Any person who sits through six hours of a conference, meeting or workshop should be declared legally dead and their estate probated. Is there anyone who is championing the cause of marathon meetings? