The CX Live! – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, Jack Griffin, CEO & Certified Coach, Light Up Ventures and Ellen Barnes-Pfiffner, Principal & Consultant, EBP Business Consulting highlight the power of Transformative Facilitation. Our conversation was rich with statistical data, step by step approaches, industry trends and real-life program examples that illustrate the art of facilitation and how it elevates ROI. 

Highlights

• Why Transformative Facilitation and How It Affects ROI
• Addressing Cognitive Overload 
• Briefing Professionals Becoming 'Pilots'
• Start by Understanding the ‘Who'
• The Science of 1st Impressions
• Working with Executives - The Rule of 3
• Trends - Beyond Directing the Flow of Conversation 
• Meaningful Agendas to Tell Your Story 
• Employing the 7 Steps of Storytelling 
• The Power of Listening 

Resources

• EBP Articles: 'Emotional Intelligence and Facilitation' and more  
• 'Lucid Meetings: Number, Effectiveness, and Cost of Meetings in the U.S.'
• ‘Luminary’ by Jack Griffin
• ‘Presence’ by Amy Cuddy
• 'The Effectiveness of Briefings' GACEP Report

Guest Thought Leaders

Jack Griffin, CEO & Certified Coach, Light Up Ventures

As CEO of this award-winning leadership development firm, Jack is on a mission to illuminate tech leaders through story development. He is also the author of Luminary, a #1 Best Selling book about communication for technical professionals. As a certified executive coach and leadership consultant, his expertise is dedicated to guiding ambitious leaders and their organizations toward transformative growth.    

Ellen Barnes-Pfiffner, Principal & Consultant, EBP Business Consulting

As the Principal of EBP Business Consulting, Ellen is a highly skilled business executive with experience spanning sales, marketing, organizational development and corporate training. She utilizes her extensive experience to benchmark briefing programs, implementing plans to develop best in class briefing practices.

In this episode, Chad Hutson, Chief Strategy Officer, and Tim Kail, Executive Creative Director, both of Dimensional Innovations, explore how experience-based destinations provide unique avenues for storytelling and creating memories that last. Employing ideas from these sources, managing budgets to achieve client objectives and testing future technologies are ways they encourage customer-facing programs to create well-rounded experiences for a variety of audiences. 

Highlights

• Museums: compelling content, interactivity, memorability
• Theme Parks: ‘surprise & delight’, design, customization 
• Everyday Destinations: hospitality, education, relationships
• Budgets: design, deploy, measure, optimize
• Innovation Labs: test early, fail fast, fail small

Resources

• ‘Immersive Storytelling for Real and Imagined Worlds' by Margaret Kerrison 
• Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge
• ‘Go Big or Go Home' by Tucker Trotter and Diana Kandar

Guest Thought Leaders

Chad Hutson,  Chief Strategy Officer, Dimensional Innovations  

Chad helps to develop and execute the strategic direction of the organization. Previously, as co-founder and CEO of specialized creative agency Leviathan, Chad led overall operations, business development and strategy for the organization, which was acquired by Envoy in 2017. 

Tim Kail,  Executive Creative Director, Dimensional Innovations

His day to day is learning as much as possible about a wide array of business categories, and working hard to reflect back some nugget of undiscovered truth that will help them connect with their audiences in a meaningful way. Prior to DI, Tim co-founded Rockbox, a strategic video content agency. 

In this episode, Kathy Sebuck, Founder & CEO of Marchitecture, shares perspectives for coping with stress, change and uncertainty to ensure our long term wellbeing. She provides compelling reasons and methods for examining our personal core values, implementing growth mindset tools, and employing positive intelligence tools among others to bring balance to our lives which is reflected in our personal and professional endeavors.

