The best conversations at any event happen at the bar.

At least, that was the proposal from Discover Saskatoon, Jenny Dao-D’Angelo and Jennifer Spear when they hosted a lively afternoon drinks-and-chat happy hour session as part of The EVENT in Gatineau, Quebec last year.

Spontaneous invention is the name of the game at Event Rap and we love a good challenge, but this one was quite a puzzle: how to (w)rap up a summary of a session composed of small groups huddled over drinks discussing key challenges in the events industry, with no collective ‘share-back’ at the end?

The solution: a roaming note-taking rapporteur.

I dipped into each conversation for 3 minutes, wrote down the first names of each participant and their discussion topic and the gist of their group take on it, and paused for 2 minutes between each ‘sampling session’ to write a few rhymes for each, so that after 45 minutes I had the rap up ready to rock.

You can’t tell who’s there from first names only, but shout to the participants I was able to ID (with Jenny’s kind assistance), Rita Plaskett, Julie Clement, Nancy Bradshaw CMP, Lisa Martin, Nicole Jeffrey, CMP, Poonam Ruparelia, VEMM, Jessie Eun Ji Lee, Desmond Lomas, CMP, Nick Litt, Matthew Blackburn, Debbie van der Beek, Shawnna Dickie-Garnhum, Patricia Pearson (Pare), CMP, Allison Collins, Calvin Strachan, Mary Jo Sterns, Carole Whitehorne, Susan Saganski, Nalina Williams, Karen Wiersma, and Karen Norris CMP.

Even with no ‘whole-group content’ to respond to, this kind of ‘sampling’ rap up can be added to any networking event, bringing together the diverse minds in the room and creating a bond of shared experience between them, and a reminder of the potency of conversations at the bar!

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