I just read a great blog post by the folks over at the Platypus Institute, the ones who are all about optimizing human performance toward innovation. In this segment, they discuss lighting and its potential hazards including headaches, mood, eye strain, concentration even problem-solving skills.

The context the writer is looking at is the office workspace and in particular, overhead fluorescent lighting and computer screens. But what about us in the meeting and event world? Are we setting ourselves up for reduced effectiveness at our meetings just by the rooms and properties we select for sessions?

Are we handing out doses of “subjective unpleasantness” and “afternoon fatigue” with the morning coffee and pastry? Yikes!

More and more as meeting professionals, we’re called upon to know about WAY more than the ratio of the room size to the position of the screen or how many gallons of coffee for the expected headcount. So how do you obtain such learning? How are you broadening your knowledge and network to learn information that potentially affects and even transforms your work? How are you becoming an innovation leader?

What research about education are you reading? What blogs about brain science fill your inbox – and actually get read? Have you discovered any Ted Talks recently that make you think about changing the way you plan your programs?

Going outside of our industry may sometimes feel like unfamiliar territory, or sometimes, even a vacation. But it’s important that we make time to expand our perspectives and then more importantly, share those new thoughts and ideas with one another.

Lord knows, it’s hard enough to stay on top of the industry newsletters and publications. I know I’ve got a giant stack, still in plastic, to flip through right now. But we try at least skim through because we want to be on the front end of trends and innovations, right? Well guess where many of those innovations are coming from? From industry leaders who’ve stepped outside to get a different view, a fresh angle on what is right in front of them.

So who do you want to be? The one skimming through just to stay up with the pace? Or do you want to be one of the few, lighting the way?