What One Thing? Finding Joy at Events with Jacques Martiquet The Party Scientist

On this episode of What One Thing? Smart Meeting's Vice President JT Long chats with The Party Scientist Jacques Martiquet to explore the concept of bringing joy to events, turning attendees from spectators into connectors and the impact of movement and music on attendees. 

Transcript

Welcome back to what one thing a smart meetings podcast that provides you a shortcut to the top of the events world by asking successful people what made the difference in their careers and lives. I'm JT Long, Vice President and Content Director at Smart Meetings and we have a treat for you today, Jacques Martiquet. Jacques is a speaker of the science of joy. And we recently chatted IMEX America on the importance of belonging at events. And I said, Jack, we need to bring this to the smart meetings community. He goes by the description of the party scientist but came to this place after some pretty intense experiences at music festivals. I want him to tell the story. Welcome to the podcast.

Yeah, thank you for that wonderful introduction. IMEX was such a blast. I'm so glad we got to meet in person and I had so much fun interacting at the smart meetings booth. I took a bunch of photos funny photos, me as a mad scientist on the front cover of smart magazine. So maybe we can include that for entertainment. You weren't? 

Boy. The dream is coming true. And yeah, I'm really glad you mentioned that the music festival work because you know what people don't understand about me, they they kind of overlook the depth, the depth of my intention toward public health and I believe gatherings social connection are a public health priority. And ironically, during COVID, they all got shut down. Right? 

So there's complexity there. But I really see it as this this incredible, healthy activity coming together with intention and being face to face. Sharing joy with one another to me is one of the greatest natural antidepressant so thank you for that, JT it is it's powerful, and we love to help people do it better. But you were probably not born a party scientists talk to me about how you got into this.

Well, I'm writing an article right now. And one paragraph I talked about how I learned to become this way, I really believe that, you know, public speaking communication skills, getting up and facilitating a crowd. All of these were skills I learned and I was anxious. I had anger management. I couldn't really talk to strangers. I sucked at networking, like I learned all these skills. And so you know, there's there's two ways to answer the question. There's, you know, the party scientists, How did I become the speaker and facilitator on the science of joy. And really, that's where it begins with my interest in health, health education, and I was a volunteer at my university's health education clinic that led me to become a volunteer for giant live events. And I was the medic. So I got to see this behind the scenes view of these live events. And I got to witness the horror, the horror of party culture, the horror, the really dark side of alcohol and substance use. And that really motivated me to change how people socialize. And that's still really part of my mission, how do we socialize with more intention, more health benefits, more depth of connection, psychological safety? Yeah. And I just remember, you know, working under these doctors, and there were these young kids coming in, and like, their bodies were breaking down, and we had to save their lives. And that really sparked a passion to me, like how can we move these like celebratory moments in our lives, like so often, you know, you're at a live event, and it's like, the highlight of your life. It's so special. It's so stimulating, you know, there's a sense of awe yet for some people, it's it's so damaging to their bodies to their circadian rhythm. And oftentimes, they don't feel that that connection and acceptance and and alcohol is the way to feel that connection and that acceptance. So I'm super curious and flipping all those scripts.

You saw it firsthand at some of these music concerts where it was young people but people of all ages struggle with this. This is not just a millennial or a Gen Z problem, right?

Certainly, certainly. In fact, I'm young, right? I'm 28. So everyone who thinks I'm a smartass can now stop listening. And whenever I attend an event in the meetings industry, it's a different it's a different generation. And I noticed that, yeah, I'm in circles, where, where drinking is less of a thing, but it's very generational drinking. The other thing I'll mention is Gen Zed. You know, they're, they're like, according to the research, they're kind of more antisocial than the other generations and they do a lot more phone communication. I think that explains why they're drinking less not because like they prefer alcohol as but just because they're socializing last. So that's my, I can say it because I'm a Gen Zed. 

So interesting. Interesting. Yeah. And then the Yeah, the gathering and the consumption equation is definitely something that looking for healthy alternatives is something planners need to know more about. And one of the things that you do what, regardless of the age is, you get people dancing. Talk to me about how movement is an important part of bringing that safety and connection.

Well, you don't see me but I'm at my standing desk. And I move a lot. And yeah, our bodies are really designed to move and magical experiences don't happen when we're in a passive low energy state, right. And so one of my teachings to people who socialize and event professionals is let's look at the physiology of belonging, of joy of art. And the physiology is like it's activating, right, when we get people moving, we get the blood flow, we get certain neurotransmitters, like serotonin, that happiness neurotransmitter, once we have those going on the brain, that's, that's going to create a magical experience for a memorable experience. And also, it's going to create more of those social bonds, where, you know, a community can form around our events. So movement, movement, and music has a dramatic impact on physiology. And I've seen this because I've traveled to 15 countries, different cultures, Puerto Rico, Amsterdam, you know, like Monaco, and Costa Rica, and I've seen music, whatever music I'm playing, I've seen music get people to move in synchrony, and it changes everyone's physiology. So it's not to me, it's not really this cultural thing. It's very unique in our species. And the point is, when we get people to move in synchrony, I don't talk about dance. Because dance has this performative element. I don't see it as dance. If you're uncoordinated, you can move your body and you can gain the benefits of moving your body with other humans. So when we move our bodies together, it releases endorphins. And endorphins are this painkiller, social bonding neurotransmitter. So there's a neuro logical neurochemical effect when we move in synchrony. And so it's as simple as getting people to stretch, stretch breaks, as simple as getting people to move around and give out high fives, it changes the physical energy in the room. And it also can really easily elevate joy, like creating joy by design is not that hard if you choose particular songs, and you get people to move their bodies. 

