S5E16: Pivoting from In Person to Online with Matthew Duhs

As we are in our "new normal" way of life within the event industry. It's been interesting witnessing, experiencing, and adapting to these new encounters! Today I have one of my students Matthew Duhs, who is interviewing Christina Krueger from  Club Management Association of America! Join in the conversation and maybe you can take a thing or two as we continuing pivoting within the online realm.


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Transcript

Matt: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Extraordinary Events podcast. My name is Matt Duhs, and I would like to thank Dr. K for allowing me to be on the podcast today. I recently had the chance to talk to Christina Krueger from the Club Management Association of America. Ms. Krueger and I chatted about the recent CMMA World Conference, and her experience of helping to move the conference from an in-person experience in Tampa Bay, to one in a virtual setting. We talked about not only her experience shifting the conference on-line, but also other events that she has been a part of in her role as the Member Communities and Student Development Manager. Hope you all enjoy our chat.

For those people who aren’t super familiar with CMMA, before Covid and before we moved it on-line, what would conference have looked like in Tampa Bay this year?

Christina: Sure, so every year we have our world conference. It’s always in a different city and the year before we were in Grapevine, TX and this year it was supposed to be Tampa, Florida. It’s always a week long, and we have it on a credits perspective in education for our professional members. Members who are trying to go for their CCM and other certifications. It’s super helpful on an education standpoint for our professional members to go, and to attend the different education sessions that we have. With that being said, I run the student program, so we have usually two or three days, two and a half days, of education for students. Some will have four education sessions, and when we were in Tampa it would have been four as well. When we were in Texas, it was the first one I was involved in. So I kinda watched everything and helped out as much as I could being the newbie, I think I joined three months prior. But it was a very remote resort. It was at the Gaylord in Grapevine and there wasn’t a lot around it. We had a networking event that took an hour by bus to get there and that was the closest club nearby.  But Tampa, there were many clubs nearby that convention center. The students were planning on having two club tours. Our student networking event was supposed to be at one of the clubs. Usually we have a student networking event. We have the four educational sessions, career fair opportunities, vendors, a couple different things that students can get involved in that the professional members can be involved in too. There’s a lot going on at conference and it’s really a pure week of networking and super fun times. Different opportunities for professional members to network with one another and with the students we have. We always have a mentorship program, which we did have this year, even though it was virtual. We did a really good job making it similar to what it would have been in Tampa, but the whole people aspect got taken out. Which is, this whole past year, the human interaction has been taken out of everything, but that was the biggest difference.  Everything else pretty much stayed the same.

Matt: So as you said that a lot of things stayed the same. I feel like some things with taking things online has had some strengths. It's been easier to connect with people. Like our student chapter, it was super easy to connect with a couple other ones that we hadn’t talked with and network with them. So what do you think were some of the strengths that both in-person or virtual would have had?

Christina: So in person, the strengths of that, everything is right there for immediate satisfaction. If you are at our coffee stand, which is where everyone normally navigated anyway between sessions. You could pick up a random conversations with anyone, student to student, professional member to student member, and it was easy on that point.  The strength of in-person, you get that interaction. As hospitality professionals, I got my degree in hospitality, that’s what we want and thrive on, the personal interaction. But I will say, on a virtual perspective, we actually had more students register this year for conference because they could afford it. It helped that registration for students this past year was $25 instead of $200, but there was no extra cost for travel or hotel, or food and beverage. We got way more students participating because it was virtual and they could. That’s kind of been the cool part I think about with conference and CMAA in general, is opportunities for students. Zoom is a huge thing. I know everyone is really tired of it, but we’ve had student chapters in Florida doing club tours in California.  When would they have ever been able to do that before or even thought about it? FaceTime has always been a thing, but no one actually thought of that as an avenue to tour a club.  Now, everything has to be virtual. And because of it, everyone has been able to do club tours at many other clubs that they would never have thought about reaching out to before. There are definitely pros and cons to both. I think on a human interaction level, we want to be in person because of that, but on an education standpoint and getting people involved, I really think that virtual has been helpful this year having everything online.

Matt: I definitely agree with you on that point. I remember there was one CMAA event where there was a club tour of Tara Iti in New Zealand and I never would have dreamed of being able to see a New Zealand club or getting to connect with that general manager.  So there definitely has been some great things with both. So going off that point, do you think you are going to keep the benefits of the online/virtual stuff no matter if conference takes place in-person or online in the future?

