Changing the Conversation: Celebrating Pride Month (with Michael Newton)

Intro: Great events create great brands, and it takes a village to put on an event that engages, excites and connects audiences to your brand. And we're that village. I'm Alyssa. I'm Paulina. And I'm Rachel. And you're listening to great  events, the podcast for all people interested in events and marketing.

Alyssa: Hello everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Alyssa and welcome to this week's episode of Great Events, a podcast by Cvent this week I am super excited. Thought we were going to have a full house. Paullina was not actually able to join us today, but I’m not by myself, we have Rachel on the podcast and I am very excited to introduce a special guest coming to us live from London.

Michael Newton, who is here to help us celebrate Pride Month, not only just at Cvent, but at great events, our podcast. Hey Michael, how's it going?

Michael: Hey, it's going good. It's a rare sunny day in London, so we don't get those too often.

Alyssa: That is a chance to, yeah, that's a chance to celebrate in of itself, right? Why are you even here? Why? Why did you agree? You should have canceled on us. All right, so Michael actually sits on our account management team within our European sales division. That's one of the hats that Michael wears, but he also comes to us as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

And so Michael, I just wanted to introduce you to the podcast and let you explain to our listeners, our followers a little bit more about what you do at Cvent and beyond.

Michael: Yeah. Thanks. Again, thanks so much for inviting me along, as was said, Michael Newton. I'm the Senior Manager for our account management team based in Europe. Look after part of the European team as well as our IIR and Singapore teams. So I work far too many time zones for my personal liking.

I've actually just celebrated my 10 year anniversary with Cvent on Saturday, it's been a lot, it's been 10 years of Cvent and the events industry, which is amazing. But alongside Cvent I also run a charity outside Cvent called The P3 Network which is a charity that helps prospective and LGBTQ+ parents, go through their journey of setting up their families issues in the workplace issues at school gates, things like this.

And I also do public speaking. Around my own personal journey for corporations and we're called storytellers. So I go in, tell my story, my journey around my journey as a gay man in the corporate world as well as my journey through, through my HIV diagnosis 11 years ago as well.

And then, yeah, that's kind of me in a nutshell. I should really, I feel like I should get a hobby or something, but I'm like, where will I put in it? 

Alyssa: No, I think you should dial it down a little bit. You seem like a very busy individual, Michael, and we're very honored that you carved out a little bit of time for us on the podcast today, and you're joining us on this conversation. Great. So with that, I think, it's funny, Rachel and I were talking and trying to prepare for this conversation today, and one of the things that we were even stumbling on Is it LGBTQ plus?

Is it LGBTQ, LGBTQIA+? So we wanted to start our conversation with just like a level setting on the definitions because we know that this is an evolving space and there's changes. And part of our position as allies to this community is making sure that we're up to date on everything. As our, we feel our role to our followers is to keep our followers up to date as well.

So can you just give us like a little bit of schooling on all the acronyms?

Michael: Yeah, so everyone will be very familiar with LGBT. So lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. As you mentioned, that has developed over time and, I know it can be difficult for people to keep updated and keep themselves aware of what letters should be being used and what selection of the acronym should be being used.

I want people to immediately know that there isn't a right or wrong. To this some groups will use just LGBTQ+. Some people will use LGBTQIA+. Some people will use other versions of it. But in terms of kind of the the letters, we'll just save

Alyssa: The letters.

Michael: The letters have been added on that people might not be as familiar with are obviously QIA.

And then what is, what does the plus mean? So when we look at the Q, that's queer or question. So queer is, it's a term that's used and it's really considered as somewhat of an umbrella. For anyone who isn't, who is non cisgendered or heterosexual for the longest time it was considered a slur and it's really something that the community have reclaimed and taken back as their own.

And some people do still find it offensive. Some people do use it, I use queer as in. Umbrella term. But I have friends that are like, no, you shouldn't be using that. It's really offensive. And I think people are allowed to have their own kind of version on that.

