Event Planning

Why so few female professors? 🔹97% of female professors say "barriers within academia" such as "implicit bias in evaluations, male networks and an unwelcoming academic culture" play an important role. 🔹Only 22% of male professors mention such barriers. Instead, male professors are more likely to point to "family factors" and "women's own interests and preferences". 🔹A majority of male professors shows "hesitation, uneasiness or reluctance when asked how the low proportion of female professors can be explained". Only 3% of female professors do so. These are among the key results of a study by sociologists Margaretha Järvinen and Nanna Mik-Meyer, based on 77 qualitative interviews with full professors in economics, political science, and sociology in Denmark. Moreover, the study identifies "a ‘silent standpoint’ among the participating male professors: the idea that women are generally less qualified than men as candidates for full professorships." Read the full study here: Margaretha Järvinen and Nanna Mik-Meyer (2026), The Silent Standpoint: How Professors Explain Gender Disparities in Academia, British Journal of Sociology, forthcoming: https://lnkd.in/eG6UkJ6x (open access) The quotes from the interviews in the "Supporting information" file are also quite illuminating. HT Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard

Early in my facilitation career, I made a big mistake. Spent hours crafting engaging activities and perfecting every little detail… Thinking that amazing learning design is what would make my workshops stand out and get me rehired. Some went great. Some bombed. You know the ones, sessions where: - One participant dominated the conversation. - People quietly disengaged, barely participating. - half the group visibly frustrated but not saying anything. I would push through, hoping things would course-correct. But by the end, it was a bit… meh. I knew my learning design was great so... What was I missing? Why the inconsistency between sessions? 💡I relied too much on implicit agreements. I realised that I either skipped or rushed the 'working agreements'. Treating it like a 'tick' box exercise. And it's here I needed to invest more time Other names for this: Contract, Culture or Design Alliance, etc... Now, I never start a session without setting a working agreement. And the longer I'm with the group, the longer I spend on it. 25 years of doing this. Here are my go-to Qs: 🔹 What would make this session a valuable use of your time? → This sets the north star. It ensures participants express their needs, not just my agenda. 🔹 What atmosphere do we want to create? → This sets the mood. Do they want an energising space? A reflective one? Let them decide. 🔹 What behaviours will support this? → This makes things concrete. It turns abstract hopes into tangible agreements. 🔹 How do we want to handle disagreement? → This makes it practical. Conflict isn’t the problem—how we navigate it is. ... The result? - More engaged participants. - Smoother facilitation. - Ultimately, a reputation as the go-to person for high-impact sessions. You probably already know this. But if things don't go smoothly in your session. Might be worth investing a bit more time at the start to prevent problems later on. Great facilitation doesn't just happen, It's intentional, and it's designed. ~~ ♻️ Share if this is a useful reminder ✍️ Have you ever used a working agreement in your workshops? What’s one question you always ask? Drop it in the comments!

AI is revolutionizing the fashion industry, and catwalk shows are no exception. What do you think about this one? 1. Virtual Models and AI-Generated Fashion Shows: Hyperrealistic AI Models: AI is creating incredibly realistic virtual models that can walk the runway, showcasing designs without the need for physical models. This opens up possibilities for diversity and inclusivity in fashion. AI-Generated Designs: AI algorithms can generate unique and innovative fashion designs, pushing the boundaries of creativity. AI generated fashion designs Virtual Reality Fashion Shows: Immersive virtual reality experiences allow audiences to experience fashion shows from anywhere in the world, creating a more engaging and interactive experience. 2. AI-Powered Personalization: Personalized Catwalk Experiences: AI can analyze viewer preferences and tailor the catwalk show to individual tastes, creating a more personalized and enjoyable experience. AI-Driven Trend Forecasting: AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to predict upcoming trends, helping designers stay ahead of the curve. 3. Enhanced Efficiency and Sustainability: AI-Optimized Production: AI can streamline the production process, reducing waste and improving efficiency. Sustainable Fashion Solutions: AI can help identify sustainable materials and practices, promoting a more eco-friendly fashion industry. 4. Interactive and Engaging Experiences: AI-Powered Audience Interaction: AI can enable real-time audience interaction, such as voting on favorite looks or creating custom designs. Augmented Reality Catwalk Shows: AR can overlay digital elements onto the physical runway, creating a more immersive and visually stunning experience. While AI is undoubtedly changing the landscape of catwalk shows, it's important to note that it's not replacing human creativity and artistry. Instead, AI is empowering designers and models to push the boundaries of fashion, creating innovative and engaging experiences for audiences around the world. #Ai #Innovation #Technology