Highlights 

• The 4 Cs - Briefing World Takeaways
  • Community, Connection, Collaboration, Communication
• Perspectives for coping with change and uncertainty
  • Ancient Wisdom/ History, Growth Mindset Tools, Personal Development, Conscious Leadership 
• How to set boundaries, focus on strengths, know our job is not our value
• The “Connected Balance Experience”  
  • Core Values, Your body’s intuitive guidance system (HeartMath and Neuroscience), Transformational Presence, Positive Intelligence Tools 
• Remember the Golden Rule - kindness, gratitude, positivity 

Resources

• Suggested Reading List 
  • Start with Why - Simon Sinek 
  • The Four Agreements - A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom - Don Miguel Ruiz
  • The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
  • The Universe Has Your Back - Gabrielle Bernstein
  • Radical Forgiveness - Colin Tipping
  • Untethered Soul - Michale A. Singer
  • Transformational Presence -   Alan Seale
  • You2 - Dr. Price Pritchett
  • Manifesting Change: It Couldn’t Be Easier - Mike Dooley
• Marchitecture
  • Waves of Change: Growth Mindset Tools for Connected Balance
  • The Connected Balance Experience
  • Digital Resources and Podcasts 
  • Speaking Opportunities 
• Tech for Good 
  • World Economic Forum - Tech for Good 

Guest Thought Leader

Kathy Sebuck
Founder & CEO, Marchitecture

Kathy is an award-winning strategic thinker, entrepreneurial leader, athlete, author, public speaker, and Fractional CMO with over 25 years of corporate tech sales and marketing leadership expertise working for Fortune 500 enterprise software companies in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors such including Sun Microsystems, Verisign, Microsoft, Citrix, SAP, and Amazon Web Services. 

For 10 years she physically built and managed corporate briefing center programs at Sun Microsystems and Verisign.  In 2019 she launched Marchitecture and offers services rooted in conscious leadership, growth mindset tools, and proven marketing communications best practices to build successful business strategies using storytelling. Her heart-centered approach is grounded in the neuroscience of HeartMath and a term she created called “

In this episode, Mark Coxon, Director of Business Development and Joe Whitesides, Director of Experience Technology, both of the XTG Division of AVI-SPL, delve deep into the psychology of attracting, educating, entertaining and moving your audience to take action. It’s very clear that their backgrounds in the areas of behavioral psychology drive their passionate approach to creating impactful spaces and experiences. From examining what is 'Wow Factor’ and the need to prepare our audience for messaging, to studying how to create truly immersive experiences, we discuss ways of stacking senses like understanding vision and auditory more deeply, plus exploring techniques like coding memories, the newness of content, contrast of scale and transporting via the narrative just to name a few.  Get ready!

Highlights

• Examining “Wow Factor” 
  • A World of Overstimulation
  • Sensory Resetting 
  • Preparing for the Message 
  • Interrupt for Attention to Drive Action
  • Providing Less Choices 
• Using Novelty and Scale 
  • Peripheral Vision vs Foveal Vision
  • Stacking Senses
  • Newness of Content 
  • Contrast of Scale 
• Appeal to the Senses
  • Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) - Coding Memories
  • Anchoring / Triggering / Nostalgia
  • Auditory  - Contextual Immersive Directional Audio 
• Transporting Guests 
  • Educating While Entertaining
  • Leverage Existing Physical Design
  • Leaving White Space 
  • Narrative Transportation 

Resources

• "Thinking Fast & Slow" - Daniel Kahneman, "The Paradox of Choice" - Barry Schwartz, "Stories That Stick" - Kindra Hall, "Free Guy" Movie 

Guest Thought Leaders

Mark Coxon
Director of Business Development, XTG Division of AVI-SPL
Mark has been in the technology industry for the last 23 years and has a wide variety of experience in the design and implementation of workplace technology. Mark’s current role with XTG involves supporting conversations around the future of work and executive briefing center programs with some of the world’s largest companies. Although Mark has a deep technical background, his real passion is working at the intersection of physical space, behavioral psychology, and technology design to create real impact. Mark writes for several trade publications and is a regular guest on several podcasts and industry panels. He also teaches a workplace technology workshop for AVIXA (Audio Visual and Integrated Experience Association) on Creating the New Connection Center.

Joe Whitesides
Director of Experience Technology, XTG Division of AVI-SPL
Joe has over 25 years of experience in the AV industry serving as systems designer, executive manager, and consultant.  Joe works with clients in a variety of markets, including experiential environments, associations, large law firms, banking, defense contracting, and federal government. As a leader, Joe has worked to develop teams and improve processes from sales to installation, while striving to provide industry-leading customer service.  As Director of Experience Technology, Joe leads a team designing systems for Corporate Experience and Briefing Centers, working on international projects.  Joe maintains certifications from a variety of manufacturers and industry partners (including CTS-D

In this episode Brittany Bell, Managing Director at Deeplocal, and James Chester, Managing Director at Gumband, share the unique ways that briefing programs can develop more memorable in person experiences. From initial discovery and ideation sessions to how to engineer spaces that evolve over time, it’s the ability to measure the impact of these spaces by tracking actual utilization that briefing teams need to understand.

