by Michael Kerr – The Workplace Energizer

As an international business speaker, humorist, trainer and author, Michael Kerr is one of North America’s leading authorities on creating healthier and more productive working environments. Kerr’s presentations are known for their high energy, positive humour and practical ideas that audiences can put to work immediately.

Being the wildly entertaining, charismatic, engaging, thought-provoking, and humble speaker that I am, meeting planners often slot me into the middle of what they describe as a, “dry, fun-sucking, soul-sucking, heavy day full of weighty speakers pontificating about things that we don’t really understand in a monotone voice using 879 PowerPoint slides.”

In other words, speakers such as myself are sometimes considered the fun, creamy centre squished between two dry, flavorless, crusty speakers.

But surely there’s a better way to think about your meetings?

Rather than thinking about a choice for serious content OR fun at your meetings, shouldn’t the aim be to choose fun AND content? Fun AND effectiveness?

Of course some of the presentations at any event are going to veer towards the more serious, content-rich side of the spectrum, but there are many simple things you can do to inject more fun into any event to make the fun more organic:

·    Incorporate humor into the program agenda or conference brochure using humorous quotes; off-beat, relevant trivia; funny photos of the speakers that link to your theme;  a quiz that participants can redeem for the chance to win a prize;  fun descriptions of the sessions.  Do something in your pre-event marketing that sends the message, yes, there is going to be tremendous value and amazing content, but that doesn’t mean we are going to take ourselves too seriously.
·   Have some of the speakers create short preview videos of their talks to so participants can get to know them beforehand. The aim isn’t to be laugh-out-loud funny, but creating personal greeting videos can help participants make a fun connection to the speaker that just can’t be done through a brochure.

·    Create fun rituals at the events. Rituals that kick off each session in fun ways to encourage people to return to their seats on time, rituals that end the sessions, rituals to start the day or end the day. It doesn’t matter what it is, but fun rituals can help you achieve your goals and help create a sense of shared history and experience that participants will likely remember for a long time. To paraphrase the old saying, participants won’t remember everything that was said at an event, but they will remember how the event made them feel.

·    Give out fun name tag badges to participants. This is a great way for people to break the ice with each other and remove some of the stuffiness from an overly serious event.  At PC Nametags, for example, you can order wacky name tags with labels such as:  Party Animal,  Bored Member,  Somebody, Computer Geek, or Princess.

·    Encourage all the presenters at your event to show their humanity and use their sense of humour in their talks. I meet speakers all the time that are afraid to use their sense of humour because they think this particular audience is too serious (uptight) or formal (uptight) or professional (uptight) and therefore they have to mirror the audience. What nonsense!  Everyone wants to laugh, and you need to proactively let all the speakers know that despite the serious-sounding name of the group or education level in the audience, they needn’t be intimidated and that everyone can benefit from a bit of humour thrown into the mix now and then. Using humour simply shows you respect the audience enough to not bore them to tears and you respect them enough to make your presentation as memorable and as effective as possible!

·    Don’t just give out “serious” door prizes. Give out the occasional silly, wacky, fun door prize that relates back to your theme.

·    Realize the benefits of hiring a real professional emcee with a gift of humour. A lot of events  scrimp on costs by trying to do the emceeing in-house, rather than appreciating the enormous value that a skilled emcee can bring to an event, especially by injecting much needed humour and maintaining a high level of energy between the speakers.

·   Consider hiring a humorous “professional summarizer” (such as the brilliant Paul Huschilt, available through Speakers’ Spotlight of course) to humorously recap the presentations periodically throughout the day.

·    Have fun theme days each day of the conference: “wacky tie” day, “high-five” day,  or “third person” day (where everyone, including the speakers, talks about themselves in the third person).

·    Do games that link through every presentation. For example, every time a speaker says a certain acronym or buzzword, everyone must give the presenter a round of applause.  Or, the speaker has to pay a dollar into a charity fund jar.

·    Award prizes at the end of the conference in fun categories, such as:  the Party Animal Award (there’s always at least one), the “I-Forgot-to-Set-my-Alarm-Award”, the “Most Likely to fall Asleep During a Presentation in Front of the Whole Group” award.

·    Collect participant testimonials in fun ways, such as setting up a “speaker’s corner” video camera that captures participant’ feedback that can later be used in a fun montage for marketing promotions for your next event.

There’s no shortage of ideas, especially if you consult with the speakers and the participants, and make the choice for fun AND effectiveness.

For more information on Michael Kerr, please contact Speakers’ Spotlight.

Tags: create fun rituals, create preview videos, door prizes, fun and effective, humour in the workplace, incorporate humour, keynote speaker, Make Fun an Integral Part of Your Next Meeting, meeting planners, Michael Kerr, Paul Huschilt, professional emcee, show humanity, theme days, thinking about speakers