It's never good when your attendees are distracted during your meeting because of the decor in the room. This is happened this week during the NC Conference of Superior Court Judges on Wednesday afternoon.
The tables were set and ready for the conference. They each had a pen, place mat (with a Sudoku puzzle), and circle decorations on the ends of each table (pictured below).
There are two issues here. First, we really don't want our attendees doing Sudoku puzzles while they should be listening to the person speaking about important legal topics. Plain notepad paper with the hotel logo will suffice. While I wasn't able to resolve this issue, it's something that I will mention to the hotel for other groups and hopefully ours if we return again in the future. On a side note - the service here was amazing and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone that asks. This is such a positive thing because I had a terrible experience at another hotel recently... see Running in Heels to relive some of that conference from last month.
Second, the circle decorations on the ends of the tables became an issue. While I realize that the hotel is attempting to create an image and brand, the attendees would sometimes accidentally knock them off the tables because they were distracted by them in the first place. These circles have some weight to them and cause a bit of commotion every time one would fall on the floor. I was told this happened about six times during one of the sessions. The email I got from the faculty member sitting in the room went as follows:
“Can you have them remove those silver circles for tomorrow? People keep knocking them off the table and they seem to serve no purpose. Except if you count being annoying . . . ”
This email sort of made me chuckle, but the point was made. I asked the hotel to remove them and this was promptly taken care of by the next morning.
It's never good to have the decor be the focus of your meeting, especially an educational one. If it is a wedding, gala, or conference about interior design then decor definitely has a more prominent place in your event. Though these circle decorations were well intended, it wasn't appropriate in this case.
This sort of thing can also happen when picking patterns for furniture. In an educational setting, a busy pattern on a chair can become the focus or your meeting or conference rather than the meeting itself. This is something to think about when you are working on decorating for your meeting or remodeling your meeting space.
We all love well done decor, but don't let it distract you from the actual purpose of your event in the first place.
Have you have experiences with decor that was done really well? How about distracting decor? Let me know, I'd love to hear about it.