Highlights 

• A different approach to the Ideation Process - bring Creatives and Engineers together from the start 
• Key principles of “showing, not telling” and the concept of learning through play 
• Keeping experiences focused on a singular message using levels known as “Wading, Swimming, Diving” 
• Future proofing with technology - ensuring spaces can evolve over time
• Applying an integrated approach for platform control and measurement 
• Being prepared for Day 2 - the concept of installation as the starting line 
• Strategies for working with partners - collaboration, communication, and transparency
• Gathering stakeholder voices, and keeping the process on track via roles, not people
• The importance of playtesting and prototyping in the build phase - why testing design assumptions pays off 
• A 6 step Process - from “concepting” to “install and wrap-up”
• Gumband design - flexible and modular to integrate numerous technologies
• Measurements including collecting, storing and displaying data on both passive and active engagements helping to determine future content strategies 

Resources 

• Simon Sinek: A Bit of Optimism Podcast “Humanize with Thomas Heatherwick”
• The Deeplocal / Gumband Process 

Guest Thought Leaders 

Brittany Bell   
Managing Director, Deeplocal
Brittany Bell is the Managing Director of Deeplocal, an award-winning creative technology and experience design company. She has nearly a decade of experience in project management, interactive exhibit design, integrated marketing strategies, consumer insights, brand communications, customer experience, and events. 

At Deeplocal, she works with brands to create permanent interactive spaces that evoke playfulness, and build emotional connections and loyalty with their customers. As a forward-thinking business leader, she has the ability to distill complex ideas into easily understandable content and project plans. She excels at motivating large, cross-functional groups to align around a single goal and balancing multiple deadlines while maintaining an organized, yet creative, approach. 

James Chester 
Managing Director, Gumband
James Chester is the Managing Director for Gumband, an award-winning SaaS platform that allows brands to control and measure their interactive environments in real time from anywhere. With his expertise spanning architectural design, marketing and tech, he has worked on multi-million dollar building and development projects, and led the digital transformation of Samsung's global media business at Starcom. 

In 2021, he oversaw the launch of Gumband as a product division out of Deeplocal. Since then, Gumband has powered experiential activations and spaces for global tech and retail brands.

Clients: Google, Stripe, Meta, TikTok, Museum of the Future, Activision, Linkedin, Spotify, Netflix, etc

In this episode, Jackie Haywood, former Director of the Aetna Customer Center, shares about her experience developing and managing the briefing program while staying focused on building an environment that prioritizes team and community. She reveals the guiding principles that she implemented to build a strong team while advising how today’s program leads can expand their reach and pay it forward. From Advisory Boards and Speakers Bureaus to the Voice of the Customer, Jackie highlights ways to build both internal and external community partnerships to help programs evolve and grow. 

“Never underestimate opportunities that could come from very unexpected places (i.e. serve on a committee, give an opinion, be part of a project)...It could influence your future career. As managers, we must be willing to do whatever it takes to support your team for success! Never stop supporting each other and always stay in touch with your network.”

Highlights

• An overview of Aetna, creating the Aetna Customer Center and team
• The importance of Executive Support and being flexible 
• Expand your program and space to external community initiatives
• The Aetna Customer Center program differentiators and best practices  
• Guiding principles for building a strong and motivated team
• Advice for EBC Program Directors to Pay it Forward
• Expanding team member roles to align with interests and strengths
• Strategies to build support from the internal Aetna Community: Advisory Boards, Speakers Bureau, Voice of the Customer
• Impactful contributions that leave a legacy 
• How to transfer skills learned in briefing programs to our future careers

Resources

• “Learning to Lead” Ron Williams, former Aetna CEO 
• “In The Current” by Virginia Kravitz, Writer & Mentor    
  • This blog contains inspiring posts on a variety of topics, each with universal life lessons that are both relevant and relatable. 

