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Sentry Centers is now Convene.

Since inception we have been committed to refining our approach and have ultimately defined an entirely new category of the collaboration and conference space business. Our rebirth as Convene is the expression and materialization of our commitment to every aspect of space, service, culinary, and technology offerings.

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Formerly Sentry Centers
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Welcome to our RFP Center. Please take a moment to complete this brief form to submit your RFP to Convene.

We understand how important the success of your meetings is and are honored that you are considering hosting your program with us.

During business hours you can expect to be contacted by an account manager within one hour of submitting this form or otherwise within the first two hours of the following business day. For immediate live assistance you may always call (888) 730-7307 to be routed to your local Convene office.



Apr 1

Joyce Bromberg

Six Meeting Planner Lessons Learned From TED

Lessons from TED

The TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) Conference has become a worldwide phenomenon since it became an annual event in 1990. Today, TED and its offshoot TEDx are held in nearly every major city across the globe; millions of people download and listen to past TED talks on their digital devices daily. Noted information architect Richard Saul Wurman conceived the program in 1984 believing the confluence of the driving forces of technology, entertainment and design would fundamentally change the world. TED’s success over more than two decades has caused a primal shift in the how, what and why of meetings, collaborations and conferences.

What distinguishes one conference so distinctly over others? What makes it the one ticket to buy? The ultimate in creative experiences? Especially when a yearly membership is now $6,000 and is by invitation only. People clamor to attend, despite the cost and the fact that all the talks are available online. Why? We’ve come to understand that it’s the social and networking opportunities, the exposure to leading edge thinking and new possibilities, the chance to see and be seen, engage and interact that are the true drivers behind continued attendance.

The early conferences, based in Monterey, California, ran for four consecutive days and featured ground-breaking thinkers. The meetings had a very definite rhythm, starting at 8 a.m. and ending around 9 p.m. These long days were divided into three two-hour blocks with two-hour breaks in between, followed by cocktail receptions or dinners in the evening. Each session had five-six speakers who were given the stage for only 18 minutes each. Notes or reading from a script were not allowed and power point slides were generally frowned upon. Conversely, provocative info graphics and video were encouraged. The main conference was held in an auditorium and, as the attendance grew, Wurman added a simulcast room to hold the overflow. At first, this was “no man’s land,” but it soon became the most desired location because of the many seating options and postures, exercise machines and food choices that were provided there (no food was allowed in the main auditorium). In addition, it was possible to discuss what was being said in real time with fellow attendees in a relaxed, informal and comfortable setting.

Wurman always had a broad theme in mind for each day’s speakers but he rarely divulged a detailed description; he preferred to allow the audience to garner the session’s theme and meaning on their own.

It was, however, those two hour breaks and after-hour cocktail parties we mentioned earlier that were the real draw. This is where new ideas were conceived through chance meetings or convergences of people who might otherwise never have the opportunity to interact. This is where new stories were told and reactions to them gauged and then refined.

For TED, it is clear that it’s all about the social and networking opportunities — about having “The Conversation”. In fact their mission statement begins:
“We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. “

We agree. It’s about “The Conversation” and access to it — that’s what truly coveted.

Creating an agenda and an environment that fosters thought, conversation, and meaningful idea exchange can be stimulated by the participants and an environment that feeds and supports that interaction. What kind of conference or meeting experiences have you enjoyed that resulted in some inspirational thinking and casual conversation that led to real revelations? Please share your “best ever” conference experience that helped change your thinking or led to discovery by writing us @Convene.

We hope you find our other related posts on workplace, collaboration, design, technology and culinary interesting, as well as helpful. The best way to stay informed is to subscribe to our email updates here or via twitter @Convene.

The TED Difference:

• 18 minute talks that are delivered without a script.
• Breaks that are as long as the session itself, with great food and drink.
• Great music that sets the tone and entertainment between sessions that lighten the mood.
• Strategically placed whiteboards to encourage discussion and diagramming of ideas.
• Simulcast or Main Rooms with:

      1. Lounge chairs and ottomans
      2. Stand up height desks or leaning posts
      3. Treadmills or Ellipticals
          4. Coffee Bars and other specialty food items

• After-hour cocktail parties with heavy hors d’oeuvres that encourage your attendees to stay for the conversation rather than go out to dinner.

