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What's the worst meeting experience you can remember having? What made it so bad?

In our experience, there are six factors that combine to make a meeting a good one... or a bad one. Some of these sound like common sense—but you'd be surprised how often these items aren't addressed by meeting and event planners.

Over the past year, MessageMakers has redesigned this website and been at work to expand the useful content we provide. Today, we received word that the redesign has been recognized with a bronze award from the 2011 Summit Creative Award competition.

"Many people put many hours into this redesign, and now we're seeing the results," says Matt Penniman, one of the lead developers on the MessageMakers website redesign.

The staff of MessageMakers had a great time at the seventh annual Michigan Celebrates Small Business event, held April 28 at the Lansing Center. At the event, MessageMakers was honored as one of the 2011 “Michigan 50 Companies to Watch,” an awards program sponsored by the Edward Lowe Foundation and presented by Michigan Celebrates Small Business.

During a recent business trip, I ended up with a few hours free to escape to the pool with a book. I eventually settled upon Arnold Bennett's productivity short How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, published in 1908. (You can get a free copy for the device of your choice.

What are you doing this weekend? Have you considered attending the Capital City Film Festival?

Ever heard of the Sophists? Even if you haven't, you may have some ideas as to their character based on our modern words sophistry or sophisticated. They don't have the best of reputations.

The Sophists were a group of Greek traveling teachers. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle looked down on them because they tended to focus more on teaching people to win debates than on searching for truth.

Do you need a summer internship?

MessageMakers has openings for interns in finance, graphic design, learning design, marketing, video production and writing at our headquarters in "Old Town" Lansing, Michigan.

Do real work for real clients. Get experience and references you can show off.

It's impossible to be in business—or any group endeavor, really—without meetings. (If you find a way, let me know.)

How those meetings are run makes a world of difference to how productive they are—and how connected people feel to “the cause.”

It can be easy for a discussion to degrade into a monologue by those in charge about what they want, rather than a rich sharing of everyone's thoughts and assessments.

We recently posted about how adult learners are active—their brains are always at work, and any learning experience is competing with everything else going on for attention. We wanted to go further and share a few tips for dealing with this state of affairs.