Of course, you may laugh when you see the title of this article. It is our business to organise events where people meet face to face – so we must be biased!
But over the last few months we have attended a number of events and organised some of our own client events, and each one has reminded us just how much can come from simply getting people together in a room and talking.
The conversations you don’t plan
We work with a lot of research and development companies across many different sectors. During the years when we weren’t able to meet in person, we all became very good at attending seminars and meetings online, so the learning, and at least some of the interaction, could continue.
But I remember speaking to one of the scientists we work with who said to me that in-person events were still vital. Many of the key moments for him hadn’t happened during the formal sessions at all – they happened in the coffee queue or over the buffet table.
A casual conversation with a colleague or peer about a problem they were working on could lead to someone suggesting a different approach or collectively finding a solution. Sometimes it was simply discovering that somebody else was dealing with exactly the same issue.
That conversation has always stuck with me.
When the unexpected happens
Every event has a reason for bringing people together: listening to an expert speak at a networking event, showcasing a new venue, launching a new product or simply updating clients on what’s happening in the industry.
But alongside those very real reasons for meeting, other little bits of magic happen.
At one of our recent events, two people from the same organisation recognised each other’s names from emails but had never actually met. They started chatting, shared experiences and went away knowing they now had another colleague they could turn to for support.
At another, we were chatting to a long-standing client who uses HotelRes for accommodation. During the conversation she suddenly realised that we could also help her find meeting space.
An informal chat developed into a proper conversation about her workload and then came the “ping moment”. She had a meeting she needed to arrange in Birmingham, an area she didn’t know well, and simply didn’t have the time to do all the research herself.
For us, it resulted in a new enquiry. For our client, it meant one more job she could take off her very long to-do list.
Neither conversation was on the agenda. They happened because people were together and chatting.
Not everyone wants the virtual microphone
I’m very much someone who likes to chat informally, face to face. Put me in the spotlight on a virtual conference and announce that the virtual microphone is being passed to me and I probably won’t be quite so forthcoming!
That doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion or something useful to contribute – I’m just much more likely to share it during a natural conversation.
I’m certainly not suggesting I have the answer to a complex scientific conundrum like our scientists in the coffee queue! But there will be lots of people like me who have experiences, ideas and knowledge to share that simply don’t emerge in quite the same way online.
And perhaps that is one of the things we sometimes overlook when we talk about the benefits of meeting face to face. It isn’t only about what happens in the meeting room. It’s also about the conversations before it starts, over coffee, during lunch and afterwards.
Thank you for getting together with us
We’d like to thank our venue colleagues at Hilton Cambridge and Hobson Cambridge for co-hosting our recent corporate meet-ups in September, and everyone who came along and joined us.
We’re already planning our next get-together, this time at the newly opened conference and event space at Cambridge City Football Stadium.
But whatever the venue and whatever the reason for meeting, our experiences over the last few months have reinforced something that scientist told me all those years ago.
Sometimes the most valuable conversation of the day is the one that wasn’t on the agenda.
