Notes from the Trondheim Conference

[Erik van der Liet]

Killing my time on the Trondheim airport, I thought it would be a nice idea to share our notes. Please feel free to contribute your notes in this thread. Start with the name of the session and the date. Here are my notes from the:
Start up session on 8th of june 2008

Improv application disciplines:
• Team building
• Communication skills
• Presentation skills
• Change
• Creativity
• Leadership / co-leadership
• Stress
• Program design
• Organization design
• Branding – core values
• Lg. group mixer

Paul Z. Jackson applied improv with
• Proctor & Gamble – presentation skills
• London Police force – dealing with aggression / conflicts

Matt Weinstein:
• Ice breaking sessions college students
• Keynote lectures -> how to have more fun at work

Anecdote: time slot at huge conference at 08.00 am. Matt did a session and made a lot of noise, created a lot of energy. Next two sessions were fully packed because people became curious about it.

Best learnings from starting up a business:
• Let newspapers write about you
• Get clients to experience the work
• Do sessions
• Get a business partner with different skills
• Do free sample sessions with associations and business clubs (example: American Society of Entrepreneurs)
• Demonstrate the value of improv (you will need to explain)
• Don’t change who you are, just expand your range of talent
• Demonstrate at lunch and learn sessions – get exposure
• Take part of a managers meeting
• Write an article about what you do (send it to AIN to get a book published)
• Prepare an elevator pitch
• (Matt:) “If you don’t give me a standing ovation at the end of the session, don’t pay me.")
• Get a person from the client to be your assistant (helps you getting participation)
• Keep focus on clients needs and objectives -> there are a lot of activities that can be done by the employees and management. You are just one of those activities on the company agenda. Make sure they’ll remember you.
• Let you client shine.
• Get testimonials.
• Write a book – article. Helps you raise your credibility.
• Speak at conferences. Have a hand out or a poster with models.
• Ask people for business cards.
• Make a list of favorites / resources list.
• Give free lunches with sample shows.
• Observe what’s happening in society and business. Spot trends.
• Build relationships.
• Make sure your first clients are agencies.
• Get connected to / affiliated with universities
• Do it!

What would you have done different?
• Educate the people you hire from the start.
• Collaborate - get other skills in.
• Network!
• Keep in touch with the people you have met. Set up a usable CRM.
• Make a video of your work from the start, put it on line.
• Set up a website immediately and put it on line.
• Plant seeds and keep track of them from the beginning.
• Get your word out to design companies -> big market for identity sessions.
• Barter at the start. Exchange a session for collateral et cetera.
• Big learning: If you’re doing a team building session, prepare with the team, not only with the team manager
• Look carefully what place / venue / location you choose to do your session.
• Organize a road show (along business clubs, etc.)
• Ask to be evaluated in the way they evaluate everything that gets in the company
• An exercise / game is just an exercise for the debrief
• Find out what the KPI’s for the companies are and which ones need to be raised.

Business thingies
• Average tariffs: $ 2.000 - $ 3.000 a day / hourly rate $ 200 (€ 1.500 – € 2.000 / € 150 - € 175 an hour)
• The more experience you have, the more you can charge
• Charge more for half a day than for a day. Half a day costs you a day anyway.
• Factor your fee with more people attending the session

[Frederique Thiriet-Smith]

It took me some time, and here it is. A summary for those who could not attend the conference in Trondheim.

The program of this conference is attached (Thanks to Sven)

The pre- conference took place on Thursday with two parallel workshops streams:
-”Improvisation in the Viola Spolin tradition”
A full day session on improvisation in the Viola Spolin tradition for beginners.
Facilitated by Gary Schwartz.
- “When Impro meets the organization – the first steps”
Half a day to discover the vital first steps in applying the principles of improvisation within an organization with AIN co-founder Paul Z Jackson.
- “The Inner game of Yes And”
Half a day to discover how to apply this magnificent mindset to your personal and professional life with David M Prior and Sue Walden

Those, like me, who arrived on Thursday had the opportunity to get together in the evening. Two third of us were attending an AIN Conference for the first time, others were the founders of this network : Paul Z.Jackson and Alain Rostain and veterans from the beginning in 2002.
The attendance was a mix of :
- Experienced improvisers, more and more asked by organizations to teach them presentation skills, wanting to know more about the wide range of Applied Improvisation,
- Knowledgeable trainers, consultants, coaches, facilitators who discovered Improvisation Theater recently, willing to bring the value of it to their clients
- And successful practioners applying improvisation techniques in organizations for many years and performing on stage.
The Conference started on Friday. Sven Veine, the chairman, and his team were very helpful in navigating us from Downtown to the University, providing us the program and any useful information.
Shawn Kinley facilitate the Opening session by offering some activities allowing us to connect with each other and to identify which type of learner we are.
ThenPaul Z.Jackson and Alain Rostain told us how the idea came to create this Network and recalled the background of AIN.

The Conference was also a chance to get information about research in the field of Improvisation.
Jazz has also a long history in Improvisation. At Trondheim University Bjørn Alterhaug studies how organizations could benefit from getting the mind-set of jazz improvisers. Together with John Pål Inderberg, he explained us the characteristics of Jazz Improvisation and demonstrated it with musical interpretations, some extracts are available on http://appliedimprov.ning.com/video

Then Erlend Dehlin told us about his work for his PHD on Improvisation and Leadership.

In the afternoon, we had a live Client meeting. Paul and Alain asked the CEO of a start-up and three of his team members to take part in a meeting to discuss the challenges faced by this company and what kind of services would assist them.
In this very unusual meeting Paul was the facilitator, stopping the meeting from time to time, Alain was the consultant meeting the client and we were all sitting at the back. When the meeting was “on hold”, we had opportunities to discuss in small groups how we would move the meeting forward, what questions we would ask the customer, etc. Then Paul collected our inputs and Alain could use some suggestions. It was a very interesting experience, showing different ways of working.

Then it was hard to choose between the four workshops offered ::
- Matt Weinstein: Using Games and Icebreakers With Groups
- Yael Schy: The Dance of Emotional Intelligence at Work
- Tomi Välimaa: Impro with Models
- Burgert Kirsten: Enhancing the climate for innovation in work groups through improv.
I finally went to “Using Games and Icebreakers With Groups”

After dinner, we met at the Theater House Avant Garden for a show. The first part was the result of the „Impro with Models“ workshop: instead of a traditional fashion show, we could enjoy stories of life, with models and non professional models who see

[Leif Hansen]

Thanks so much for sharing these notes Erik. As I really wanted to be there, its great to at least get a taste of the 'learnings' from your notes. Looks like you had a good tiem!
Warmly,
Leif