Anita MacDonald

speaker

113 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 23 Jul

Anita MacDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Event Industry News Podcast · Making Networking Work for Everyone: The Neuro‑Inclusive Guide · 23 Jul 2026 podcast

So we came together as a group and thought, right, what can we look at next?

And I think we put a poll out as well to event professionals within ABCO and within our own networks about asking people what

you want us to look at next and networking came up high um and you know i'm i'm not neurodiverse i've seen myself as neuro neurotypical but even i struggle with networking going into a room when i don't know anybody um the noise levels as well and it and when you see people talking in little pleats

I find it overwhelming and I'm just thinking if I find myself as neurotypical, what is it like for somebody who identifies or who even perhaps has neurodiverse characteristics and hasn't even realized

they're in that sphere, how on earth does it feel for them?

So that's kind of how it came about.

And what we did is that we put a survey together and we put it out to anybody who's ever attended an event, doesn't matter whether it's a conference, a meeting, a dinner, a networking, a family gathering,

And it didn't matter whether they were an ABCO member or not, or an event professionals.

We opened it up to everybody within our networks, asking them questions about how they feel when they attend an event and around networking, how does it make them feel and what changes would they like to see?

And I think the overwhelming result was

um nobody likes it the traditional format of all being shoved in the same room with catering glasses clinking lots of noise music going on quite bright lights nobody likes it so it kind of begs the question if if nobody likes it why are we sticking to this traditional format

something needs to give, something needs to change.

And that's kind of how we started to evolve it.

Andy, is there anything you wanted to add to that?

Because obviously you collated the results.

yeah absolutely it's um i think one of my sort of favorite things that there was two that came out that i really liked um and these were ideas that came from um respondents to the survey and within the the group itself so um one was um having a networking body

And it could be somebody within your committee, somebody within your organizing group that would make introductions.

So if you're new to a conference, new to an event,

they would actually help you make introductions and introduce you to a group.

And it just having somebody do that and breaking that barrier down.

Showing 21–40 of 113 · page 2 of 6