An event is dislocation in service of faster behavior change.
principle — attributed to Ruud Janssen
Janssen's definition of an event is precise. An isolated period of time in which people are temporarily dislocated from their normal reality in order to change behavior faster or more effectively. The travel itself starts the shift; being out of routine, in a different mode of thinking, makes people conscious of what is changing in themselves and in others at the same table. The dislocation is not the inconvenience that has to be tolerated; it is the design instrument that makes behavior change possible. Online events that try to skip the dislocation are doing different work. The implication for hybrid and virtual formats is that they have to find different mechanisms to produce the same dislocation effect.
For event designers, learning and development leaders, and corporate event teams thinking about format choice between in-person, hybrid, and virtual. The principle is most useful when budget pressure is pushing toward virtual without accounting for the dislocation effect.
dislocation, definition, travel, behavior-acceleration