Startuppers are a little like mad scientists. They find themselves possessed by an idea that they can't shake and the only way to get the Frankenstinian monster out of their heads is to assemble the monster’s parts on a gurney, slap a lightning rod to its noggin, step back, and hope for the best.

The one thing that sets startuppers apart from mad scientists, however, is that that they don’t work alone in secret labs. No matter your idea, whether it’s a death ray, an asteroid magnet, or an army of rabid Sharktopi, mad genius isn’t enough. You need minions, partners in crime who believe in your grandiose designs. You need a place to meet with other mad scientists, a place to exchange ideas free from the scrutiny of the outside world.

Seattle has such a place. It’s called “The Easy.”

Like the speakeasies of the past from which it takes its name, The Easy is a startupper’s refuge, hidden away in the heart of the ever expanding Amazon HQ campus. Here geeks of all stripes meet and discuss technology and startups over pizza and beer. More importantly, however, they come to The Easy to make lasting connections, connections which could very well become the foundation for Seattle’s next tech giant. Considering how The Easy has hosted over 50 events (like the Lean Startup Seattle and Hacker News Meetups) and over 3,000 entrepreneurs (and would-be "wantrepreneurs") met there last year, it’s likely these connections have already been made.

But don’t take our word for it, just listen to what Seattle’s tech community has to say about the space:

We're proud to list “The Easy” on eVenues and feature it here on the eVenues blog. We'd like to point out that if you're organizing any event around a startup related theme, Red, the startup concierge for the Easy and the mastermind behind StartupCity will waive the cost and let you use the space for FREE.

Finally, you might have noticed from the video that they're looking to give the space a makeover. Please support the Easy in the $25k makeover contest sponsored by Turnstone. By voting for them you'll help make Seattle a better place for startuppers and mad scientists alike. Also, you won't be attacked by a sharktopus.

It's administrative assistants week, and to express our appreciation for all the admins who use eVenues to book meeting space we decided to take a look at administrative professionals from television history who kept everything running smoothly.

Although all of these admins are likeable in their own way, we thought it would be cool to rate each of them on their ability to do their job. We invited Bonnie Low-Kramen, former assistant to Academy award winning actress Olympia Dukakis to rate the administrative assistants based on these five criteria:

1. Ability to Put Out Fires

2. Handle of Office Politics

3. Level of Organization

4. Ability to Anticipate Needs

5. Ability to Multitask

Without further ado, here are the admins:

#10 - April Ludgate

April Ludgate from NBC's Parks and Recreation

April Ludgate is probably one of the last people you'd pick for a personal assistant. You however, are not Ron Swanson, the director of Pawnee's Parks and Recreation Department. Since Ron doesn't actually want to see anyone in his office, she's the perfect pick. She's surly, sarcastic and apathetic and no matter what business you have with Ron you can pretty much count on the fact that she won't let you see him, as evidenced by this clip (45 seconds in):

#9 - Betty Suarez

Betty Suarez from ABC's Ugly Betty

Betty is the personal assistant to womanizing and often irresponsible Daniel Meade, the Editor-in-Chief of the fashion magazine "Mode". We like Betty, she's diligent, conscientious and hard-working. If you were to pick an administrative assistant, you could certainly do worse. While Betty gets points for character, it always seems like she's rushing around putting out fires rather than preventing them before they happen. Although some might call her naïve, victim to the machinations of her rival assitant Marc and Mode's receptionist Amanda Tannen, her strong moral compass has managed keep her above the petty squabbles and schemes in her office.

Betty, like any great assistant, essentially runs her boss' life, as shown in this clip below:

 #8 - Waylon Smithers

Waylon Smithers from Fox's The Simpsons

Smithers is the personal assistant to Montgomery Burns a man who, According to Forbes Magazine, is the one of the richest men in the country, with a net worth of over $1.3 Billion.  Anyone who has watched the Simpsons knows that Smithers is nothing if not devoted to Mr. Burns, mainly due to the fact that he harbors a secret crush for his employer. He is an excellent personal assistant, highly organized and hard-working. His feelings for Mr. Burns, however, may have a tendency to get in the way of him doing is job.

Here's a few clips of Mr. Smithers:

#7 Pam Beesly Halpert

Pam Beesly Hapert from NBC's The Office

For the first four seasons of The Office, Pam was receptionist for the paper company Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that she often had to act as the Branch Manager Michael Scott's personal assistant. For this, and this alone, she deserves a medal. Pam started off as passive early in the show, but she grows to be more assertive and manipulative, especially when she tricks a fellow employee into promoting her into the salaried position of "Office Manager."

