With over 25 years of experience in the meetings industry, Kelly MacDonald is an expert when it comes to pairing the right speakers with the right audiences. Recently, Kelly worked with the PCMA conference planners for their Canadian Innovation Conference, which took place in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Here are her thoughts on the featured speakers, Behavioural Finance Expert Preet Banerjee and Creativity Expert and Master Magician David Ben!

Back from “the Rock” and the 2016 PCMA Conference, here are two reviews of the unique speakers and their one-of-a-kind perspectives…

Day 2 began with a very cool TED style format where four speakers delivered 15 minutes keynotes, followed by an hour workshop.

First up was Preet Banerjee, speaking on why we are hard-wired to make bad money decisions…and what we can do about it!

Originally trained as a neuroscientist, followed by a brief foray as a race car driver, before entering the world of personal finance, it’s no surprise that Preet Banerjee’s take on the topic is fresh and exciting! His keynote was a hit and the follow-up workshop was packed to standing room only!

Preet empowers people to take control of their financial health which is a message employers are paying attention to as well!

Financial stress is a big contributor to productivity loss. Empowering employees with the information they need to become financially successful can create a more engaged, stable and healthy workforce!

Day 3 started with magician, master of sleight-of-hand, accomplished writer, educator, producer, consultant and …creative problem solver, David Ben!

In David’s keynote, Advantage Play, he shared stories from his illustrious 40 year career, living the creative life. And, he performed a wonderful magic trick which he then deconstructed to demonstrate how one can effectively approach the universal components involved in solving any problem – identify the objective, generate solutions, evaluate, and implement. He had so many great insights. My favourite was that “our #1 asset is our sense of smell”.

Our clients count on us to be the difference-maker: helping them to make decisions that are informed by years of experience, the programs we have helped create, the resources and relationships we have accumulated, our taste and our expert judgement. These lead to trust, and with that together, we can indeed achieve the impossible!