Alyssa: Interesting.

Michael: Also for people who are maybe not sure where they sit.

They know, they sit somewhere on the spectrum. So it's a, I think it is a good term in terms of allowing for people to know that they are part of it, but they're on that journey of discovering where do I act? And they might always sit in that queer section but they're allowed to go on that journey.

Then you've got I, which is for intersex, so this is term that's used to describe an individual who's born with a variation of sex characteristics and they don't necessarily fit into the binary of a male body or a female body. And again, they sit somewhere in between. And again for those people that are into sex, they're on a journey.

They may decide to stay in that section, but they may decide to go one way or the other at another point in time. Then you've got a, which is asexual. Sometimes shortened to ace. So this is just, this is a term that's used to reference somebody who has little or just like no sexual attraction.

But at the same time, they might experience a romantic attraction, but it's just not a, it's not a sexual desire in that instance. And then the plus, so this is used to really signify all gender identities and sexual orientations and isn't necessarily specifically tied into those initial kind of few terms that we ran through.

As an example, something you might find is, Two spirits being considered under the plus or pan indigenous American identities, things like this. So there's a whole, we would be here far too long if we ran through everything. We wouldn't cover anything else if we ran through all of the other kind of acronyms that fall under the plus side of things.

But yeah, that's a high level overview of LGBTQIA+ at large.

Alyssa: Super interesting. I honestly feel like I'm learning something already here. Like I didn't even know what all the letters stood for and I do actually know the letters. I just didn't know what they represented because I myself, I'm not part of. These, would we call them kind of micro communities or smaller communities or just kind, I know broadly we refer to the LGBTQIA+ community but clearly there's differentiation between all of these subsets.

Something to foster and we're, when we start talking about, belonging and inclusivity, there are differences between just even the community within LGBT+. I'm curious how you segment even within the community itself.

Michael: I always like to think of it as LGBTQIA+ is a city, so it's London. And then each of the kind, each of the letters within the acronym, that's a different borough of London. So one part is Southwark, another part is Surrey, another Camden, and it's, we all live in the same city.

But we also have our own little sections. That's how I always like to think of the LGBTQIA+ kind of acronym in my mind.

Alyssa: I like that. That's a good way to think about it. Okay, so my next question for you, Michael, especially as you've been now at Cvent for 10 years. What a perfect milestone to be celebrating and talking about, what you've noticed as a change over time in this industry now, and I don't know if you were in the meetings and events industry prior to starting at Cvent, but certainly over your 10 years span here within our organization.

I expect you've seen a change in support, in allyship, in just even having the conversation for this community. So I'm curious, just what are some of those subtle changes or large changes that you've noticed over time?

Michael: Yeah, so I think a lot of the changes really come in play, I would say in the last five or so years. I think little things were happening, but I think we're now seeing bigger strides. And I think a lot of it really goes around making sure that events are delivering diverse and inclusive content.

How are the, how are people doing this? When you're presenting, you need to start looking at, people learn differently, people engage differently. How are you communicating with an audience? A lot of panels, I have a number of friends in the industry and I think Rachel, me and you have spoken about this term before, we were seeing a lot of “manels”. We were seeing a lot of panels just consistently made up of white, I sounds weird. Me saying it as a white man

Alyssa: Guilty.

Michael: Yeah. I've gone, I tend to be like, hey folks, or hey crew, because I don't want to unnecessarily, yeah. I don't want to unnecessarily offend somebody by using, a male term. Ideally, and I've had this conversation with so many people but guys, it's just it's just a throwaway term.

I'm like, it is to you. But there might be somebody in that audience who they might be transitioning and it might be a trigger word for them. And things like this, you don't necessarily know everyone that's in the audience. For me, I don't even really refer to people by gender terms anymore.

