How do you get people to attend meetings introducing new technologies, when they may not have a vested interest in the technology?
In order to introduce a new technology, the target user community must be educated and "sold on" the new technology. Holding a meeting to introduce the new technology is an acceptable method.
Make food available for the meeting. Morning meetings call for donuts and bagels accompanied by coffee, tea, and juice. Afternoon meetings call for cookies and sodas (or the local equivalent). Meetings which fall in the middle of the day call for lunch to be available. Always have iced water available no matter the meeting time, especially in Phoenix.
Engineers, especially, will attend almost any meeting if free food is available. Having the food to concentrate on when the meeting gets slow helps hold their attention (caffeine and sugar won't hurt!).
It is difficult enough to get engineers to attend meetings where their presence is required. It is next to impossible to have good attendance at a meeting where something new is presented. These meetings are always considered optional and most engineers won't attend unless they have a vested interest in the information being presented. Engineers with a vested interest can usually be counted on to take up the new technology without any extra incentive, but the rest of the community can be enticed to attend with the incentive of free food.
While the prospect of free food is nice, another technique that can be used is a Brown Bag. Do Food and Brown Bag are effective at boosting attendance at other meeting types.
This technique has been used to draw attendance to information sessions set up to introduce Patterns to AGCS.
Brown Bag is an alternative to Do Food when free food is not available.
This graphic of chocolate chip cookies accompanied by an ice cold Pepsi has been left to the reader's imagination!
Pattern Source: AG Communication Systems
Keywords: food, meetings, technology