2017 is an important year for Dutch municipalities. After all, it was agreed in the coalition agreement that companies and citizens should be able to handle all of their official matters digitally by this year at the latest. This means digitizing  lot of work processes. But digitization is also penetrating the meeting room, which is no less than logical. Why should we continue to hold meetings in the old-fashioned way when the municipal organisation is changing as a whole? The following trends show that although municipal meetings will continue to exist, they will inevitably change in terms of form.

Lists of trends – what’s hot and what’s not - are always a popular item at the start of any new year. We think that a list of meeting trends for 2017 should certainly be among them. So that’s why we’ve identified a number of trends of which we would like to feature two in this blog. Both trends relate to one of the most common New Year’s resolutions - to live healthier and with less stress! Although it’s not always easy to keep to your resolutions, we’re sure that you would like to succeed this year. So why not take full advantage of these meeting trends? 

Did you know that in the Netherlands we spend a quarter of our working hours in meetings? You have only to calculate how many hours that is per year to see that it should really be rather less in 2017. Or more efficient anyway. And certainly if you’re the one who has to prepare the meeting.
In this blog, you’ll read how to make a fresh start with your meetings in the new year.

Pop your VR glasses on. Have they started already? No! “Welcome”! says a colleague, with a smile. “Take a seat!” You sit down on your virtual chair and the meeting can start. Is this the future? Maybe, but if so the meeting of the future is closer than we think. Perhaps not yet with Virtual Reality, but certainly digitally and in the cloud.

Has your employer already fully embraced ‘The New Way of Working’? In organisations that have adopted the New Way of Working really seriously, you work when and where you want. It might be from your home office, from the office of a client or in a café, early in the morning or late at night – it really doesn’t matter. There are no problems as long as employees deliver their work as agreed. The result is that increasingly more offices are being laid out with a maximum number of fixed workstations. The rest of them are flexible workstations. 

One of the nightmares of every chairperson has to be colleagues that squander huge amounts of time on the vaguest item on the meeting’s agenda – ‘any other business’ (AOB). No matter how tightly you manage the meeting, there are no rules for ‘any other business’. Before you know it, you’re embroiled in a discussion that nobody saw coming and for which nobody has prepared. That’s why in this blog we’ve gone back to the basics: what is the item AOB meant for anyway?

Days that are getting shorter and fewer long meetings? Are those two things related? Well, they could be! And certainly so if you conduct your meetings standing up. It simply makes your meetings much more active and quicker. Moreover, it means that you and your colleagues have to leave your comfortable chairs for twenty to thirty minutes and get some much-needed exercise. And that’s pretty important now that the short autumn and winter days are upon us. Because we tend to curtail our lunchtime stroll, cycling to the office and running in the evening when it’s dark and cold outside. So when the days get shorter, make your meetings short and active!

Meetings... Most people can easily think of something nicer to do. In fact, many people find meetings totally mind-numbing. Why is that? Do we get annoyed with colleagues who are meanwhile busy with entirely different things? Who visibly take no active part? Or are there other factors to consider? On average, we spend 6.5 hours a week in meetings, so at least let’s make them a bit easier and enjoyable! To help you, this blog describes the four biggest annoyances with meetings. Because once you realise why you approach meetings with a sense of foreboding, you know where changes should be made.

Never heard of FOMO? It’s a virus that many Dutch people suffer from: Fear Of Missing Out. For example, children who have little or no WiFi connection on their vacation can get seriously stressed out. There are few things worse than being offline for five minutes. Just imagine missing an update or not being able to catch Pokémons! And perhaps you too know the anxiety of missing out on something: you notice that you check your email and Facebook posts just a tad too often; you sleep badly because you can’t be parted from that 24/7 stream of information, etc. If you’d like to know more about FOMO, watch this hilarious video of The Ellen Show.

Teleporting yourself during a meeting, moving into another space? It sounds like you have landed in a science fiction film that even surpasses Star Trek… And still, it is becoming reality. And developing at the speed of light.