Because again, I don't know how they identify. So I typically just as a standard, will refer to somebody as they, or that some people find it offensive. I'm like, no, it's a safety net for me and things like that as well. 

Rachel: would you say Michael sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Would you say in the last 10 years we've evolved because I feel like as an ally, and I'm not in the community necessarily, but the events industry specifically has called enough attention to this, not enough, but enough attention where we've moved the needle on pronouns, inclusive language speakers, to your point, like representation anti-harassment policies and things like that in registration. Would you say that we've made strides there and have we made enough strides there? Do you feel like meetings, the meetings industry specifically is helping lead the charge there? Like I'm just curious have we done a lot here? Do we need to do?

Michael: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think the meetings industry definitely, the meetings industry is probably one of the most diverse industries that you can work in the entire world. We're not, lawyers. We're not people that work in finance. We're not the, we're all, we're every possible industry that you could work in one industry at the end of the day.

Alyssa: And you're in the business of bringing people together, right? Like that at the core of this is there is, it's fostering that notion of togetherness.

Michael: Yeah. And I think that, We've, there's, and there's always more that can be done. There's always more that can be done, and I think some things people do forget about when you start looking at kind of partners that you're working with at events and things like that. Do they share the same kind of mindset and beliefs as you as an organization that's running the events and things like this?

But I think we've definitely seen, a shift, seeing people come on stage and, introduce it and use pronouns seeing people having the ability to have pronouns on their badges and things like this. Accessibility making sure that, when somebody's registering for an event, for example, they have the option to choose a pronoun in that section.

I think pronouns is something that I'm focusing on here, but I think it's one of those little kind of micro, people would see as a microaggression if it wasn't there. And it's an easy one to fix. But then as we were saying, making sure that we've got those diverse speakers, we've got those diverse conversation points that are happening.

All of that stuff is definitely something that I've seen improve. And we're seeing a lot of people and a lot of organizations globally really target in on this and, opening up, what they're looking for within their events. So when we're doing kind of abstract submissions and things like this, putting in the, we're really looking for people that fall into kind of these categories or, This is just an open forum where we are, we're taking conversation topic points from kind of anything.

So then you are mixing it up and you've got that side of things, utilizing people that you also have internally to be able to pull people in for those conversations as well. When I joined Cvent, that was my first time in the event industry I was working for a different tech company previously, but it was in business marketing and we didn't, like I said, didn't really see a huge amount of variety. People like a bit of spice with their food. Why not bring a little bit of spice to the events? When I think about, and it was actually my friend Chris said this to me last week, and I was like, that is perfect.

When you start looking at, okay, like, how do you describe kind of diversity, equity and inclusion. And he was like diversity is when you invite somebody to the party. And then inclusion is actually asking somebody to dance.

The three of us have been to many parties together. We've shared many glasses of wine together. Who doesn't? Who doesn't like to be invited to parties and who doesn't like to dance? So I think, and I was like, that is such a, Unique and easy way to understand it. When we invite people to our events, we want them to get up and be dancing. So let's make sure that the content that we've got for them and the platform that we've set up allows for that.

Alyssa: Michael, let me ask you one more question that kind of dovetails from that recently. I don't, I want to say within the last maybe 12 months, I've heard belonging being added to Let's talk acronyms again, de and I, and now there's a b. So what's the difference between the dancing right there where that's the inclusive experience and then the belonging part of it as well?

Michael: Yeah, so the belonging is the emotional state behind everything. So creating that inclusive environment where people do feel safe and they feel welcome. So when I think of that kind of that dance metaphor, so if you get invited the party and then inclusion is dancing, I think of the belonging as feeling comfortable enough to ask somebody if they want to dance.

