S3E13: There is No Going Back

Why is everyone talking about "going back" to in-person meetings? We're not going back! This is physically not an option. In this podcast episode, I discuss how thinking about "going back" to something is the completely wrong mindset to have and how we as a society need to recognize that things are not what they once were. Better yet, how a comical Facebook comment centered around someone being bitter that their University didn't cancel finals in December 1989 due to a snowstorm inspired this post.

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Transcript

Dr. K: Hello, hello, my friends! It is an exciting Monday that I'm recording here today, it is freezing cold outside, we are in record setting low temperatures, things around me are getting canceled because of how cold the weather is. And I hope that it is warm there where you are, or when you're listening to it that it's nice and warm. When I look outside my window that's right in front of me, I have about 15 inches of snow still from a couple weeks ago. And it is just frigid. And I hope that you are all staying warm, or again, if it's warm where you are then you can close your eyes and laugh at me just a little bit here. 

Today, I have just a lot on my mind. And a lot of it just has to do with this concept of changing, staying up with the times, recognizing that things are not what they were. And that's not a bad thing! And comparing our industry or our lives to the past is not a good thing to do. One of the reasons that this came to my mind was that it's freezing cold outside, like I just said, and our University decided that they were going to close today, because of the frigid temperatures our high, I believe is negative four, negative six, and our low is negative 27 or negative 28, I think. But the Windchill is so much colder. And when you're on a campus that involves a lot of walking, and a lot of people who take the public transportation, and maybe not everybody has the clothing that they need to have. They don't have the warm jackets and the gloves and all the different things to keep people safe in this type of temperatures. I felt it was a very responsible thing that the university was doing. 

Now, if you were to go to social media, you can already see where this is going. If you were to go to social media, and read the comments on the closure notice of the university, it was very one way or the other. There was a lot of people who were saying that we needed to turn in our membership to the Midwest universities. There was some that said essentially, that we didn't understand what cold truly was, etc, etc, etc. And of course you don't see this on the K - 12 schools on the younger kiddos schools who also canceled you don't see it on any of those. But you see on the university page. And one comment that stuck out to me was someone had written that we never canceled school in December of 1989, when we had freezing temperatures and blizzards, and everybody was still expected to go for finals. 

And so I read this comment, and I just had to laugh a little bit. First of all, here's someone who's holding on to the fact that 32 years ago, somebody didn't have finals canceled because there was a snowstorm. Just let it go. And then also this recognition that the world is not the same that it used to be people used to live on campus. There wasn't as much University sprawl and all the different buildings. When I went to school, granted, mine was a little bit of a different situation. But when I went to undergrad in my university, we were in two buildings. So I could park pretty much right in front of the buildings and just walk right in. And so when it was freezing cold, then it wasn't that big of a deal because I was walking right in those buildings. But here we have such a sprawl. People could be walking 30, 40, 50 minutes and, and not everybody's always dressed appropriately. And I think that there's a big difference there between 30 years ago and now. 30 years ago, people would be full time students, maybe you potentially have a part time job. But if they did have a job, it would pay for all their schooling. And now here I am, I teach class. And I have students who have one or two full time jobs, where they're just trying to pay their bills so they can survive. Nevermind paying off school, which they're taking out loans for, they have to work 40, 50 hours a week just to pay rent of the inflated rent system. 

And when you sit there and look at things like this, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, politics and business, economics, etc, etc. But we're also doing this in events, we're doing it in the event industry. There are so many times that I will be online, and I read comments of when are we going to go back to this time, when are we going to go back to what we were, when are we going to go back to in person meetings, when are we going to go back to doing this? And that is completely the wrong mindset to have about this. Even when we are, quote unquote, going back to in-person meetings. It is not the same in person meeting that we experienced two years ago, people have changed, situations have changed, the concept of learning has changed. The fact that we can now pretty much access any of our information, or any of our content or engagement with other people online through other events that are done well means that there's more options, people used to potentially go to your local event or your statewide event, because it was easy, and it was inexpensive, and of course for good local networking. But now, there's so many more options that are open, and you're not just competing locally, or statewide or regionally, you're now essentially competing with the rest of the world. And as event planners, we are not just competing with other event planners. Now, we're competing with experience designers, and we're competing with digital marketing companies. We are competing in this cross industry perspective. And I don't think that a lot of people are thinking like that! 

I just did a site tour the other day, I was on site, we're having an omni channel event, also known as hybrid, if you haven't heard my previous, also known as hybrid for some of you that maybe haven't heard one of my previous podcasts. And I remember I took a zoom call on my phone as I was walking around the venue. And people were saying, “Oh, I'm so excited that we're going back to in-person. And yes, we are going to be hosting this in person and online. But we're not going back, we are completely going forward, there is no going back. Every single day that we live in, we're alive is the day that we're in. And every day, tomorrow is just a day in the future, you cannot go back, you can't change the past, you can't look at you can't, you can't set your goal to go back in the past, right, you can't be forward thinking and future focused and have the past in mind. Even if we're looking at potentially the same bottom line figures of the past that we're trying to get to, the end result is really, that even though that end number might be the same, the line items leading up to it are going to be very different. Instead of the majority of our income coming from memberships and registrations, we are now going to have to diversify all of our different incomes, we're gonna have to diversify our offerings, we're really going into just a totally new age of live and in person and online experiences. And I don't know what else I can say about that. I hope that all of the hundreds of people that listened to this podcast, hopefully in the future 1000s. But I think and hope that the 100 of people listening here, you really just internalize this and help spread that word. And when people are when you're talking with people who are talking about that we get to go in the past and we get to go back to meeting a person. That is a mindset shift that we really need to get out of. 

And it's difficult because I'm also having to educate my strategic partners in terminology. When I send out a sponsorship guide, which has always been a sponsorship guide, I don't want to call it a sponsorship guide. I want to call it something else. But then in fine print or in my email, I have to say also known as sponsorship guide because people just aren't keeping up with the learning and the information that they need to be. So I know if you're listening to this podcast, I'm not talking to you because you are keeping up with your learning and your information. And spread this podcast, share this podcast with others. I am horribly, horribly bad at asking people for ratings and shares. And I just love the podcast. And I love sharing. I love our Friday webinars which have kicked up again this month. We want to change the world, one event at a time, one person at a time, we've got to share the message. 

So if you like this, and you rate this on Apple Podcast, or whatever podcast platform you listen to, if you read it and take a screenshot of it, and you send it to our email, theeventsinitiative@gmail.com then I will send you a personalized video message to thank you for reading it. And thank you for listening and send you just a fun little note to thank you for being such a great listener. And definitely share this with your friends and with other people. Last week we had content focused on trade shows. Not a lot of people are talking about trade shows or thinking about trade shows. And the week prior we had re envisioned the entire sponsorship document, this partnership document that I'm talking about, which is probably one of my favorite and most impactful episodes to date. And I promise you, if you share in like and rate then I will do a much better job of sharing it myself, because we are all in this together. And we are all moving forward together. 

And I am so so excited about the future. And I'm excited about meeting some of you and sending you videos. And as always, thank you all so much for taking the time to make the time. I'll talk with you soon.