Tahira Endean shares comments from readers of her brand new book Our KPIs, which is amazing: how live events catalyze, happiness, productivity and trust.
Event Manager readers praised her for reshaping the success of the event with a refreshing lens: “I spent years chasing attendance metrics and ROI, but your insights made me rethink how we measure magic.” “It’s the script the industry needs, with the same inspiration and permission to prioritize real resonance.”
This book is Endean’s second book on the business event industry; her first intentional event design written in 2017 is also a script.
Skift Conference sits down with IMEX Programming Director Endean to learn more.
Conference innovators is a new series dedicated to the pioneers to define the future of the conference industry. Every month, we have visionary professionals who break mold with innovative strategies, new perspectives and bold ideas. In addition to planning events, these pioneers are also creating experiences that resonate, inspire and lead forward. Join us to celebrate creativity, take the future in your own hands, and shape the next step in the world of conferences and events.
Joy is certainly a different KPI compared to people who are used to the event industry. How did you think of it?
We need to talk to our stakeholders in different ways. It’s not just the people you add to your CRM. So, there are more names in your CRM – if you don’t follow them and have no connection with them, then they don’t mean anything.
So, I think, what if our KPI is actually joy? And explore it in the book in many different ways. How do we create our events so that they are the experiences that everyone wants to be there? That’s almost impossible, right? But it’s not impossible, it’s really difficult.
Senior managers often underestimate soft skills. But isn’t emotions related to work performance?
Ultimately, we are doing business, but if we are doing business and we are suffering from it, you won’t provide good customer service and the customers won’t be happy. If you don’t have any sense of happiness at work, you won’t be productive. You won’t build trust with your teammates or clients. You will not be able to move forward.
Did you introduce a meeting on IMEX that you do not measure by traditional standards?
Some of the smaller meetings we are proud of are “hard negotiations” that focus on things like fences or sadness. Whether six or 35 people attend the meeting, they will have a positive impact on their lives. We plan to continue to do this because we have some people willing to lead these tough conversations.
We did a discussion about parenting. If you are looking at these numbers, you will never do it again, but if you know that the person who attends the meeting will create a WhatsApp group and will be friends forever, you will do it every year.
It’s impossible that you can almost copy these things, in?
No, it’s different from sitting down with someone or meeting someone in the hallway and having a different conversation and collaboration. And if we don’t have conversations that will lead to collaboration, we will never innovate.
IMEX is known for its innovation, especially in the field of sustainability. How do you keep that time of year going?
Our sustainability efforts are amazing outside Taiwan. But we keep on. No one on the team said, “Oh, that’s good enough.” We continue to innovate. We continue to look for new partners we can work with and how to conduct more in-depth research with the partners we have. Every year, we are trying to attract new speakers and keep the plans fresh.
Where do you get your ideas?
This year, I will be visiting SXSW London SXSW and the World Experience Summit, and that’s where we will meet new people.
I also learned a lot from my students. I teach activity strategy and design classes at British Columbia Technical College this year. I know these people are going to go there and be our next innovator.
Do you think the conference industry needs more innovators?
The industry needs more people willing to take risks. We’re back from the pandemic and say we’re going to meet differently – we don’t. We did the exact same thing.
Then everything becomes more expensive. Costs have increased by 21-36% or more on average, which requires us to be more innovative to have this impact because we need editorial decisions. We do need to think about how to maximize the use of the activity experience.