In this clip below, Pam shows off a bit of her assertiveness:

#6 - Jennifer Marlowe

Jennifer Marlowe from the CBS show WKRP in Cincinnati

Jennifer the smart and attractive receptionist at the WKRP radio station in Cincinnati. She also acts as an ad-hoc personal assistant to the general manager, Arthur Carlson. Her ability to keep her cool even in the most trying of situations gives her high marks for her handle of office politics, but her refusal to do anything but answer the phone leaves her wanting in the "anticipating needs" department. 

Clip of Jennifer:

#5 - Kenneth Parcell

Kenneth Parcell from NBC's 30 Rock

Kenneth is an NBC page, who often runs errands for the staff of "The Girly Show with Tracy Jordan"

It's really hard not to like Kenneth. He's unceasingly cheerful and has the uncanny ability to accomplish any task set out for him, no matter how difficult or ridiculous it may be. The only thing that really keeps him from being an exceptional assistant is his naivete, which makes him easy to manipulate.

Here's a clip of Kenneth:

#4 - Joan Halloway

Joan Holloway from AMC's MadMen

Joan Holloway starts out in Mad Men as the Office Manager for Sterling-Cooper, the fictional ad agency in the show. Joan is sultry, sassy, and a little dangerous. She's not afraid of speaking her mind and putting people in their place. While she gets more overall points for her incredible ability to anticipate needs and to put out fires than Donna Moss or "Radar" O'Reilly, she takes the #4 spot because of her manipulative personality. Still, it might be worth hiring her considering the other skills she brings to the table.

Here's a clip of Joan giving Peggy, a new arrival to the office the 411:

#3 - Donna Moss

Donna from NBC's The West Wing

Donna Moss starts out on the show as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman's assistant, and later progresses through the show to become the chief of staff to the first lady.

Here's a clip of when Donna and Josh first meet:

#2 - "Radar" O'Reilly

"Radar" O'Reilly from the CBS show M*A*SH

Radar starts off in the show as Colonel Blake's assistant, and then later becomes Colonel potters. If we could give 6 points to Radar for the ability to anticipate needs, we would. Not only does he have extremely perceptive hearing (he's able to hear helicopters come in before anyone else) but he can practically predict what his commanding officer is going to say before he says it, (as evidenced in the clip below):

#1 - Miss Jane Hathaway

Miss Jane Hathaway from the CBS Show The Beverly Hillbillies

Miss Jane Hathaway is the personal assistant to Mr. Drysdale, the money grubbing banker who constantly thinks up schemes to keep the Clampett family's newly found wealth in his bank. Our Judge Bonnie says of Jane that while "All the [admins in this list] have qualities that are important as an administrative professional...Jane has them all. She is experienced, smart, has a do-whatever-it-takes attitude, always looks professional, and speaks up to her manager, Mr. Drysdale, when necessary. She is not a manipulator and uses her brain to get ahead, even though she does have a little crush on Jethro.

Check out Miss Jane in action (jump to 14:10):

About our judge:

Bonnie Low-Kramen is a celebrity assistant, speaker, and author of "Be the Ultimate Assistant, A celebrity assistant's secrets to working with any high-powered employer." For 25 years, she worked as the Personal Assistant to Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis and now teaches workshops around the country. She is the co-founder of New York Celebrity Assistants (NYCA), a networking professional association. www.bonnielowkramen.com

How much can a spare boardroom, conference room or other space make in a year? If you have an office, chances are that you might have one of these spaces that you only happen to use only one or two hours a week. The rest of the time it just sits there as unused (one might almost say "wasted") space. While you might not think it's worth your time to consider renting out your space, we're thinking that the numbers provided below might change your tune. Just select your room capacity, type of space, city and distance from your city center and you'll see what we mean:

Creating the perfect Mad Men Space would be difficult, not to mention expensive (the show has over a $25,000 weekly budget for set decorations). If you’re willing to sacrifice a little period authenticity, however,  there are a lot of compromises that you can do to make your space “MadMen-esque” without having to mortgage your kidneys. From the resurgence of cocktails to Banana Republic’s Mad Men Collection, it’s obvious that the show has had a significant influence on contemporary style and culture.

Instead of spending your day at the thrift store or cruising ebay, you may be better off stopping by your local retailer and find something that approximates the Mid-Century Modern Style. Of course, you have to know what you’re looking for. Start a collection of 1960s Sears and Montgomery Ward Catalogs, as well as issues of Better Homes and Gardens. Before you know it, you’ll be an expert on the period in no time. Furthermore, you’ll know what to look for when you make that trip down to your local thrift shop.

The Art of Mad Men

If you really want to go all out, you’ll want to decorate your space with art from the period. If you want a comprehensive look at the kind of artwork that gracing the walls of Sterling Cooper’s offices and the homes of their employees look no further than the Art of MadMen Blog.