🗣️“You must be more assertive.” Last year, those five words burned into Amy’s memory. She’d walked out of her 2023 review at XYZ Global determined to “step up.” Speak more in meetings. Push harder on decisions. Stop softening her tone so she wouldn’t intimidate anyone. She did exactly that. Fast forward 12 months. Same conference room. Same 2 VPs across the table. 🔇“You’ve become too intense, need to work on softening your approach.” 😑 Amy stared at them, speechless. Wasn’t that what you asked for last year? Which version of me do you actually want? She thought about the past year: 🤔 The time she challenged a flawed budget forecast in front of the CFO, saving the company $3 million, but earning whispers that she was “abrasive.” 🤔 The time she stepped in to rescue a failing project, praised for her “grit” publicly, yet privately told she “dominated the room.” 🤔 The time she finally got invited to an executive offsite, only to overhear a VP say, “She’s great, but can be… a lot.” This is the tightrope trap senior women walk daily: • Be assertive, but not too assertive. • Be collaborative, but don’t fade into the background. • Be visible, but not “hungry.”    The same behavior praised in men (decisive, strong leader) gets women penalized as abrasive or too much. Until you set the narrative yourself, you’re trapped performing for a moving target. If you’re exhausted from balancing on a wire men don’t even see, here’s how to step off it and still rise. 1. Audit the pattern, not just the feedback • Track every piece of feedback, especially contradiction. Patterns reveal bias. If the goal keeps moving, it's not you! • Phrase to use in review: “Last year I was encouraged to increase my presence; this year I’m told to soften it. Can we clarify what success really looks like?”    2. Control the frame before the room does • Pre‑set the narrative in 1:1s and emails leading up to reviews. I.e., “This year I focused on driving results while bringing the team with me, you’ll see that reflected in project X and Y.” • This primes leadership to view your assertiveness as an intentional strategy, not a personality flaw.    3. Build echo chambers, not just results • Secure 2–3 allies who reinforce your strengths in rooms you’re not in. • Promotions happen in the absence, you need people echoing your narrative, not someone else’s. • Phrase to brief an ally: “If my leadership style comes up in review, can you speak to how I challenge decisions but still align the team?”    Women aren’t just asked to deliver results. They’re asked to perform, decode, and reframe, all while walking a wire men don’t even see. If you’re exhausted from balancing between “too soft” and “too aggressive,” stop walking the wire and start controlling the narrative. Join the waitlist of our next cohort of ⭐ From Hidden Talent to Visible Leaders ⭐ https://lnkd.in/gx7CpGGR 👊 Because leadership shouldn’t feel like an impossible balancing act.

Confession: I'm a nervous public speaker… (yet I’ll make $1M+ from keynotes this year). Here are 9 strategies that turned my deepest fear into a powerful strength: PHASE 1: PREP WORK Strategy 1: Study the Best. We have the world's best speakers at our fingertips. Use them. Find 3-5 speakers you admire. Watch their talks on YouTube at 0.75x speed. Take notes on their structure and pacing, voice modulation, movement and gestures, audience engagement. Strategy 2: Create Clear Structure. Great speakers don't deliver speeches, they tell stories. Map your journey explicitly: opening hook, 3 key points, memorable close. Tell the audience where you're taking them. Strategy 3: Build Your "Lego Blocks." Don't memorize your entire speech. That's a trap. Instead, perfect these moments: your opening 30 seconds, key transitions, punchlines and closers. Practice in segments, not sequences. When things go sideways (they will), you'll adapt instead of freeze. Weird trick: Practice once while walking or jogging. It simulates the heart rate spike you'll feel on stage. PHASE 2: PRE-STAGE Strategy 4: Address the Spotlight. The Spotlight Effect: We think everyone's watching our every move. They're not. Use the "So What?" approach: Name your worst fear, ask "So what if it happens?", realize it's never that bad. You'll stumble? So what. Life goes on. Your family still loves you. Strategy 5: Get Into Character. Create your speaker persona. Ask yourself: What traits do they have? How do they move? What's their energy? Flip the switch. Become that character. It's not fake, it's your best self. Strategy 6: Eliminate Stress. The "Physiological Sigh" kills anxiety fast: Double-inhale through your nose, long exhale through your mouth, repeat 2-3 times. Science-backed. Immediate impact. PHASE 3: DELIVERY Strategy 7: Cut the Tension. Last week, they asked what song I wanted to enter to. I said "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys. They thought I was joking. I wasn't. "It's my 1-year-old's favorite song. Figured he'd be more excited to watch if Dad entered to his jam." Instant laughter. Tension gone. Audience on my side. Find your tension breaker. Use it early. Strategy 8: Play the Lava Game. Your pockets and torso are lava. Don't touch them. This forces you to gesture broadly, open your body, project confidence. Big gestures early build momentum. Strategy 9: Move Purposefully. Don't pace like you're nervous. Move like you own the room. Slow. Deliberate. Purposeful. Use movement to create dramatic pauses. Let your words land. Start with one speech, one strategy: Pick your next presentation—could be a team meeting, a toast, whatever. Choose ONE strategy from this list. Master it. Then add another. Public speaking is a muscle. These strategies are your workout plan. The more you practice, the stronger you get. Remember: Everyone gets nervous. The difference is having a system. Now you have one. Use it. Practice it. Watch yourself transform.

