Group Meetings Ideas While Social Distancing
IMAGE: Qin Fan / Unsplash
Face-to-face meetings for groups will resume soon. Planners and suppliers are creatively developing ideas for how these meetings could look while still providing a sense of safety for participants. Two ideas from recent PCMA Convene articles caught our eye:
“Twister Reception”
Idea from: Marc Dooner, national sales manager, Visit Raleigh
Article: Ideas for Social Distancing at a Networking Event
Participants self-select a color which identifies their level of comfort interacting – i.e. “red” guests are willing to interact with more people, “blue” guests are choosing more caution.
Masks (or badges) could be used to identify colors.
This would create a tiered networking event giving those who choose limited exposure to network with like-minded attendees.
Certain areas of the room or food stations could be designated and limited to certain colors.
“Family” Style Seating Arrangements
Idea from: James H. Gilmore, coauthor of The Experience Economy
Article: Experience Economy Expert Envisions Meetings in COVID-19 Times
Gilmore said that “the chair is the most powerful icon of an event.” Gilmore believes that social-distancing guidelines encourage event organizers to be more innovative about how seating is arranged.
One scenario Gilmore envisions is pairing one attendee with four others — with the group taking a “divide and conquer” approach, each participating in different concurrent sessions before reporting back and sharing their insights. “Who’s your tribe or your family that you’re going to traverse through the experience with? If you have to be six feet apart, it seems a smaller group would help,” he said. “Five people even 10 feet apart feels a lot better than 500 people six feet apart.”
“This is an opportunity to create something new, not to try to automate or replicate what you’ve done in the past,” Gilmore said. “That’s the mindset to embrace, because if people are to again gather, the experience really is going to have to be worthwhile.”