So knowing that you can go and ask a question, you can feel safe you're not going to have to worry that, something's going to backfire on you. And when I talk about their, and I have these discussions with people, and I always I use Cvent as an example, as you both know, 2020, I was the keynote for a sales kickoff, which is thousands of people, which is daunting and, shared my story about my upbringing coming out, as gay, my HIV diagnosis, and then coming out from that side of things, Cvent really has in my mind anyway, and again, different people are going to have different viewpoints on it, created that sense of belonging because I would never have felt comfortable again, on stage and doing that thinking there's going to be a repercussion. This is going to be used, this is going to be used against me.

People when they're joining an organization shouldn't have to check themselves at the door. They should be able to come in, be who they are. I always joke that, see them for the last 10 years of let me come into work every day and let be my weird self, and they just accept it. And I like to think that I bring my whole self into work, and I feel like that as a manager trickles down to the people that report into me, that they feel comfortable to come to me with issues that they're facing outside work and things like this. So I do think that, that for me is how I would view  the belonging side of things.

Alyssa: Yeah it's the vulnerability and authenticity, no reluctance. And to your point, it's a safe environment. Sorry, Rachel, I didn't want to cut you off.

Rachel: No, I'm good. I just think it, it comes down to your event, your organization, right? If you're trying to create a sense of belonging I'm just thinking with my planner brain on a lot of people may have hesitations to doing this at their events potentially. And I think that it's a pretty easy way. It's pretty easy, right? Like I think that there are ways to ask registration questions to help with what your attendees actually want on site. So I've seen a lot I've registered for a few industry events lately, and granted they're the meetings industry, so we're pretty honed in on being accepting and inclusive. But they've asked things like, what kind of meetups would you like? And they list out a lot of these sub communities, or what did you call it? Sub-communities?

Alyssa: Micro communities. Yeah.

Rachel: questions where it's like, would you be interested in doing this? And what that's formed is these inclusive groups that get together and meet up at these events that they can create connections with that.

And I think you can do that in your own organization too. And I think that is also part of what's changed in the last 10 years. Michael is just like the from my perspective as a planner and looking at event design, right? That's changed a lot. We didn't have that. And having these round tables or meetups or mixers or whatever you want to call it, incorporated in there as an option for your attendees, helps you be a better ally. And it also helps you connect people to feel safe, to feel bold. That sense of belonging.  

Alyssa: It's about acknowledging and celebrating those differences as opposed to being like, oh, it's easier if we make generalizations and so we're going to just this is a stupid example, but like everybody gets chocolate chips. Like, or chocolate chip cookies, right? No, it's like some people might be allergic to chocolate. Some people don't like chocolate, and all those people want a different cookie type and that's fine. Like we'll figure that out in the planning process.

Rachel: And it doesn't different meetups, right? It could be like, here's our little area that you can do your own meetup. And put the onus back on your attendees too. I think sometimes it's daunting to organizers to be like, oh my God, I don't have the budget to support 20 different mixers. It's you could have one, but then subgroups in it or an area where they can form their own mixers, right?

Alyssa: Go ahead Michael. You were going to say...

Michael: Yeah, and I was going to say, just kind of what you were saying about that registration side of things. That's a perfect first hit for organizations to be able to communicate their values. Using the website, the registration form, social media marketing materials, you can use all of these assets, you have to actually foster that inclusivity.

The communication that you're going to be dishing out isn't just about the words, but it's also about factoring in things like the imagery that you're using. As well. So does that represent all of your target audience? If if your event said the word earlier, is specifically targeted let's say white men use photos of white men all over your website, do it. Go for it. Have at it. But most of them now are, they're-

Rachel: Males for everyone. Males everywhere.

Michael: I look at the customers that I get to speak with, they're trying to get, more numbers to the events. They're trying to get, they're having to do bigger events with smaller budgets and things like this. If they're able to get a more diverse audience, the good thing about that is you are getting more diverse thoughts.

When I think of things like, you have a sales kickoff, it's Hey, we're going to put you into these subgroups and things like this, don't put all of the SDRs together and all of the account managers together, all of the directors together, all the people from Europe to get, things like mix it up because you're going to get different thought process, you're going to get different ages, different genders, different everything.