Over 300,000 people are expected to attend the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix this weekend, but not a single one of these fans will arrive by car. Here's how Zandvoort used incentives to create the world's most sustainable sporting event (and why other events should copy their strategy) 👇 First, it's essential to understand why Zandvoort is so unique. The race track is surrounded by water, beaches, dunes, and even a natural park. It's essentially a dead end — there is only one way in and one way out. This is why race organizers banned cars altogether. Instead, they increased the frequency of trains so that one would arrive every 5-10 minutes before, during, and after the race. It's just a short walk to the track from there. Then, race organizers set up "Park & Bike" stations, allowing fans to park their cars a few miles away from the venue and then rent a bicycle to complete the final leg of their journey through the scenic dunes. The result is 40,000 bikes parked directly outside the track, with 98% of attendees arriving via train, bus, or bicycle. The only people allowed to drive into the venue (2%) were drivers, media members, team employees, and F1 personnel. But even more impressive than the Dutch Grand Prix's transportation initiative is how they eliminated waste through a gamified system. When fans arrive at the track, they are given a token that can be exchanged for a plastic cup when purchasing a drink. If you bring your plastic cup back when purchasing your second drink, you will receive another plastic cup in exchange. If you lose your cup, you will be charged 2 euros for a replacement cup. Once the race is over (and you return your last cup), you can then enter the code on the back of each token to win prizes online. This system is commonly used at other events in the Netherlands (concerts, etc.), but it helped achieve a 75% recycling rate for cups during the race. It worked so well because it gamified the recycling process with incentives. Some people held onto their cups to avoid paying the fee, while others proactively picked up trash to increase their chances of winning a prize. Think of it like this: Instead of spending money to hire hundreds of crew members to pick up trash, organizers paid fans (via prizes) to do it for them. This saved them money in the long run, but also produced better results, as people are more likely to recycle when everyone else is doing it too. Genius! P.S. Follow me (Joe Pompliano) for more sports business content! #sports #sportsbiz #linkedinsports

Yes, CDN improves latencies by caching things closer to the users, but here's an interesting optimization they do to optimize on latencies... TCP suffers from slow starts, i.e., when a new TCP connection is established, it doesn't immediately operate at full bandwidth. Instead, it begins conservatively with fewer segments and doubles them each round-trip time until it detects congestion. This ramp-up can take several iterations to achieve optimal throughput, which is problematic for latency-sensitive applications. This is a big problem for CDN, because even a few additional round-trips for a massive scale costs a lot. CDNs solve this by maintaining persistent connection pools to origin servers. Rather than establishing fresh connections for each user request, they keep a pool of long-lived connections alive between edge nodes and origins. The clever part is pre-warming during low-traffic periods. CDNs periodically send small amounts of data (like health checks or cache validation requests) over these idle connections. This keeps the TCP congestion window at max and prevents it from shrinking due to inactivity. Here's a simple calculation to quantify the impact. By keeping the congestion window pre-warmed, it is operating at 64KB instead of 4KB. This eliminates the 3-7 round-trip ramp-up delay that would otherwise occur. For a connection with 50ms round-trip time, this saves 150-350ms of latency, and that's pretty significant for something that operates at web scale, literally. Hope you found this interesting, and like always, keep digging deeper.