While the art in Mad Men isn’t all from the 60s, a good portion of it reflects the minimalst abstract style that was popular then. While it would probably be prohibitively expensive to get original of minimalist art, it should be easy enough to find prints to give your space that extra touch of authenticity. For inspiration, check out this image gallery.

Art pic from: http://papculture.com/2010/08/01/mad-men-op-art-in-roger-sterlings-office/

Sweating the Small Stuff

Of course, it’s not just furniture and art. In order to really make your space evoke the Mad Men period, get old 1960s issues of Life or playboy and set them on the coffee table. In place of a computer or laptop, get yourself an IBM selectric. Also, and this should go without saying, get yourself a nice liquor cabinet and stock it full of gins, whiskeys and vodkas. You don’t have to get these things all at once, but if you’re really intent on bringing the early 1960s back to life, every little bit helps.

Recreating Don Draper's Office

If price isn’t a concern, it might be fun to go all out and see if you can recreate Don Draper’s office to the letter. This can be a challenge because a lot of the set decorations are, according to the set decorator Amy Wells, very rare thrift shop finds, but this list below should be helpful getting you started. (Note: We couldn’t identify everything precisely, so in some instances we gave our best approximations.

1. Time Life Executive Chair
2. Hvidt/Mølgaard-Nielsen FD 146 Chair
3. Office desk - The wooden paneling and metal desk legs are suggestive of Knoll and Steelcase designs of that era. Your best bet would be to do a eBay search for Knoll/Steelcase and use the category filters to limit your search to the correct period.
4.  Boxy Sofa (A reproduction by Futurama Furniture). Pretty cheap when you consider that the comparable Florence Knoll Two Seater runs for close to $10,000!
5. Lounge Chair/Coffee table from Futurama.
6. Crosley Kettle Classic Desk Phone
7. Underwriter’s Laboratory desk lamps come pretty close, they aren’t as fancy as Draper’s desk lamps but at least they’re period appropriate.
8.The orb-like object near the front left corner of the desk  is actually a roulette cigarette dispenser. While you might be hard pressed to find one of those, ebay certainly has plenty of alternatives. Personally, I think this brass world dispenser might give the roulette ball a run for its money.
9. Painting by Michal Shapiro called Butternut.
10. Find something we missed? Feel free to let us know in the comments and we’ll edit the list!

More Inspiration

Need some more inspiration for MadMen-ifying your space? Check out our Mad Men Pinterest Board and be sure to repin the stuff you like!

Last week we talked about how the Seattle Startup Giant Thinkwell managed to capture 9% of the twitter audience with just 20 people, a room and a plan. We thought this was an excellent story to cover for eVenues because it seems like every other month we hear about some technological innovation that "threatens to replace" face-to-face meetings. Time and again, however, we've found that technologies like email, Skype, and social media have not replaced face-to-face meetings at all. Rather, they’ve made meetings better.

When Interviewing Giant Thinkwell’s CEO Adam Tratt for last week's post, we learned that Adam Loving, a developer for BigDoor, a gamification startup based in Seattle, came up with a new web tool called Linksy (still in private beta), inspired in part by the success of Giant Thinkwell's social media war room. We sat down with Loving and asked him about it.

What does Linksy Do?

Like Thinkwell’s war room invitations, Linksy is a tool that enlists your supporters to share links to content through social media channels. Unlike the war room, however, you don’t need to send invitations, and (gasp!) you don’t need to find or book a venue.

All you have to do is input the URL of the content you’d like to share as well as a list of 20 of your closest fans (investors, executives, employees, and customers) into Linksy’s web interface. Linksy then generates an email that goes to those 20 people. The email directs them to the Linksy web site which then directs them to choose what kind of message they want to go along with the link they are to share and which services they want to share it on.

Users don’t have to sign into anything. They just open it up, click it, close it, and they go on with their day. If they care to, they can check out a dashboard which shows who happens to be driving the most clicks and traffic to the target URL.

Linksy’s Origins

Linksy's first customer, the Startup Weekend team "Chicken Check-in." Loving initially tested out Linksy by helping promote several Startup Weekend Projects.

Aside from Thinkwell’s war room success, part of the inspiration for Linksy comes from Loving’s experiences working for tech startups. For most startups operating on a tight budget, PR efforts largely revolve around leveraging supporter’s social networks on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Says Loving: ”The VP of marketing sends around an email saying: ‘Here’s the coverage we got. Here’s the link to it. Could you, first of all, tweet and “like” this? Second of all, could you go comment on this?’ A lot of times the employees don’t necessarily recognize the benefit, like if you’re a developer who has 80 followers or if you have 60 Facebook friends you’re like: ‘how does that benefit?’"