So if you are able to mix all of this stuff up and to what you were saying, Rachel, about, giving people the options to go into those kind of sub break off groups and things like this, they can pick and choose where they want to go and sit in and you're going to get much better diverse forms of thinking, but you should also have that logic when it comes to your planning.

It shouldn't just be all of the same people that are just on the event planning here and break you. You might be like, shut up, Michael. Shut up, as the person that plans all of the events at Cvent. But it's, we having people that are maybe outside of the events group, contributing to, hey, like we're wanting to think about doing these sessions or have this piece as part of the this and that within it, that's going to give, outside thinking that you're like, oh, that's a great idea, I would've never have thought about doing that.

Rachel: Yeah. Let's, okay, let's switch topics to actual pride month. So I know, pride is a beautiful way to celebrate and represent the progress that you all have made. But I want to hear from you of like your view of pride month, your view of the celebration. For me as a planner, I love an event that brings together people that can celebrate love.

Like I think that's a great excuse to throw an event and multiple events, a whole month of 'em. So I want to hear from you. Exactly. So for you, Michael let's talk about Pride Month, what it means to you, what you think it means in the events industry or for organizations. I just hit us with the, hit us with everything here.

Michael: Pride Month for me is, and I'm a gay man 12 months of the year. I occasionally take September off, but it depends on what my calendar, usually 12 months.

Alyssa: Which letter is that one, Michael? I'm kidding. Don't answer that.

Michael: Delusional. It's deep, it's delusional. But for me it's pride is about being able to celebrate everyone's uniqueness. The great thing about being a human is that we're all different. And I think sometimes people forget that we see a lot of. There's a lot of craziness going on in the world right now, and a lot of people do ask, like, why do we still need pride?

The corporates are doing this and we've got this. And I remember somebody said to me, they were like, why do you need pride? You've got marriage now.

Michael: I was like, oh, don't make me hit you. Don't make me hit you. Oh, but it's, there's still so much going on in the world, there's so many places where being LGBTQIA+ is illegal. You can be fined, you can go to prison. You can go to torture. Torture. You can be tortured. You've got countries like Iran where you can be sentenced to death just for being who you are. In the US at the moment, there's a lot of laws being put out there and things like this. There was the don't say gay bill and which means that, if a child confided in their teacher about their sexuality, that teacher then had to report this and. Ultimately Pride is, and the events around pride, they're about human rights. They're about empowering LGBTQIA people to reclaim their rights, their freedoms that are just denied to them.

And, being able to go to public places that maybe, do often exclude them. In pride, we've discussed this previously about, rainbow washing. And things like this. And a lot of people, a lot of organizations have been like, Hey, it's June. We're just going to stick a rainbow on it, kind of thing.

And that's really, yeah. Okay. To a certain extent it's great because there is a bit of visibility, but that visibility should be all year. Visibility is so crucial for fighting shame and stigma and threats and violence within the community. And these pride events and organizations get in behind their employees and get behind these causes.

It's showing support and showing how we should be celebrating these differences and shows the lgbtq+ community that they don't need to be intimidated and they can continue to demand that equality. Until, how should I put this? I've always said that there's a lot of, there's a lot of stigma within the LGBTQIA+ community within their own kind of sub-communities, if you will. And I can only talk about, and you said earlier about me being an expert in DE&I, I don't think of myself as an expert in DE&I I'm an expert in my lived experience. I know what my lived experience is and I can talk to the experiences of a lesbian or trans person, but it's me reflecting what they, what I know kind of thing. And I think, I've received, I got diagnosed in 2012 with HIV and I've received a lot of very unfavorable comments, I will say, because some of the language would not be acceptable for this podcast. In that time from within the community and bizarrely, the heterosexual community I've never had an issue with anybody who is, heterosexual in terms of my HIV, but lots of issues within the gay community around it. And it's again, because you've got those kind of old mentalities of what HIV was in the eighties and the epidemic and all this kind of stuff.