Mar 19

Joyce Bromberg

The Workplace Equation: Human Capital + Social Capital = Knowledge Capital

Knowledge Capital

What’s the value of seeing co-workers daily, exchanging ideas, and interacting on projects in real time, and face-to-face? Many experts believe the type of activities that result from working closely together is at the heart of innovation – and an important factor in the “where to work” debate.

Why is being near so important? Because it builds social capital – the social relations between workers that produces trust. Social capital is developed and fed by the type and frequency of workers’ interactions. The more they have, the greater the social capital and level of trust. And trust is essential to developing, sharing and expanding ideas that can lead to innovation.

It’s like the social capital between good friends. We’ve all had the experience of running into an old friend whom we haven’t seen in a long time. The friendship is immediately rekindled and the time flies as you relive the memories and experiences of your shared past. However, the stories soon lose their interest and the conversation goes stale. Why? Because you have no new shared experiences to fuel your conversation. Social Capital is like a bank account. If you continually make withdrawals your account dries up; unless it’s replenished, you wind up broke. We need fresh, shared experiences and face-to-face interactions to keep Social Capital alive.

We’ve learned from Dr. Karen Stephenson, a corporate anthropologist and noted expert in Social Network Analysis that Human Capital, the education, experience and abilities of an employee + Social Capital, the social relations between workers that produces trust = Knowledge Capital, the ability for an organization to Innovate and create new value.

While virtual proximity does exist, we believe that innovation occurs best through face –to- face interaction, through the chance run- ins that spark new ideas and the trust that is built over time as people share their knowledge and grow together. We believe that environments specifically designed to enable collaboration and the sharing of ideas — as well as encouraging informal social interaction — is at the heart of great workplace strategies. When employers and employees share in the “where to work and collaborate” decision they build even greater commitment, engagement and trust.

Does your organization use your workspace to promote more interaction and innovation? Would you like to see more attention to developing social capital within your work group? We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences where social capital played a key role in a project’s success. Write us @convene

Joyce Bromberg
VP, Strategy and Research
jbromberg@Convene.com
Follow @Convene on Twitter

Mar 6

Joyce Bromberg

No One Right Answer to Yahoo Workplace Debate

Convene blog illustration

Driven by declining profits and a bloated and missing in action workforce, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently announced employees would no longer be allowed to work from home. In one swift act she has swung the pendulum from one direction allowing a certain level of worker choice and autonomy completely back to another of organization control. Reactive? Yes. Necessary? We think not.

We believe choice and trust versus control and fear are at the heart of this current “where you work” controversy.

In this world, few things are absolute. There is no longer one right way to do anything, especially when it comes to where and how people should be working. Instead, it’s about having the ability to choose the right place or location, tools and resources for the work at hand. Some highly concentrated work is best done at home where interruptions can be controlled. Some is best done at corporate HQ where the people you need to see are generally around and chance interactions can spark new and important ideas. Sometimes you work best at Starbucks where the action and buzz drives your creativity and feeds your spirit. Sometimes it’s at highly serviced and outfitted places that let you get away to meet with others you may not always see to accomplish a specific and critical task. Ultimately, it’s about companies and their workers trusting one another and behaving in ways that say our relationship is based on reciprocity and trust. We give and we take to achieve our shared goals. This office landscape looks something like this:

Office Landscape Illustration 1

To understand how we arrived at this thinking it’s necessary to delve briefly into the history of workplace design and its relationship to organizational theory.

Current office design evolved from the Bullpen, where all the workers were at open desks in the center of one large room and those in charge were in private offices around the perimeter. Think “Mad Men” and you’ve got the picture.

The next model mirrored the Corporate Hierarchy; the organization governed primarily through fear and control. Information was scarce and always “need to know”. An individual’s workspace reflected his/her status in the company and their work was accomplished primarily alone. Good work was rewarded, in part, by the size of one’s office and the lavishness of its finishes. This planning method fell out of favor because the right number and size of offices weren’t always available and reconfigurations were disruptive, costly and time consuming.

Then Universal Planning came along. With the advent of systems office furniture everyone worked in the now dreaded cubical. The belief was that all knowledge work was essentially the same and was accomplished alone. When change was required you would move people and their belongings and leave the furniture alone. This time the workers rebelled and “Dilbertville” helped Universal Planning come to a slow and painful demise.

The next model, Activity Based Planning, reflected new worker mobility. Enabled by portable and miniaturized technology, this model understood that knowledge workers, charged with the task of innovation and creating corporate value, were all doing different kinds of work. Because the work was difficult and the problems complex they did this work both together and alone. The workers were, in fact, more than capable of choosing where and how they worked inside of a corporate building. Owning a desk became less important than being able to choose a setting that best fit the work at hand. Activity Based is still the dominant design in office planning.