As marketers know, and early trials of Linksy have proven - every share on the social web provides benefit. Perhaps more important, Linksy rewards the influential people in your social circle by showing them just how much benefit they’ve provided through the simple act of sharing a link. People like being helpful to their friends, as long as they know what they’re doing really does help. Linksy provides them with that knowledge.

Case Study: Linksy and Vittana

While Linksy hasn’t been put to the test with any large launches like Giant Thinkwell’s war room, it has already proven useful to help get a real idea just how well tweets and facebook shares from certain people convert into newsletter signups or dollars spent. Loving tested Linksy out by promoting a link from Vittana, a Seattle based non-profit with a website that helps users make microloans to students in developing countries. Each loan helps students get a little closer to finishing their education. After graduation, many of these students earn anywhere from 3 to 8 times more in annual income than they would have earned without a degree.

For the promotion, Loving chose Sergio, a computer science student in Paraguay, and asked ten people in his personal network to tweet out the link. Loving says that only half  of his friends participated, but even then they managed to get over 600 clicks to Sergio’s lending page. The tweet that drove the most clicks was by GroupTalent founder Andrew Kinzer, which was then retweeted by Dave Schappell, another notable influencer in Seattle’s tech community:

Let's make Sergio's day. He's studying computer engineering in Paraguay. Make a loan NOT a donation. linksy.me/r/52 via @adamloving

— Andrew Kinzer (@superkinz) January 22, 2012

Out of the total 600 clicks Schappell and Kinzer drove about 400 of them and helped raise $50 for Sergio’s education. While $50 doesn’t sound like much, it’s not bad for just a few tweets.

Partial View: Click to See the Entire Dashboard

Does Linksy Replace a Launch War Room?

In a word: no. What Linksy does is provide a way to reach out to friends to help promote links a few times a month. This tool certainly doesn’t replace a coordinated launch effort like Giant Thinkwell’s war room. There’s simply no replacement for a coordinated team responding in real-time to social media chatter.

Linksy, rather than being a replacement for a social media war room, could actually become one of the main tools in a war room’s arsenal. By using this tool you’d be able to keep track of just whom among your friends and family are the most influential as far as driving clicks and traffic. When the time came to send out invitations to your war room, you’d be able to limit your list to a select few whom you know would really be able to help you out--thus saving you beer and pizza money...not to mention the money you’d be saving by booking a smaller, cheaper venue.

Thinking about organizing a social media war room yourself? Consider booking a one of our venues in Seattle, SanFrancisco, LosAngeles, San Jose, or Portland.

The concept of a social media war room is simple: You get 10 to 20 of your friends, arm them with laptops, and have them blast your message to as many Internet and media influencers as possible: the twitterati, the blogerati and the linkerati.

Adam Tratt.

The Seattle startup Giant Thinkwell used social media war room tactics to promote their "Mix-and-Match" facebook game, featuring rap legend Sir Mix-A-Lot to great success. In fact, with just a day and some 20 people, they managed to get 9% of all twitter to receive at least one tweet or message about Sir Mix-A-Lot and his game. Not only that, but they managed to increase the number of likes on Mix-A-Lot's fan page from 1,200 likes to over 21,000 likes in one day.

Since eVenues provides a marketplace for event and meeting spaces, we're always looking for stories about new ways to conduct exceptional meetings, and Giant Thinkwell's war is a remarkable example. We sat down with CEO Adam Tratt to learn just what a exactly is a social media war room and got some pointers on how to organize a war room of your own.

Identify your media targets and prepare outreach materials in advance

The most important thing for Thinkwell was to identify their media targets. They segmented media into 5 categories: "local," "tech," "gamer," "music," and "business." They identified journalists and bloggers in those categories who they thought would be interested in the story based on other things they had written.

Says Tratt: "We were looking for scale and so it was journalists and bloggers who would give us that scale." Identifying those individuals, knowing how to find them, knowing where to find them and doing what they could to build a relationship with them in advance was of utmost importance.

Obviously, contacting just a few journalists wasn't enough. As far as media outreach is concerned, "It's more impactful if you're everywhere for one day, than if you're everywhere over the course of a month," says Tratt.

Being everywhere for one day, however, takes manpower. That's where the social media war room came in to. While it takes enough time to contact the top ten gamer blogs. In order to generate some serious buzz, they needed to contact the top 200. You need enough people to man the listening and communications posts. You need to provide them with the right type of ammunition--the right messaging.

"We prepared the materials," says Tratt, "so that if you walked in cold, just as a friend of the company and said, 'put me to work' we could say: 'Here's the release. Here's the messaging. Go tell the story.'"

Here's some sample messaging material (Used for Giant Thinkwell's "Baby Gaga" game launch):https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y7ftFBH44G0r7ifLYtgoqNy6JuyFQnwdppuFr81LFc4/edit

Find Creative Ways to Reach Top Influencers

"If you're a journalist you get thousands of voicemails a day from people that want to pitch you a story, so you have to break through" says Tratt.

