As a minister, community leader, and a celebrated convener for the green building industry for decades, Kimberly Lewis is no stranger to bringing people together. So when the COVID-19 pandemic completely dismantled traditional in-person gatherings, Kimberly saw an opportunity to reimagine how we can convene.
Dr. Maya Angelou, one of my favorite authors, once said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” As an event organizer, it’s a quote I carry with me every day. Our impact on each other’s emotions is profound, rippling through their self-esteem, confidence, and holistic well-being. Making someone feel good enhances their sense of worth and appreciation, but more importantly, it helps them see the best in themselves.
At its very core, an event organizer’s job is to cultivate a space and program for people to connect on purpose. But that definition is evolving ever so slightly as we try to navigate a post-pandemic normal; event organizers are beginning to understand that we need to cultivate experiences when everyone feels valued, and that’s really the secret sauce to creating a successful event.
Before the pandemic took hold, events often focused on content packing, a total experience killer as attendees would feel drained instead of inspired. Not everyone wants to run nonstop from session to session, and not everyone is ready to jump in bright and early. To bring people back to events, we need to turn a gathering into an experience with well-being at the core, one that engages, nurtures, and energizes, one that makes everyone feel welcome and excited to come back again, fulfilling for the early risers with the 2 p.m. slumps as well as the night owls blooming at evening networking sessions.
The experience is in the programming, the food, the venue, and every touch we put in. I rolled out the new experience-based approach during our 2022 WELL Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, when I created schedules that fit both the early risers and the night owls without anyone feeling FOMO. That turned out to be a huge success that I got a lot of high-fives for!
There’s no question that the pandemic highlighted the critical need for inclusivity, so another major pivot I made in my strategy was to design each event with the most marginalized people in mind. We, as event organizers, aren’t always thinking about the few people who might need wheelchair access, for instance, but we really should be thinking about them first.
In Scottsdale, I had a keynote speaker who relied on his wheelchair. He shared with me that he would often experience PTSD whenever he traveled because so many of the services – – from airplanes to hotels to even the staging – – would often create barriers for him to get around. The venue I chose was not only wheelchair accessible on stage but also in his room, including the bathroom details. That consideration delivered a total well-being experience for him, and it also enabled us to make another attendee (who had unfortunately injured her knee and needed crutches) feel included as well. That woman told me “Kim, you didn’t know that I would show up like this, but your planning for that gentleman made it so easy for me to get around!”