The latest model to evolve is called Alternative Workplace Strategies or AWS. This model was driven, in large part, by a desire for organizations to lower real estate costs. It espoused that large corporate headquarters were no longer necessary because technology had precluded the need to be in the same place at the same time. You could work at home on your computer and rarely, if ever, come to the office. This had a disastrous effect on some organizations that lost the ability to innovate and grow and even to know who their workers were and what they were doing.

You might say the pendulum had swung from control by the organization– you do it my way, in my office – to control by the individual—you’re on your own, being together is no longer necessary, we’ll see you sometime. It was a total shift from tight control to individual autonomy. The lesson here is that absolutes don’t often work. In fact, we conclude that corporate excellence is achieved through worker commitment, rather than organizational control. Work is now decentralized and is best accomplished both on and off campus based on worker need, preference and the kind of work being done. It’s an exciting time to be a space provider and we look forward to providing you one of many choices in great places to work.

If you enjoyed this blog and have made it this far down the page then you may find our other related posts on workplace, collaboration, design, technology and culinary interesting as well. The best way to stay informed is to subscribe to our email updates here or via twitter @Convene.

Feb 12

Joyce Bromberg

Understanding Meeting Types Informs Better Meeting Planning

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People outside of the meeting planning profession are likely to underestimate the strategic significance of meeting design.  While a layperson might assume that a meeting is simply food, tables and chairs for everyone, it is so much more than that.  Professional meeting planners align every aspect of program design with strategic objectives and ultimately have a major influence over the success of the collaborations that they orchestrate. 

At Convene our research team is focused on studying the elements of successful collaboration.  Using a Human Centered Design methodology we’ve observed countless meetings, conducted in-depth research, and engaged the brightest in the field through focus groups, rapid prototyping and discussion. Our intention was to decode the elements of successful meetings so that we could increase the potential of reproducing them.

One of our most pertinent discoveries is that there are three distinct meeting types that require specialized resources and space in order to be most effective.  Understanding and identifying meeting types informs every aspect of strategic meeting planning including venue selection, seating configuration, agenda, format, and technology allocation.  We’ve built on research conducted by Steelcase Inc., the global leader in office furniture and workspace design, which has discerned three major meeting types:  Informative, Generative and Evaluative.

 

Informative Meetings are about the sharing or broadcasting of predetermined information.  Examples include new product launches, training seminars and stockholder meetings. Any gathering where large numbers of people (50-300 or more) gather to hear and learn together can be termed an informative meeting. They should be hosted in large rooms, with ergonomic seating, and will likely require microphones, projectors, polling devices and other mass communication resources. Multiple projectors or displays should allow every seat to be the best one in the house. If the meeting is expected to last for an entire day — or longer — it’s important to allow attendees to adopt alternative postures, stand or put their feet up.

 

Generative Meetings are about creating new content together. They usually occur in small groups of 2-8 people. The work can go on for long periods of time or be a short breakout from a larger informative meeting. The work requires strong focus from the participants and the ability to capture, manipulate, retrieve and preserve the content they have created.  Resource allocation for this meeting type includes lots of whiteboards and flip charts, mobile chairs and tables, and intimate/private space.  In addition to collaborative technologies, it is important to provide a generous supply of paper-based tools such as Post-it® Notes, tape, pins and markers.

 

Evaluative Meetings are about making decisions, setting direction and long-term planning. These are usually small and have fewer than 20 participants. These meetings require intense engagement and benefit from governance and protocols. Large, information-rich displays are helpful to these meetings.  Projectors, flip charts and conference lines should also be provided. As the content of these meetings is often highly confidential, special care should be taken to provide acoustical and visual privacy and a minimum of disruptions.

Providing the right tools, furniture and space design for a specific meeting type are key elements in achieving your meeting goals.  Paying attention to every detail can make a meaningful difference to the end result.  The great architect Mies van der Rohe once said, “God is in the details.”  We couldn’t agree more.

Does your organization host one type of meeting more than another? Is meeting type something you consider when selecting a location? What things are most important to you in the selection of a meeting locale?

We invite you to participate in the Convene User Council which hosts insightful discussions among industry thought leaders.

Joyce Bromberg

VP of Strategy and Research

jbromberg@Convene.com

Follow @convene on Twitter