In order to cut through the noise and reach that top tier of media influencer they made customized video messages using Sir Mix-A-Lot. Here's an example of a video they used to reach out to Joel Johnson of Kotaku:

This creative shoutout got them a mention here: http://kotaku.com/5813927/the-time-sir-mix+a+lot-asked-us-to-sign-an-nda

"I know it helps when you've got a Grammy winning rap icon in your corner," says Tratt, "but there are lots of things we could have done without him that may have made a dent." It's all about being creative.

Prepare the War Room

Last but not least, a war room would be nothing without the proper space. Tratt admits that they had a bit of a meltdown in the first part of the day because the room they had chosen only had a single router. They eventually had to move up to a conference room which, although it did have enough bandwidth, was a bit cramped. If he were to do a war room all over again, Tratt says he'd have "a large, open space" with lots of bandwith and as many phone lines as possible. After all, 20 people on laptops streaming audio and video is going to take a little more oomph than a regular day at the office.

...

As a launch effort, the social media war room was a success. The facebook game featuring Sir-Mix-Lot wasn't. The lesson learned from this was that although the outreach effort was outstanding, people weren't interested in playing the game. This only underscores the fact that even having a brilliant campaign like the social media war room won't necessarily guarantee that people will use your product. If you don't have the buzz, however, you'll never know if your product failed because the product itself wasn't good enough, or not enough people heard about it.

As you can see social media and technology doesn't replace face-to-face meetings, but rather augments them. That's what we thought, however, until we talked to Adam Loving, a developer at BigDoor, the gamification company. Adam has developed a web tool that may replace the social media war room altogether. Stay tuned for the article next week where we talk with Loving about his web tool and see about ways in which his tool does and does not replicate the social media war room dynamics.

Be sure to follow our meeting and event tips facebook page or grab on to our RSS or twitter feed for the next installment!

An Ottoman Coffee House

Coffee shops have been grabbing our attention as of late. We always hear good things from our customers about the Kiln Room, a boardroom adjacent to the The Woods Coffee shop. The atmosphere is casual and inviting, the wifi bandwith plentiful and the coffee, of course, keeps flowing.

It's only a theory, but we think that coffee shops like the Woods are successful so successful on our site is because, ever since the first coffee houses sprung up in the Middle East, coffee has always been associated not only with meetings, but the exchange and flowering of new ideas. We did a little research on the topic, and thought we'd share a bit of the coffeehouse's rich history with you.

Holy Drink/Devil's Drink

Since Islam expressly prohibits the consumption of alcohol, it only seemed natural that instead of taverns and wine-sinks coffeehouses became the gathering places of choice in the Middle East. Indeed, coffee became so beloved in the Islamic world that Sufis often praised its stimulating effects for keeping one alert during long prayer recitations. There's even a story from Persia (Not in the Koran) that says Muhammad was first served the drink--a potion as "black as the black stone in Mecca"--by the angel Gabriel when he was feeling ill.

Murad IV. Better Stick to Decaf.

It was only when coffeehouses started to spring up that religious authorities began to regard it as a "sinful drink," a drink that loosened the tongue and made one prone to spouting lies and gossip. But the change in attitude toward the beverage probably had nothing to do with the beverage itself. It probably had a lot more to do with the caffeinated discussions about new and potentially subversive ideas that made political and religious leaders nervous. In the Ottoman Empire one sultan, Murad IV, even went so far as to make coffee consumption a capital offense. One of his hobbies was to dress up as a commoner, walk the streets with a giant broadsword and behead anyone he saw drinking it.

By the 17th century, though, Persian coffee houses gained popularity as places to discuss politics without fear. While the effects of coffee stimulated vigorous discussions of governmental activities, its soothing warmth and aroma created a relaxed atmosphere to play games, tell stories and recite poetry. This blend of activities attracted a variety of patrons and transformed the coffee house into a meeting place.

European Coffee Houses

For centuries, water in Europe was often too unsanitary to drink, so a common alternative was alcohol--a lot of it. It was not uncommon for someone to have a few light beers in the morning, beer for lunch and perhaps mixing it up with some wine or gin in the evening. Essentially, all of Europe was in a drunken haze, morning to night.

According to the historian Tom Standage, when the first coffeehouses started springing up in the late 1600's, there was at last an alternative to the perpetual drunken haze, people "who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert and stimulated, rather than relaxed and mildly inebriated, and the quality and quantity of their work improved."

In coffeehouses, the people met not to drink and sing, but to exchange ideas, to discuss poetry, philosophy, politics science. One could even argue that coffee was the drink that brought the Enlightenment to Europe.

