Posted by Will Ng Responses (2)

There are lots of discussion at MPI about a new format they are calling "Cafes." Here's the gist: Meeting participants are able to direct their own meeting content by posting a topic on a whiteboard, getting a table number, and waiting to see who shows up to discuss. If you think that sounds crazy, you're not the only one.

I'm pretty open to new ideas, so I participated this morning on the following topic: How do you run high-end incentives with an awareness of corporate social responsibility? The person who proposed the question was not an expert on the topic and neither were any of the participants who showed up for the discussion. In going through their own struggles and challenges, however, the seven participants at my table were able to connect with each other around a shared interest, provide lots of food for thought, and give some ideas about next steps to take to achieve some basic social responsibility when it comes to incentive programs, which are usually known for their extravagance.

Some ideas that came out of the discussion were how to reduce some waste (most specifically, bottled water), incorporating charitable activities (suggestions about specific suppliers to use), and using hotels and resorts that have conservation programs in place.

These are all basic ideas, and good ones, but they came out in the first 30 minutes of the discussion. The second 30 minutes, which should have taken our thought processes further, meandered to a discussion about the new format itself, technology adoption, and other topics that had nothing to do with the original subject. While I like the format and the ability to define your own content for a meeting program, I wonder if there is some way to direct participants a little bit more about how to moderate a group conversation to take it beyond what's already been said and push it towards more innovative thinking and problem solving.

I think we had some good brains around the table, but we lacked techniques to take our conversation to the next level. That's what a good moderator can do, but how can those techniques be incorporated into such an extemporaneous format?

—Blog by Elizabeth West, on location at the 2008 Professional Education Conference, in Houston.