And it's universal, like you said, I mean, you're you're in Canada, it happens everywhere in the world. And yet, it is not an automatic at events. Are you finding that meeting professionals are open to some of these alternatives to just putting a speaker on stage and having them speak to a passive audience? Yeah.
Well, I'll be honest, every time I go to an events, industry event, and I see keynote talks, I'm just I just don't find it very innovative. I love the ideas being generated. But it's just to me, so, so conventional, so normal. So I think there's a huge risk in getting people out of social autopilot, because to me movement, and like playfulness, and games. All of those are just alternatives to talking and having like intellect, like their alternative social technologies to bring our people together. And I think they're, they're really underused. 

But there's a huge risk. We don't want to make people uncomfortable, right? And so it's, it's really challenging to walk the line of inviting people and using just a little bit of positive peer pressure, but not alienating people. Right? But it is a good thing to get people to close their laptops, put down their phones and participate. Like that's a good thing. That's positive peer pressure. But when someone you know is more neurodiverse, right, this was a big emphasis. When I was speaking for the Google experience in this institute, neurodiversity volume control, cognitive overload, these are factors that must be considered in my experience, I can get like a lot of people participating and even the people just watching are having a good time. So even though people are not participating, they're feeling the emotional contagion. So all that to say it's important to know our audience and take baby steps and to not force like a big step on people. You know, dance, getting people to dance on stage is a big step but I'm I'm a facilitator. So I do that, you know, right away. and I do it really safely, slowly and gently. But you know, event producers who are who have a different audience who have, who aren't just speaking to that professionals like me, I'm lucky I have a great audience. You got to take it really slow and people are not used to being asked to do something in an educational workshop.

Yeah. So I will say you are speaking to a very powerful audience right now the smart meanings, community moves mountains, what can they do to normalize getting people moving?

Yeah, I would say the first step in behavior change is getting motivated. So I have a framework in my head. And this is why I prioritize, you know, movement, music, movement and synchrony. Now, you can learn more about this and get motivated and see the neurochemical changes that happen and see how it impacts physical energy, how it can elevate joy and how Joy facilitates social connection, productivity, creativity, it boosts our immune function and physical health. So I think getting motivated is the start and and seeing why it's important and why it benefits your guests. It really does, even though they don't know that it will benefit their bodies, there's a lot of research suggests it will, especially the health benefits of joy. The second thing that I would say is you don't have to be the person on stage, trying to change the social norms and get people out of social autopilot. That's a skill that has taken me like 1000s of experiences and talks and events. But what you can do is you can change your educational program, you can move away from performers, toward facilitators, performers are there to entertain, and what will happen is everyone will take out their phone and disengage from connection, and they will get a performance facilitators will get people to put down their phone, look at each other face to face, instead of just the backs have each other's heads and connect and access collective intelligence and change their physical energy and their emotional state. So I would suggest you think about the educational program you have and choose speakers and content that is a little bit more engaging and interactive, not just the keynote talk where guess what the sad truth is they forget 70% in 24 hours, unless your keynote speaker is getting people to write notes and telling amazing stories. And they do. But it just it just goes right through people's heads. So all that to say you don't have to be the person on stage doing this. You can incorporate interactive facilitators into your events, instead of speakers, performers, dancers, musicians, all that's great, but I'm sorry, it's it's passive. And it's not increasing the physical energy of your audience. So you're putting people into spectator mode, not creator, connection mode. 

And that's the mode where community is built, loyalty is built, relationships are built
so so get a partner, you don't have to do it alone. And you can do one step at a time. And then you'll get to a point where fun is the vehicle that gets the goals? How
do you do it? JTI? Like curious on your input here. Yeah, what's How do you, you know, take these baby steps. And what would you say? 

Well, smart meetings puts on our own events, but they are interactive events. They're hosted buyer and everyone participates. It's that's how people get networked better. That is how they exchange information, because especially at smart woman summit, I mean, it's a room full of smart people. Why would we speak to them when we can have them helping each other hero, right?

I love that so much. Because yeah, you can break the model of these these big rooms with chairs. And you can you can facilitate the cross pollination, it doesn't need to be the big screen at the front. It can be a totally different event design, right? It doesn't need to be the stage to audience model. And that's that's what I'm hearing.
I do worry that some of our listeners may have a little bit of PTSD when they see that I'm interviewing the party scientist, because one of the things that we struggle with is the fact that people think we're party planners, our family doesn't understand what we do. Our CEO thinks it's the first thing that can be cut. Like I understand the idea of bringing a party to a meeting. But how do we also get across that we're doing business here and this is a big dollar amount that we manage, and this is a big ROI that we manage.