Just like their Middle Eastern counterparts, coffee houses encouraged open discussions about politics, art and intellectual subjects. Patronage of these establishments were discouraged by royalty and government officials, but to no avail. Coffee houses soon became the principal hubs where politicians, artists, writers, and thinkers gathered and exchanged ideas.

Notable Cafes

The Cafe de Flore in Paris became a popular meeting place for intellectuals, writers, painters, publishers and filmmakers. Apollinaire, Giacometti, Hemingway, Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir visited the cafe frequently.

Cafe de Flore

The oldest coffee house in Paris, Cafe Procope, was frequented by Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander von Humboldt and George Sand.

Cafe Procope

In Rome, visitors to the Caffe Greco, near the Spanish Steps, included Goethe, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Stendhal, Liszt and Casanova.

Cafe Greco

The creative spirit of Goethe was often inspired by the atmosphere of the coffee house. Writers and artists frequently enjoyed the artistic atmosphere of the Cafe Hawelka in Vienna. Patrons of the Hawelka coffee house included Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs, Helmut Qualtinger, Oskar Werner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Georg Danzer and Andre Heller.

Cafe Hawelka

The Cafe Central in Vienna was a popular meeting place for the intellectual elite. Chess players, such as Russian revolutionary Leon Trotzky, often engaged in matches and the cafe became known as the "chess school."

Cafe Central

A "Patriotic Drink" 

The political and artistic atmosphere of European coffee houses was infused into early American coffee houses as well. The Green Dragon in Boston hosted the greatest thinkers of the 18th century.

In 1765, a group of men burned an effigy of Andrew Oliver due to his support of King George III. The next day, the group gathered at the Green Dragon to discuss the burning and other political topics. The group became the Sons of Liberty and the Green Dragon was host to their meetings. Later, as a result of the British taxation of tea, coffee became known as the drink of patriots.

The Boston Tea Party was more than a declaration of independence from tea; it was a symbol of the colonists' patriotic support of coffee. The newly formed Continental Congress met at America's most famous coffee house, the Merchant's Coffee House in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the public.

A Place For Meetings and New Ideas

Throughout history, coffee houses have symbolized freedom without fear and have provided inspiration for artistic expression. In the beginning, coffee houses were perceived as meeting places for unscrupulous gossip and forbidden discussions. Over the past millennium, the coffee house has become a regular meeting place for people to find common grounds by engaging in delightful, often energetic, conversations.

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Shameless Plug: Need a coffee house or someplace else to meet out on the West Coast? Use our advanced meeting place search engine. Do you have a coffee place to rent out for meetings? You can list your coffee shop for free here.

Photo Credits:

Cafe de Flore by Ayustety 

Cafe Procope by Serge Melki 

Cafe Greco by Andy G 

Cafe Hawelka by Yusuke Kawasaki 

Cafe Central by Jason Wu

At eVenues we like to stay on top of the best blogs about events, technology, and of course, event technology. There are a lot of posts out there and it can often be overwhelming. We dig through all of it and find those select few we believe deserve special mention. This month those posts are:

31 Social Media Marketing Posts Written With Event Pros in Mind

If you want to know about social media and how it applies to planning an event, you really have to look no further than this one incredible post. Did I mention they're all from the same blog? Thanks to Jenise Fryatt for creating such an incredible resource!

How to Get Press for Your Event Planning Business: A Conversation With 3 Editors

If you're serious about promoting your event planning business and you've only have time to read one blog post this month, make it this one. In it, Lara McCulloch picks the brains of editors from BizBash, Special Events Magazine, and Event Solutions magazine. There you are, everything event magazine editors want in one convenient blog post. Ignore at your own peril!

3 Wonderful Lists from PlannerWire

While it's not a rule set in stone, we usually like to keep our five picks to one post per blog per month. We noticed, however, that Keith Johnston put out not just one, but 3 lists of great tools for event planners this month. It seemed silly for us to list just one and ignore the other too. Please be sure to check out Keith's list of  WordPress Plugins, Email Marketing Tools, and Accounting Tools.

Of course, these tools are often used by folks other than event planners, but Keith does provide advice as to how an event planner should use each tool.

10 Brain Based Learning Laws That Trump Traditional Education

Midcourse Corrections has always been an invaluable resource not just for meeting planners, but also for people interested in cutting edge ideas in education. After all, one of the main reasons why people meet is to learn. This month Jeff Hurt doesn't disappoint by providing some fascinating "brain laws" which should help you get people more engaged at your event.

The Problem with Pecha Kucha

Liz King of Liz King Events has really stepped up blog up this year with a new panel of guest writers, all of whom are experts in event planning and related industries. While so many of the posts here are worth singling out, Kristy Casey Sanders has provided a fascinating look at a presentation style from Tokyo called Pecha Kucha. Essentially Pecha Kucha limits presenters to 20 seconds each for 20 slides. Is it here to stay, or is it a fad? Read on and see where you stand.

