Seth Godin, opening speaker at Skift Conference Forumhas spent decades inspiring thousands of viewers Make change happen.
“If you want change to happen, you have no choice but to accept that you are going to create tension. You are not in this business to be convenient, cheap and reliable – because many people can do that. Your job is Create tension. Create tension effectively, usefully, and intentionally.
When clients disagree with their proposed innovations, he encourages viewers to object. “The opportunity is not to fight to maintain the status quo, but to determine how we redefine the status quo.”
He said the COVID-19 pandemic had changed the mission of today’s meeting. A company with 1,000 employees that used to work together day in and day out every year may now only have them working together three days a year.
“You plan to have a roundtable and bring in some speakers and then have some social hours. You’re completely missing the point,” he said. “Those three days are not going to change anyone. No one wants to go to that meeting again next year. No one will be talking about it in two months.
“What people want is the interaction they have when they meet someone in the lobby at work. So how do you create that environment? What if we assume the meeting doesn’t last 72 hours? Instead, a month before the event , you’ll receive a profile of 12 people you need to meet there. What happens, instead of saying ‘please download our app’, is there a good reason to keep using it?
Question the status quo
“Why do most conferences only last three days?” Godin asked the audience. “Why doesn’t the conference last 365 days and have us all be together for three of those days?”
One solution from some of the best events he’s ever attended was: “Cancel the three most mediocre speakers and use that time to divide people into groups and give them a problem to work on as a group for an hour. Work it out together. There will be some confusion, and then it will change the people in the room.
A question posed to the audience at the beginning of the session found that the biggest challenges faced by the audience were budget and burnout. “They are related,” Godin said. “Burnout is when you work extremely hard, using resources you don’t have to get something you don’t have. You need to think hard about what you’re taking on.
“Look who hires you to host their events,” Godin advises the independent planners in the room. “Are they looking for mediocre events on a tight budget? You don’t have to work with that because every time you do, you’re not working with someone who’s going to challenge you to be the future of this industry.
Does your choice matter?
Godin ends with a story about a memorable meeting he attended in the New Mexico desert. One evening at an outdoor conference, the keynote speaker, astronaut Neil Armstrong, spoke under a huge full moon that was just rising over the horizon. He’ll never forget that night, or when Armstrong pointed to the moon and told the audience, “I’ve been there.”
“Astronauts will be able to go into space with the same computing power as the cell phones in our pockets,” Godin said. He encourages viewers to remember this when they feel overwhelmed by work. “It’s not a question of if you will succeed. You already are. It’s about ‘will you choose to matter?’ “
“You’re going to be the voice in the room saying, ‘Can we push this? We can make this special.
