This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
Name: Stacy Weber
Company Name: Moss Adams LLP
Job Title: Meeting, Travel, & Procurement Senior Manager
Years of Experience: 20+
How do you think you are positioned, after months of persevering with the pandemic, to take advantage of our new and disrupted meetings/events landscape?
Life before was go-go-go with no time to stop. This break allowed us to have conversations with clients about their wants and needs, review and update our processes, and implement new tools and procedures. As a whole, our firm is more thoughtful about the goals and objectives of travel and meetings.
As our community moves forward with planning in-person meetings, what new technologies or processes are you implementing that you may have not looked at before?
Virtual is here to stay whether for events or just daily meetings. We are optimizing those platforms for what may come next. Smartsheet is our new favorite toy - we have migrated from Excel to Smartsheet and we are much more automated.
As we see virtual meetings transition back to face to face, hybrid meetings are beginning to be the vehicle to return to normalcy. What are your thoughts on hybrid meetings versus traditional fully in-person meetings?
You can't just add a camera and call it a hybrid meeting. The virtual attendees deserve as much of an experience as the in-person attendees. I've yet to be convinced that the work and cost involved in doing it right is justified in the ROI or attendee experience.
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
Meeting in-person allows you to connect beyond the meeting agenda. You socialize and make personal connections, you spitball ideas, you share best practices...conversation is organic and free flowing and you never know what great idea might come from it.
As the pandemic fades away and we return to face-to-face events what do you hope changes, either for planners or hoteliers, in the traditional RFP and proposal process as a result of all of the learnings from the last 20+ months?
Partnerships and flexibility on both sides. Recessions, booms, pandemics - we have to be there for each other in both the good and bad otherwise we won't survive. Planners and suppliers need to communicate openly and understand the other side because neither of us are just making random decisions without reasons why.
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.