New here? You might want to check out some of our popular posts:

• The Most Creative Meeting Room Names in the U.S.
• 3 Unique Advantages Most Event Bloggers Fail to Leverage
•  5 Ways Psychological Research Can Make Your Meetings Better
• Feng Shui for Meeting and Conference Rooms

Photo by: Stew Dean

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Meetings can be a great way to generate new ideas and solve problems--if they're planned correctly. The problem with many meetings, and a possible reason for why they've built a reputation for being toxic time-sucks, is that the focus has for too long been about the meetings themselves, and not the people in the meetings.

Since meetings are all about people, we thought we'd dig into some of the latest psychological research out on what makes people better at creative problem solving, and how to integrate research findings into practical applications for your meeting plans.

Here are some of the suggestions we came up with:

1. Get Absurd

When the mind is exposed to absurdity (like non-sequitors or poems composed of made-up words) the brain goes into overdrive to find hidden patterns, to make sense of something that fundamentally makes no sense to begin with.

In one study (Proulx & Heine, 2009) a group of psychology students were asked to read a story called "The Country Dentist" based on Franz Kafka's  short story The Country Doctor. The students were separated into two groups. The first group was instructed to read an even more absurd version of the story complete with illustrations that didn't have anything to do with the words on the page, while the other group read a story that actually made more sense than Kafka's original story, complete with illustrations that matched the story scene for scene.

After reading the stories, both groups of students were then given lists with strings of letters (e.g. SDFBIMAAAANDO). Some of these strings had patterns, while some of these strings didn't. Because the students in the first group were forced to find hidden meanings in the strings that weren't there, their minds were "primed" or psychologically conditioned to find hidden patterns in the letter strings. Incredibly, not only did the students in the first group select more strings as having patterns than the second group, but they did so with greater accuracy as well.

Before a meeting or brainstorming session, consider giving everyone a "creativity warm-up" by having them read a nonsense poem like Jabberwocky, one of Kafka's stories, or watch some weird YouTube videos. Also, since the study participants were good at finding hidden patterns, this would be an especially good exercise for those working in fields like data analysis or business intelligence.

2. Use general verbs when presenting problems

If you organize a problem-solving session, chances are that the problem you're trying to solve has been solved before, either by you or by someone else. The problem is that when confronted with a new problem,  people often fail to recall solutions to similar past problems.

A study  done in 1995 (Clement et al, 1995) suggests the reason why people tend to do this is that they get so bogged down by the details of a problem that it seems  unrelated to any problem that might have been solved previously.

They fail to utilize what is called "analogic thinking," a process whereby people draw connections between two similar events (e.g. problem X is similar to problem Y, so we should use a similar solution). An example problem you might tackle in a meeting is "How can we encourage website visitors to stay on our site once they've added an item to their shopping cart?" Because this problem is too specific, it will hinder participants from recalling similar solutions employed in the past. If the problem was rephrased to something more broad like "Why do users leave a website?" oftentimes people come up with many more answers and solutions, many of which can be applicable to your more specific problem. Start broad, then narrow the focus down to specifics.

3. Have meeting participants recall a sad memory while smiling

Research shows that people who recall a sad memory while smiling or people who recall a happy memory while frowning will be more accepting of unconventional ideas (Huang & Gallinsky, 2001). This can be an excellent asset in a brainstorming session, where the objective is to build upon novel ideas, not shoot them down offhand.

In the study, the participants were presented with several words and categories and were asked to judge if the word belonged in each category or not. The subjects who did the sad memory/happy face exercise were much more likely to accept unconventional categorizations  (e.g. a camel is a vehicle, garlic is a vegetable, a telephone is a type of furniture) than those who didn't. The former group was able to think on a more expansive and broad level, while the latter thought thought on a more narrow level. Narrow thinking has its uses, but not in a brainstorm. Consider giving this exercise to your team to help pull them "out of the box".

4. Cupcakes!

Not surprisingly, a good mood is another thing that research has shown to promote expansive thinking (Fredrickson, 2001). If you're planning a brainstorming session see what you can do to foster well-being with your meeting participants.

Despite objections from 9 out of 10 dentists, a surprise delivery of sugary treats just before a meeting can be a great way to put everyone in a good mood. Conversely, bad moods will tend to foster more narrow, analytic thinking. So when you're ready to shoot some holes in the idea list you've generated during a brainstorm, consider doing it on a miserable rainy day. 