Guest Thought Leader 

Jackie Haywood
Former Director of the Aetna Customer Center
In her 35 years with Aetna, Jackie held multiple positions including Implementation Manager in National Accounts Sales Support before moving to the Aetna Customer Center first as the Operations Manager and then promoted to the team’s Director. 

Jackie managed the proposal and building process for the new Aetna Corporate Executive Briefing Center.  She was responsible for all aspects of managing the Center and team, including program development, staff, budget, marketing initiatives, internal & external communications, sales, training & experiential display elements. 

Jackie assembled a diverse team representing external suppliers & business partners from various professional disciplines (content writers, exhibit designers, media, construction, audio-visual) as well as company-wide business leaders and subject matter experts. She determined program specifications, design requirements, overall content and business objectives for the Center, which was the first of its kind in the healthcare industry and was LEED Silver-certified upon completion. 

In this episode, Ricken Patel, Senior Leader, Global CXC, with Cisco goes into great detail about expansion of the Cisco Experience Centers, including new models for recently opened centers in Atlanta and Paris.  He also focuses on how Cisco has applied strategies related to each of the ABPM world class characteristics  (Management, Operations, Branding/Experience and Analytics) to create a more globally unified team that moves together, celebrates together and learns together.

“Democratize and evangelize your data - being more open with our data has allowed us to build tighter relationships, get access to the right people, and even get some funding out of it. The more people know about what you’re doing and bringing to the table, the better off you’ll be.”

Highlights 

• The Cisco Global CXC Program defined including locations, team member roles, demos and onsite requirements
• How to fast track the build and launch of a new regional center while implementing a new service model 
• The importance of referencing the ABPM World Class Characteristics
  • Management
    • Functional organization
    • Communication
      • Move Together 
      • Celebrate Together
      • Learn Together
    • Embracing so called “Rogue Centers” 
  • Operations
    •  Vision - how to set priorities according to your “North Star”
    • Tools & Resources - driving strategy through consistency 
    • Processes - Common vs Local 
  • Branding / Experience 
    • Consistent branding across locations
    • Daily communications to provide consistent experiences 
  • Analytics 
    • The motto of “share all data!” 
    • Curating self-service dashboards by personae
    • Partner with “sister teams” for executive insights 
  • Lessons Learned including ‘Be extremely curious’, ‘Right-size advice and best practices’ and ‘Democratize and evangelize your data’! 

Resources

• “Good to Great” by Jim Collins
  • “Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great” by Jim Collins
• “Hit Refresh” by Satya Nadella

Guest Thought Leader

Ricken Patel
Senior Leader, Global CXC, Cisco
Ricken is responsible for the Global Cisco Experience Center program. He and his team are accountable for helping their sellers execute high level engagements across all 11 CXC locations. The team’s purpose is to connect their customers and partners with the best of Cisco. 

Ricken graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering and immediately began working for CIsco. His entire professional career has been with Cisco including a number of interesting and challenging roles within the Sales organization. 

Having attended ABPM conferences since 2019, Ricken presented his first session at the ABPM Fall Workshops in San Diego this past October.  

In this episode, my daughter, Jaxlyn Werner, and I review the highlights of our 2023 season providing key nuggets and resources from this year’s amazing interviewees.  We introduce our 5th season which will start in January 2024 to include more conversations with global briefing industry leaders who are changing and elevating our profession with their creativity and willingness to think outside the box.  

Highlights: 

• A review of all 11 episodes of our 2023 thought leader interviews
• Key topics of interest provided in each episode
• Important resources referenced by our interviewees 
• A look ahead to our 5th season of The CXLive! Podcast  

Guest Co-Host: 

Jaxlyn Werner

Artist, Entrepreneur, Honor Student, Tinker, Athlete and a leader for our next-generation, Artveva

Jax just turned 12 and is currently in 6th grade at the same middle school I attended!  She loves math and science and is on the Principal’s Honor Roll.  She loves the arts including musical theater. She recently won 1st place in 2 drawing categories in 5th grade and has created a number of painting series including one for Ukraine relief efforts last year. Her creativity is showcased in her pop up Art Booth where she sells her paintings, bracelets, stress balls and more. She plans to start her own Etsy site very soon called Artveva.  

