Don't hold meetings. Produce shows.

technique — attributed to Don Welsh

People no longer assemble for information; they assemble for feeling. Welsh has Destinations International stage productions built on musical and visual themes and tells two thousand attendees to close the laptops and put the phones down. It is a right he earns the way a coach does: the whole team in the room at 6:30 every morning, doors locked on latecomers. The instruction to be present is only credible when the person giving it has already paid the price of presence themselves.

For association and corporate event owners whose flagship program has drifted into a series of panels. The two moves are inseparable: raise the production quality of the room, and earn the standing to demand attention from it.

program-design, experience, discipline, earned-authority