5. Meet someplace new

The 106 Pine Wine Bar in Seattle, WA

In 2011 researchers did fMRI brain scans on subjects who experienced "novel" situations (Krebs et al, 2011). Interestingly enough, they found that the portion of the brain activated by novelty (the substantia nigra / ventral tegmental area or SN/VTA to be precise) also resulted in a dopamine release (the brain's pleasure or rewards mechanism). From these observations we can conclude that as humans our brains are conditioned to expect rewards in novel situations. Not only that, but because novelty is so closely associated to pleasure and reward, we are actually more motivated to think in novel way--especially when we encounter novelty.

If you're looking to get new ideas from a meeting, consider meeting somewhere where you haven't met before: An art gallery, or a beautiful hotel boardroom, or coworking space for example. Even a trip over to the nearest park can be enough to get new ideas to flow. If you're looking for more ideas for novel places to meet you can also check out eVenues local lists of meeting spaces. We have a pretty good selection of venues in Seattle, as well as in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and many other cities on the west coast. Shameless plug, yes...but we thought it was appropriate  

What are some other "people focused" ways that you can improve productivity in a meeting?

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Smile Photo by Bill Sodeman

Cupcake Photo by lamatin

Hi there! If you're new here and like this article consider following us on twitter and our Meeting and Event Tips facebook page to keep up with our new content.

When I lived in Tokyo I had the opportunity to meet hundreds of professionals who ran behemoths like Sony, Toshiba, Honda, NEC and many others. As a corporate headhunter, my job was to learn about what they did, about who they were, and to convince them that they'd be better off working for one of the companies I represented.

As you may know, Japan can be seen as a stiff and formal country, governed by rules of etiquette that most Americans would find stifling. This was never more evident to me than during a business meeting. There are rules for everything: rules for the exchange of business cards, rules for where to sit, rules for bowing, rules for beginning a meeting, rules for ending a meeting, there are even grammar rules for formal business Japanese.

Americans can break the rules

The recruiting firm I worked for hired us Gaijin because we were exempt from those rules in many ways. We spoke English in our meetings not only because it was easier for us to communicate, but because we didn't have to use all the honorifics that Japanese people were obligated to use when talking to their social superiors.

Social superiors could be anyone, a customer, someone who had a higher ranking position within a company, or simply someone who happened to be older than us. As a recruiter who often found myself talking to country managers and CEOs, usually all three of those happened to be the case. Because English was the language we chose to conduct our meetings in, however, I wasn't obligated to use certain words that would put undue emphasis on a CEO's social superiority. We could meet as equals and negotiate deals without rules of etiquette getting in our way.

As an American, I got away with a lot. Not only did I not have to school myself on the intricacies of honorific language but I also didn't have to learn the various bows for the various situations which, according to many of my Japanese friends, we foreigners never get quite right. That said, there were some customs that, even as foreigners, we were obligated to adhere to:

Where to sit

I remember when I first sat down for an interview with the recruiting firm. I went into the room and took the chair nearest the door. I didn't think much of it, but when the office assistant came back to serve me a cup of tea, she politely informed me that I should take the seat farthest from the door.

Later I found out that as a guest in that office it was my right and privilege to sit in the seat facing the door. In feudal times, it was not unheard of for assassins to stick a blade through rice paper doors and impale a guest or two. This is why, to this day guests are expected to take the honor of sitting in the "safe" chair. I've tried looking this fact up, and couldn't find any evidence for it. Still, however, it makes for an interesting story.

Business Card Exchange

There were many subtleties to business card exchange that took a while to get the hang of. Since I was an American, the routine was to first shake hands, reach into a suit pocket and produce a business card holder, or meishi ire. We'd exchange cards holding them out with two hands, thumbs and forefingers on the bottom two corners. Since they were usually the guest and social superior, I would hold my business card a bit lower than theirs.

Business cards were not to be pocketed right away, but rather to be placed on the table in front of you. If you're meeting a group of people, this can be a useful way to remember people's names as well as keep track of who does what in the company. Although I'm now in the states, I still find this to be a useful little trick.

"Yes" and "No"

One thing that I found particularly frustrating was how Japanese businessmen often avoided saying no directly. If I presented an opportunity to them, they would often act as though they were very interested when, in fact, they were just being polite.

Our headhunting firm got around this hurdle by asking questions about about a prospect's interests, background and their work history. Once we knew pretty much knew everything there was to know about them, we had a good idea which one of our positions may be a good fit for their background and interests. We knew they would be interested in what we had to offer (and not feign interest out of politeness) because we spent time (sometimes even more than 20 minutes!) asking about their interests first.

In the States, people are much more direct about what they want and don't want, but that's not to say the same "mask of politeness" phenomenon doesn't happen here as well, albeit to a lesser extent. I have found that spending time knowing people's background and interests before asking for anything on my behalf has proven extremely useful.

What about you, what have you learned from meetings in other countries?

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Photo by Danny Choo.