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The Future of Meetings: Tribalization

Humans love tribes. Whether your tribe bikes, climbs, paints, drinks, plays games, or reads books, you have a tribe of people that you like to do things with. Organizations like Meetup.com and YEP!thrive on bringing people together into small and large groups to pursue common interests.

Marriott International along with PCMA (Professional Convention Management Association) reviewed the implications on the future of meetings and one of their key takeaways was the “tribalization” of meetings and events.

Consumers and meeting attendees in general are “moving away from individualism and towards ‘tribal’ communities of likeminded, passionate individuals who can push each other to a higher level,” says an ehotelier.com article on the subject.

What does this mean for you, as an event planner, vendor, or supplier? It means focusing more on the attendees, or rather, the event participants, as they are more appropriately thought of. It means thinking about how your event participants will contribute something of themselves to an event, whether at a corporate business meeting or a fancy gala or a networking mixer. Is a photo booth a way to get them to be more creative? Is it a group activity like a city-wide scavenger hunt? Is it getting your corporate business participants to talk about just one photo they posted on social media recently to a neighbor sitting at a 72” round?

Just as we do at YEP!, consider ways to bring the group more intimately together, on a personal level, before you start expanding the way they think to the larger group. Your tribe, after all, starts with you.

– MM, Dec 2016