MPI’s 2018 World Education Congress (WEC) has won Association Meeting top honors as part of the 9th Global Eventex Awards. Utilizing an illustrious jury of leaders from throughout the world of meetings and events, the Eventex Awards are designed to “celebrate creativity, innovation and effectiveness in the industry.”

This global competition included 331 entries from 42 countries spanning 77 categories, and each was evaluated based on criteria including creativity, planning and effectiveness.

“It’s truly an honor to be recognized for our hard work and dedication on our signature event, the World Education Congress,” says Paul Van Deventer, MPI president and CEO. “We are committed each year to showcase innovative ways to reimagine WEC and bring unparalleled education to our members. Congratulations to all those who were involved in designing, organizing and executing this amazing event that truly showed when we meet, we change the world.”

Melinda Burdette, CMP, CMM, director of events for MPI, says the award was gratifying to the MPI staff members who made WEC 2018 happen and provided inspiration to achieve even greater heights with future WECs.

“It feels amazing, quite frankly,” she says. “We knew going into WEC last year that there were challenges and we came out of WEC knowing we didn’t get everything perfect, but we were really, really close to providing a different type of amazing experience for the attendees. The fact that we’re now recognized with this award is amazing, personally. For MPI, it’s a huge feather in our cap and it certainly sets the bar high moving forward.”

Jessie States, CMP, CMM, director of the MPI Academy, says WEC 2018 involved implementing a new design concept.

“It was completely re-imagined using the Event Design Canvas,” she says. “We mapped out the behavior change that we hoped our audience would achieve on site at the event and then designed the experience in order to facilitate that change. In any event, the ultimate goal is some type of behavior change—you want your audience to come in feeling, seeing, doing, acting one way and leaving doing or saying something different. We were able to accomplish that—it was very exciting.”

States says the award is not going to impact the MPI team’s passion and delivery when it comes to developing and executing events.

“It’s simply a recognition of the amazing effort that our team has put out, and an affirmation to us that we’re on the right track in disrupting the marketplace,” she says.

Burdette adds: “It raises the bar and makes my ulcer a little bigger <laughter> thinking that we need to reach that goal again. From that aspect, it does change things, but we can’t rest on the laurels of that award.”

Susie Townsend, senior vice president, visitor experience at Visit Indy, was one of the co-chairs of the WEC 2018 host committee and says a couple of the keys to success were that it was (a) very experiential and (b) very inclusive and welcoming.

"Our collective idea was to make this experience for everyone, not just for the meeting professionals if you were a planner or supplier,” says Townsend, who is also a member of the MPI Foundation Global Board of Trustees. “We wanted to make sure that every attendee was a VIP.”

She cites the creation of a welcome lounge at the airport, where arriving attendees could have drinks and snacks, meet up with their friends and colleagues, get their event credentials and then get transportation directly to the eight hotels in the WEC 2018 room block.

“There were a lot of volunteers involved in making this the beginning of a number of great experiences that the WEC attendees would have in Indianapolis, and all of us who worked on creating those experiences are just thrilled at receiving the recognition that this award brings,” Townsend says.

One of the key elements of the design of WEC 2018 is the use of the Event Design Canvas platform, which involves starting by reducing the plan for an event to a single sheet of paper that is the product of the collaborators of the event. The Event Design Canvas is the invention of two gifted European designers, Roel Frissen, CMM, and Ruud Janssen, CMM, DES, themselves well-experienced and insightful event creators and the co-founders of the Event Design Collective. Their Europe-based enterprise uses #EventCanvas for its own clients, including groups ranging from the International Olympic Committee to the Global Spine Congress. They also teach the usage of the template in workshops and certification programs around the world.

The creators say their canvas is not just a useful collaborative tool, but also enables teams to look at the big-picture goals they have for the event design process. In a word, they want to see event design “democratized.” They want to help the event owner bring a broader range of stakeholders into the process systematically.

Frissen and Janssen met with MPI staff at MPI Global headquarters and then at the event site in Indianapolis before WEC 2018.

“It was very gratifying to see MPI embrace event design using the #EventCanvas™ methodology for the design of the 2018 WEC in Indianapolis,” Janssen says. “MPI’s leadership team is not just talking the talk, but walking the walk, and we believe this will be reflected in the upcoming editions of the WEC as an extraordinary experience.