“Immediately you knew you were in a
different space,” said Janet Sperstad,
CMP, program director for the Meeting
and Event Management Degree Pro-
gram at Madison Area Technical Col-
lege in Madison, Wisconsin, “and your
shoulders come down from your ears, a
smile breaks out, and dopamine levels
naturally increase, just by walking into
that room.”
Sperstad would know. She became
so interested in the connection
between how immersive experiences
like face-to-face events transform
behavior that she earned an executive
master’s degree in neuroleadership
from the NeuroLeadership Institute.
She has since become an advocate for
building more mindfulness elements
into meetings.
“People often correlate event design
to cool furniture and interesting seating
styles, because it’s a very physical thing
we know and can all talk about,” Sperstad said. “They’re not wrong about
these elements, yet event design goes
beyond that, integrating our senses and
our brain’s networking systems, like
attention and novelty detection, as well
as including the whole spiritual and
wellbeing side of it.” .
Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s web editor.
Senses &
Sensibility
Janet Sperstad, CMP, who builds
neuroscience into the event-design classes she teaches at
Madison Area Technical College,
has a unique take on mindfulness at meetings. “It’s heightening the senses and it’s bringing
attendees’ consciousness up
and their threat levels down
in order to foster more holistic
thinking,” she said. “The mind
includes the human spirit and so
much more. The brain is just the
thing inside of our noggin, an
organ inside of our head like our
heart in our body.”
Our senses play a role in long-term memory, so “meditative”
touches within a meeting environment have a dramatic effect.
“Someone may not remember
the content,” Sperstad said, “but
they might be able to visually
remember the room, or scent.”
Citrus-based scents brighten the
senses, while lavender lends an
air of relaxation. Cool lighting and
blue and green color palettes create a soothing environment that’s
conducive to learning. Sperstad
also suggests looking beyond
the meeting venue to ensure that
partner hotels have quiet rooms
with operable windows, so that
attendees can breathe fresh air in
the morning and evening.
Also: “Do not have a speaker over
lunch,” Sperstad said. “Attendees
need to be fully present, enjoying
the meal and making connections with the people at their
tables. This is a time for the brain
to shift into neutral and relax.”
Heal the World The Global
Wellness Summit brought more
than 470 delegates from
40 countries to Mexico City
last November.
ON THE WEB
› Read the full paper on working
memory capacity published in
the journal Emotion at convn
.org/working-memory.
› Learn more about the Massachusetts General Hospital study
of the effect of meditation on the
brain at convn.org/mgh-study.