I've delivered 500+ keynotes. Here's a pro-tip for speaking/presenting. Your pre-performance ritual isn't optional. It's essential. The difference between good and transformational always comes down to those final 15 minutes. HERE'S MY NON-NEGOTIABLE RITUAL: T-minus 30 minutes: Tech check complete. No more logistics. T-minus 15 minutes: Complete isolation begins. This is when I start programming my nervous system for peak state. T-minus 10 minutes: Active preparation. I pace backstage, repeating my opening lines until they're cellular: "Change itself has changed..." "When we think about transformation..." "Let me tell you about the moment..." T-minus 5 minutes: Full state activation. No conversations. No distractions. Just presence. Why this matters: Your opening determines everything. If those first 30 seconds land perfectly, you're in flow for the entire presentation. If they don't, you spend 10 minutes trying to find your rhythm. THE SCIENCE: Your prefrontal cortex can hold 7±2 pieces of information. Your opening sequence needs all of that bandwidth. A "quick chat" deletes 3-4 of those slots. Now you're on stage trying to REMEMBER your opening instead of BEING it. FOR SPEAKERS/PRESENTERS: Protect your ritual. Write it into your contract: "15-minute isolation period before stage time required for optimal performance." This isn't being difficult. It's being professional. FOR THOSE HIRING SPEAKERS: Want maximum impact? Give us space to create it. We're not being antisocial. We're preparing to transform your audience. Think of us like athletes before a game or surgeons before surgery. The ritual isn't preference, it's preparation. THE FRAMEWORK: 1. Decide your optimal activation time (10-30 minutes) 2. Communicate boundaries clearly and early 3. Design your ritual for YOUR nervous system 4. Practice until it's automatic 5. Never apologize for protecting your performance Your boundaries aren't limitations. They're the architecture of excellence. What pre-performance ritual would unlock your next level?

Whenever I go to a networking event, I walk in as a CAT. Meow Just kidding. CAT is a three-part framework that finally made networking feel like something I could actually enjoy—instead of something I had to survive. It’s how I’ve landed invitations, intros, and opportunities, without ever delivering a “pitch.” 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬: C - Curiosity Don’t walk in trying to sell. Walk in wanting to learn. When you’re genuinely curious, people can tell. Your questions get sharper. The conversation gets real. Suddenly, they’re opening up and you’re both actually interested, instead of just circling the same old small talk. Ask stuff like, “What made you choose this path?” and see how much more you get than ten minutes of polite nodding. Bonus side effect of being curious? No anxiety. Curiosity kicks self-consciousness out the door. It’s Win Win. A - Add Offer something useful, expect nothing back. Most people try to get noticed by talking about themselves—flip that. Leave them better than you found them. Maybe you share a contact. Maybe you offer a resource based on something they casually mentioned. Maybe you say, “I know someone who solved that exact thing, want me to connect you?” It’s rare, and people remember it. Generosity that isn’t transactional is magnetic. T - Timing Leave a breadcrumb for next time. Most “let’s stay in touch” promises fade out because there’s nothing to anchor them. So end the conversation with a time cue: “Let’s catch up after your launch, I want the inside scoop.” “Tell me how the team offsite goes when we reconnect.” Now the follow-up feels natural, not forced. And you show you were actually paying attention, which—let’s be honest—most people aren’t. So that’s CAT. Curiosity + Add + Timing. It’s how I network without feeling like a salesperson. Try it at your next event, and let me know if it works for you. Follow Aaina for more such posts! #networking #collaboration #events #branding #strategy #mindset

I’ve changed my mind about trade shows. 6 months ago, I talked about how ineffective they were as a marketing tactic. - Booths cost £1000s - No one gets new business. - You get ignored by attendees. - Everyone is just pitching at you. - There are 100s of competitors there. - You get drowned out by other vendors. They’re a massive waste of time. Or at least that’s what I thought… Then I got sent the photos (below) from one of our clients’ booths at a recent trade show. That’s when I realised trade shows aren’t the issue. ↳ It’s how companies approach them that’s broken. The key: Create a campaign around your booth. Here’s the playbook for getting noticed at trade shows: 1/ Don’t Make Yourself The Attraction Our client hired Kaleb from Clarkson’s Farm to be at their booth. Crowds flocked for a chat, photo, or simply to see what all the fuss was about. They came for Kaleb. ↳ But then they’d chat to our client. —— 2/ Turning a Booth Into an Experience They ditched the usual trade show freebies and brought in a VR welding setup. Kaleb set a time. ↳ People tried to beat it. ↳ If they did they won a prize. This meant visitors weren’t just walking by—they were staying, engaging, and talking about it. —— 3/ Force Them To Remember You Here’s where it got clever: Our client offered a hefty reward for the person who won the VR welding game. But they wouldn’t find out if they won until the end of the day. That meant the last booth people went to was there. ↳ Keeping them top of mind on the way home. —— Don’t get me wrong, most trade shows are a waste of money. But if you go into them: - With a clear strategy. - An approach to get noticed. - A campaign around your booth. They can really make an impact. Definitely going to be doing more of this with clients. P.S. Follow me to learn how to get your company noticed Niall Ratcliffe 📚