The Annual Meeting in Boston: 320'000 Euro!

We are an internationally operating company making fluid analysis devices and employ about 3,700 people in total. Once a year salesmen from all over the world (Asia, Russia, North America, Europe) are flown to a single location to spend a few days getting up to date with the latest news. A short while ago for example, we were in Boston.

The company of course pays for the flight, the stopover and all travel costs. So about 200 people sit in an auditorium from 8:30 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon getting bombarded with PowerPoint. Throughout the day about five or six presenters take turns, each of whom always starts off by connecting up their laptop and projector, they then often have to solve technical problems and then rattle off their slides. What they all have in common is that their slides are completely filled with text. And because it is so exciting nearly every presenter goes over his time slot.

All turnover figures from the previous year from all sections are presented in their entirety and every product is presented with all relevant innovations compared with previous versions. That device has been widened, this cable has got shorter, such and such an input signal can be scanned more sensitively and the color of the casing of that very device has changed. After that, endlessly long software functions are presented. They also love print screens on which they point to some hardly discernible menu item with a laser pointer. All of it is pure information overkill. It is frowned upon to duck out of these presentations, so, you have to serve your time bravely. Time and again you can spot people busily typing away on their laptops whilst others send off text messages from their mobile phones.

You regularly see one or two characters who have nodded off and as of about the second day there is always a busy coming and going in the hall – officially due to important telephone calls or toilet breaks.

This is the fifth year now that I have been suffering through it. Actually the only reason I go is for the contacts during the breaks. If say a colleague was off sick and I had to summarise the main points for them, it would take me about two hours. But the event takes five days! Imagine it: five days of non-stop PowerPoint. I view it as a money destroying machine.

Estimated money destruction. Only salaries: 320’000 Euro!
With travelling, catering, hotel approximately a total of 630’000 Euro