I love that. I mean, I really, really But with that, because I'm the party side, there's people here that and they think they think like ideal drugs or something. And it's true, it's natural neurotransmitters, I just think that events are an incredible avenue for creating community loyalty and community loyalty, customer loyalty, creating a community around our brand around our business that matters. 

People may buy a product, and they're gonna stay for the people that they meet and the relationships they have with your company. So to me, it's twofold. And speaking on the party element two, if people understood how incredibly like multifaceted and positive joy is, if everyone partied before they entered a classroom, learning outcomes would go massively up because joy and positive emotion. 

And this is the problem people don't understand this research, joy and positive emotion makes us more intelligent, more creative, it puts us into a rest and relax response lowers our stress response. So the first part is understanding the power of joy for stimulating productivity, improving relationships, and social bonding. So that's the first thing. So partying is important. But the problem is partying just with alcohol is yeah, like, I would say, alcohol may be a waste of money. And you know, open bars are quite prevalent. And they, it's a lot of the budget. So back to the point. The point is when we build a community around our brand, and our customers talk to each other, and we have an ecosystem that's going to drive loyalty for for the company and events, face to face events, and intentional activities that bring people together and stimulate the social trust neurotransmitters that is going to create a community that is loyal to our brand. And it's going to improve relationships between employees and customers. And that's what I think keeps people loyal. Right. It's those related i It's because we like each other, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, maybe partying just gets a bad rap. It could be Yeah, if you can separate the negative part out, yeah, it needs a better PR person. It
does. And you're it and the funny thing is, I like I'm the party scientists yet I don't use the word party, I just use. I use my own term, which I've defined. So it's called vibing. And it means to flood your brain with healthy neurotransmitters through sharing joy. So my method is totally different than partying. Most parties I go to, I'm critiquing them, and they're not worth staying up late for. I'm a walking paradox, just like all other humans on this earth.

vibing I love that we need to use that. Right. Let's use that more often. And I've heard the term glimmer, right, instead of a trigger. It's a glimmer, so but has a positive reaction, right? Yeah. Wow.

Wow, I like that. I'm going to start using that. Okay, so I'm gonna start using
five, eight. This is the reason that I actually brought you on to what one thing we want to know, Jacque, the party scientist, what one thing did you start doing that made all the difference? And what can our community learn from that? And how can they do that same thing to make all the difference in their lives?

 Yeah, the first thing that I've said so many times to everyone, when they when they asked me, Hey, how are you so happy? Like, why? Why is it that and I'll be real with you, JT. So some of my clients are music festivals, right. And a lot of people you know, are drinking and doing drugs at these music festivals. And I'm there to show them, hey, you can access this naturally, you can actually have more energy, more joy, if you access it naturally. And people come up to me and they're like, Wow, you seem like you're on drugs. 

But you found a way to do it naturally, which is so inspiring. And they come up to me and they asked me like, well, what's your secret? Like, how do you do this? And really, my life changed when I started to journal on a daily basis about my social skills, my inner mental dialogue, and I just started to see my patterns, see how I interact with people and make mistakes, see how I take risks and get rewards? Right? And that's the other piece is, I take a lot of risks. I take a lot of risks. And when I'm working with the crowd, I'm taking risks. And to me taking social risks is a very solid path to happiness and meaningful deep relationships. And if I were to just wait for people to be be vulnerable with me. And to start a dance party, if I were to just wait for all that to happen, my life would be so much more boring and shallow and my relationships would be shallow and my customer relationships would be like merely transactional. But because I take social risks, and I have this courage to step out of my social autopilot, and be courageous, and sometimes it feels uncomfortable, it feels uncomfortable to you know, step up in front of a crowd and suggest, hey, let's do this. Let's do this activity together and see how it goes. Right? 

So to sum that all up journaling, about my interactions with other humans and my inner monologue that has helped me become autonomous and become conscious and non impulsive, okay. And that has helped me choose to take social risks, and to be able, as a result, to be able to connect and find common ground and feel joy with anyone, right with any stranger on the street with anyone who my mind tells me, I won't connect with this person. We're too different. You know, my, the bias in my head will say, yeah, no, like, we're not, I'm not gonna connect with this person. But then I take social risks, they open up holy crap, we have this similar human experience, we all have this similar roller coaster of this human experience. And once we reveal that to others, it's so beautiful. And like, you know, it's just you feel close to other people and you feel nourished. I love that.

So the best way to connect with other people is to first understand yourself, and then you can reach out, be vulnerable. Take risks. So what you're saying, yeah,
and my avenue to doing that has been journaling about myself. That's right. Love
it. Love it. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us here. We're going to share all of this with our smart meetings community, and we look forward to seeing you at lots of events in the future and getting out there and moving.
Party on.