And there's a lot of education that still needs to happen around that. But for me, I don't think we would end up, we will end up having kind of equality across the board until we have equality within our own community. So seeing, people walking hand in hand with each other is a beautiful thing and we need more people to be doing that.

But until people feel that they're safe to do that and they're going to be able to walk outside, hand in hand. Like me and my boyfriend, we walk arm in arm. But there are occasions where, we'll, unlink and I live in London, which is one of the kind of, diverse most diverse cities in the world. And even here it's still a bit Ooh, nope, no.

There's a group of people walking towards us. Oh no, let's just unlink kind of thing. And I think we need to get to a point where we do feel safe. And I think having people. Being open to having conversations like this and having people that are allies all year round, not just for June. That's key in making sure that kind of acceptance and pride will continue and pride's going to be something that's always happening.

It's a beautiful time to, like I said, celebrate people's uniqueness. And I don't necessarily feel like there'll ever be a time, and maybe it's a bit little narrow minded of it, but I don't think there's ever going to be a time where pride isn't needed as a celebration. It might change what it's celebrating, but I think there'll always be a version of pride.

Rachel: I think I didn't really think about this too deeply and I probably should, but the fact that Pride is inspiring, like some places probably can't even host pride because of fear of, retaliation or it's illegal. And that's a really good point for why it's so important. It's important for a lot of different reasons.

Not just corporations slapping a rainbow flag on the outside of their building and calling it like, check, we did it. There's more that can be done, bringing people together. I think that's why the meetings industry like goes really well with pride because a lot of our own beliefs are let's think about it.

Getting people together, right? Check, inspiring people, uniting them creating bigger sense of purpose. That's half of what event planners do. So I feel like I. Pride in, in itself, like lends itself to what we do for a living. But pride on a much larger scale for human rights.

Alyssa: and if we can ultimately instill those values into all the events that we do that are year round, right? It's not just a June conversation, but if we bring these attributes to light through our event programs where it's a win-win for everyone, right? It's an inclusive world, it's an inclusive environment, born out of our event programs, which is a really exciting opportunity that planners have.

Michael: Yeah. And people always say, hate isn't taught. I always say that my, my favorite pride that I ever went to was Pride in London in 2017. Because as a part of my charity, we hosted an event where we were able to, we were at Cafe Royal in London, and we were on a balcony and we were overlooking and we could see the whole parade, but people have brought their children

And there were maybe 50 adults and probably 30 or 40 kids raging from babies up to kind of teenagers and it was just a room just full of so much love. The kids were looking and the, there's drag queens and everything, and they're like, oh my God, that's such a tall lady. Like how is she walking to the look at her hat, like she's beautiful and things like this. And then you have things like DragCon and people take their kids to, these are safe spaces that allow for kids to grow up knowing that if they're a bit different, that's cool. And I think, like you said, Rach, the events industry really is a place where people can come and feel safe. And, it's made up of such a diverse character set of people just globally. And knowing that I work in an industry made up of just these wonderful, beautiful people that are just from every possible corner of every spectrum and every part of the world and things like this, it makes me excited to get up and come to work every day.

Alyssa: On that note, Michael, I think that was a perfect way to wrap this. I know we're celebrating a lot of things. Wonderful weather in London, your 10 year anniversary at Cvent, but the most important of all Pride Month and really honestly, pride all year, which is what we're really getting to here. But with that I'd like to wrap up this episode.

Thank you all. Followers for joining us in today's conversation. Thank you once again to Michael for joining us. Thanks Rachel as always for helping me co-host this. If you have any topics or people you'd like to introduce to our 2023 season, you always have the option to DM us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or send us a note greatevents@cvent.com.

Thanks so much for tuning in to a very important conversation today. Once again, this is Great Events. My name is Alyssa. See you next time