Small & Boutique Meetings — Point Clear

Themed events are often designed with good intent, and they can be an excellent way to spotlight local customs or culture in your host destination. But intent doesn't always match impact: If an event design doesn’t acknowledge the traditions, customs, religion or local cultures with awareness and competence, planners might find themselves conducting damage control rather than celebrating a successful experience. How can we be proactive rather than reactive? How can we ensure cultural sensitivity? And how do we stand behind our decisions when universal agreement is so hard to come by? This session speaks to all of those questions.

Attendees will:

• Come away with a proactive, repeatable framework for sourcing vendors, choosing a venue or building a theme from scratch
• Learn the factors that separate appreciation from appropriation: consent, compensation, power imbalance and historical context
• Apply a decision-making framework to an event redesign challenge, using real-life industry cases
• Practice responding to stakeholder feedback when the room is split, so they can hold their ground with confidence instead of second-guessing every choice

In a world increasingly driven by technology and AI, human connection has become the ultimate competitive advantage. In this interactive and entertaining keynote, mentalist Joshua Seth uses mindreading as a metaphor to show audiences how to read people, connect with them quickly, and make every moment meaningful, memorable and magical. The result is stronger relationships, better sales conversations and more-connected teams.

Participants will learn to

• Build trust and connection faster
• Read people more accurately
• Communicate with greater confidence
• Influence outcomes with integrity
• Create stronger relationships and teams
• Become more present and engaged communicators