash of inspiration or a guiding hand.
44 2022 #1 AMIMAGAZINE.GLOBAL
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