Audience-Centered Seating™ Principles Set to the long wall. Curve the seating to face the presentation.* No straight rows. Flare aisles 45 degrees off the end of the podium. No center aisle. Face each chair directly toward the presentation. Cut single-chair veins or access lanes into long rows every sixth chair. Set the last row on the back wall. Leave aisle space in front for exit. *Curved-row sets, rows curved sufficiently so that participants can see others in their own row, serve the meeting functions formerly ascribed to semicircular sets. Being able to see each other for networking opportunities, view the presentation, comfort, safety, access and capacity are an essential part of this request. Immediate Full-Back Set Even if the facility is adamant and unyielding in their insistence on setting straight rows for body count, you can insist on several of the Audience-Centered Seating principles with AudienceCentered Theater Style in illustration A. Angle the outside seats, still in straight rows, toward the presentation. Wide-Ranging Presentations Require an Elliptical Set Your presentation style may dictate the degree of curve in the rows. If you roam the stage like Tom Peters, then shape the seating in an ellipse (see illustration B). Fixed-Place Presentations Do Well with a Semicircular Set However, if your presentation style is more fixed and contained in one space, then choose more of a semicircular configuration (see illustration C). This is also the more intimate arrangement. You can use a compass, placing the pivot point in the basic center of your presentation area, and drawing increasingly larger concentric semicircles toward the back of the room. Then mark off aisles from the front corners of the podium at a 45 degree angle toward the exits, or draw them directly toward the exits, expanding to accommodate more traffic flow and schmoozing in front of the exit doors. Never, Ever, Ever, Ever Give Up! The straight-row mind-set will yield slowly and be replaced by a curvedrow mind-set in the worldwide meetings industry. The pain of the straight-row set will eventually be intolerable to audiences and straight rows will be shot down like the Minutemen shot the British who insisted on standing in straight rows. Then we will be able to return to seating that the Greeks and Romans institutionalized about 800 A.D. Meanwhile, you need to approach meeting facilities armed with a specific request as well as a firm determination to obtain your preferred seating arrangement. Being in the vanguard of a movement requires such resolve. And our audience members deserve the best seats in the house now, not when the meeting facilities get around to it. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Thrival.com