Bizcast: Tahira Endean on her book, “Our KPI is Joy”, in conversation with Subhanjan Sarkar

Tahira Endean is the  Author of Intentional Event Design, “Our Professional Opportunity” and Our KPI is Joy, Using Live Events to Catalyse, Happiness, Productivity and Trust. She is also the Co-founder of Strategy Table – helping companies Transform Team Dynamics Through Expert Meeting Facilitation. Tahira is a curious event designer and education curator for the MICE industry. She is passionate about global travel, intentional event design and the integration of technology into our lives and events to enhance the human experience. Tahira wore her “Association Hat” as Head of Events for SITE from 2019 through the pandemic and until we returned to events fully in 2023. Change is inevitable, and in 202,3 Tahira put her passion for life-long learning into practice to earn an MSc in Creativity and Change Leadership. Tahira continues to educate the next generation, teaching Event Strategy and Design at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Tahira Endean Deeply committed to the industry, Tahira has been recognised for a range of contributions, including 2022 Influencers with Northstar Meetings, SmartMeetings – Women in Meetings Visionary (2021), MeetingsToday Top 20 Trendsetter (2018), a MeetingsNet Changemaker (2016), the MPI BC Chapter Mentor of the Year (2018), among others.  In 2015, Tahira was inducted into the Meetings Canada Hall of Fame in the Big Idea category.  Driven by a fascination with what we are learning about neuroscience and the power of the five senses to enhance memory, knowledge retention, and improve connections, she is continually seeking appropriate ways to design the most relevant incentive, meeting and event environments.  Tahira also loves travel, cooking, time with her family, and anything with bubbles! Our KPI is Joy Tahira speaks to Subhanjan about why humans connect and that the experience of attendees and participants at events should be the paramount criterion for event design. Ultimately, people want to connect and experience empathy and joy at such gatherings. This is the subject of her book “Our KPI is Joy”. Events are costly, and when organisers plan them, they typically look at factors such as display effectiveness, website functionality, technological efficiency and a host of other such criteria. But they ought to spend at least a tiny amount of their resources on thinking about the human experience. The customer journey starts with the anticipation phase, when they start packing for the journey to the event. Great events should make the arrival, the registration, and the welcome- all of these memorable experiences for the attendee. After all, out of three or four-day events, most people tend to remember only six minutes of the entire engagement after a while. Run time – 01:02:18 mins. Links for Subhanjan  [email protected]  https://www.linkedin.com/in/subhanjansarkar