Christina: I think so. I mean this has been a learning experience for all of us.  We had never done anything on-line before. A couple of our BMI that CMAA have, Business Management Institute, for our education for professional members, all of them have been on-line. I would say fall was the first BMI that we normally have in person. They are usually always in person, that was CMAA’s first event if you will that went virtual. We had dipped our toes in virtual planning, but nothing compared to what conference turned out to be, and we had never done something to that extent before. I do think so. Because, there were more people that were able to be involved because it was virtual. I do think that there will be aspects of it that will continue to be virtual.  If we are able to meet in person, which I have a feeling we will be by next February. We’ll definitely be in San Diego. We are all crossing everything, unless something else crazy happens, which I’m not going to put it past this world right now. But, unless something crazy happens, we will be in San Diego. But even if we are in San Diego, I just have this sneaking suspicion that we will be doing some things on-line so more people can attend. That’s the whole point. We want people to get involved.  We want people to learn and if this is another way that we can provide that, then we are going to do everything we can to have it. I know I’m definitely looking forward to San Diego and Orlando the following year with the warm weather.  

Matt: Me too! It would definitely be cool if students could do stuff virtually if need be. If they can’t get there because of classes, and hopefully there is more education stuff on-line. You touched on dipping your toes a little bit in the virtual planning, but not a whole lot. What do you think were some of your biggest challenges moving from Tampa to the interwebs?

Christina: I think at least for myself, we waited so long to try to see if we could make it to Tampa. We didn't really make the decision in November. Maybe the end of October. But for me, I am not type A, but I am closest to type A where I want to know what is going on so I can plan and I can program accordingly. And so I think maybe a little bit of the last-minute part threw us for a loop because I've already started planning for San Diego. So a year or more in advance and I think you only having a couple months to put together something that is virtua, that we've never done before, I think was the hardest part. We did a really good job. There was a couple of the education sessions, not for students, but for our professional members, that were pre-recorded. That was helpful that we didn't have to worry about the tech part of it, that we could pre-record and then put it on our platform and watch it. And then right after, we had most of them, always had a continuing the conversation. That second half hour after, and people could go in and immediately start talking to the speaker so they were there. But it was pre-recorded. On a challenging perspective, it was all challenging for everyone just in a different way, but our goal was always the same. The goal is always education. The goal is always community, and I feel like every department did a really good job of just relaying to members that we are going to do this, we are going to have this, it’s going to be okay and I think just for events in general, as long as communication is always there and we're communicating with our members by “We're going to do this. We're going to have it.” Positive attitude spewing out the positivity, we always knew it was going to work out, but I think the last minute flip was probably for everyone we just felt like if we would have had one more week then it would have been even better. But in actuality, it all ended up working out in the end anyway.

Matt: I mean it's always going to be that no matter what event you have to plan. If you would have had one more week or one more day to plan. So say Covid-20 comes around next year two months before San Diego. Is there anything that you think that you would do differently with planning and shifting things online?

Christina: That would really throw me for a loop. I was talking to my boss about all the new things I want to do for our student program in San Diego, and if that all had to go virtual, I would cry. Differently though, I don’t think so because for the most part, everything is the same in a sense all the speakers would have been selected already. We already had them. All of the schedules would have already been put together, so we already knew what was going to be where. It would really just be, “okay cool, let’s get our online platform back up”. Which I think actually going back to the last question, that might have been the most challenging part with the online platform. I actually didn't even see it until a couple weeks prior to conference. So learning it, and then being able to explain was challenging itself. I think that would probably be the hardest part, if two weeks before conference, we got our 2.0 of Covid. I think that would be the most challenging part, is to get that platform back up there and have everything put on. Not to say we couldn’t do it if worse came to worst. And I mean this wouldn't be my decision, but we could always push it back another week or two. If it was going to be virtual anyway, then you know what's another week just so we could get all of our ducks in a row. I think just on a scheduling standpoint, on making sure speakers are selected, that wouldn't be too too challenging because we already had it. It really would have just been organizing how our viewers are going to see it online, and in such a short period of time. I think I underestimate the world of technology, and I say I think, I mean I know that I do. There's a lot of stuff about technology that I don't know, and to a certain extent, I never want to know because it's so intense. It’s definitely good to be able to know and be able to pivot in that way, but that would definitely be the most challenging part to get everything done in two weeks. That gives me stress just thinking about it.

Matt: Hopefully, you don't have to worry about pivoting that quickly again in a world where we’ve had to pivot so much in the past year. Thank you so much for chatting with me. Hopefully, I get to see you in person and we can have another conversation in person in San Diego next February. Thank you again for talking with me and thanks everyone for listening in!

Christina: Thank you!