Jax has a mechanical mind like her dad.  She’s so curious, taking things apart and figuring out how to put them back together. Thank goodness she also has a scheduling mind like me.  She is very athletic having been involved in dance, gymnastics, tennis, basketball, and volleyball over the years, now focusing on her latest passion: Karate. 

Jax stays informed about what is going on in the world and is defining her own voice. Needless to say, we are very proud of her and are so excited for the next steps in her journey. 

And her journey to the briefing world was an obvious one. Already a veteran of ABPM events, Jax attended her first ABPM Spring Conference in 2012 in Boston at 6 months old. Many of you may remember meeting her there and seeing her again at Solution Partner Showcase events when held in Santa Clara before we moved home to Redding, CA in 2016. And of course, I couldn’t resist sharing photos of her in opening slides when teaching ABPM sessions.  Thank you to so many of you for your care and interest in her life over the years. 

In this episode, Rebecca Bucher, Senior Director, Global Accounts with HelmsBriscoe, takes us along her journey from her days managing the Xerox Briefing Program to working with the ABPM team and ultimately defining a new career consulting for global events.  She shares key elements that everyone leading event teams, including those briefing programs who have taken on event teams, should know when negotiating contracts for hotels, AV, transportation, and other services.  Rebecca specifically addresses how important it is to look for and uncover hidden costs when negotiating on her clients’ behalf.  

Highlights: 

• Rebecca’s career with Xerox where she held many different positions 
• The road to managing the Xerox Briefing Program 
• Her introduction to and ongoing relationship with the ABPM Team 
• How to leverage the power of global players to address clients’ needs 
• Specific event elements Group Business clients should know when looking to secure hotels, AV, transportation and other services 
• How to negotiate for value and avoid hidden costs 

Guest Thought Leader: 

Rebecca Bucher

Senior Director, Global Accounts, HelmsBriscoe 

Rebecca worked for Xerox Corporation for more than 20 years and held numerous positions including Manager of their Briefing Program. She has been an active member of ABPM since 2000 participating in every conference, hosting Tour Day in their NYC Center, and also served on the ABPM Advisory Board.

Today, Rebecca is an associate with HelmsBriscoe, the global leader in meetings procurement.  In this role, she offers an easy and cost-free alternative to the time-consuming and costly aspects of finding and contracting a hotel for group events. Rebecca has received their President’s Club Award 11 times.  And, the ABPM staff relies on Rebecca to find, negotiate and contract hotel locations for all their conferences.

In this episode, members of the Procore briefing team including Jessica Gass, Simone Sterling and Cheyanne Faulkner share the story of how they envisioned, built, grew and continue to expand their APEX briefing program and its offerings. From the importance of understanding their unique audience to the organic evolution of a program that the whole company believes in and is proud to participate in, this is a success story that inspires! 

Highlights: 

• How the Procore briefing program began in 2020 
• Stages in the evolution of APEX, the Procore briefing program
• The gift of Executive Buy-in and Sponsorship
• Knowing the Construction industry and creating unique “white glove” Procore experiences 
• Expansion to internal, external and industry relevant engagements 
• The power of Processes, Tools, and Solution Partners 
• The Procore team’s vision for the coming years including international growth and formalizing the Executive Event program 

Resources:

• “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara

Guest Thought Leaders:

Jessica Gass
Senior Manager, Field and Executive Marketing, Procore
Jess currently manages the briefing program as well as field marketing and other executive event programs at Procore.  Her previous experience includes roles in field marketing at BMC and Cloudera as well as some Marketing generalist roles at early stage startups that were acquired into those companies.  Her early career included concierge work at the Hyatt and an overnight bellman role at the Four Seasons which really spurred her interest in delighting people and not really ever being able to say no (which has been both a blessing and a curse - her team can attest).

Simone Sterling
Executive Program Marketing Associate Member, Procore
After graduating with a sports marketing background. She has pursued her roles in events over the last 10 years in nonprofit events, sports events, tradeshows and now executive events.
 
Cheyanne Faulkner
Executive Event Program Associate Member, Procore
With her early roles at WeWork and Zendesk in marketing events and hospitality, Cheyanne has always had a passion for making people feel welcome and connected ever since she was a kid.  Cheyanne’s first time interaction with ABPM was at the Boston 2023 conference!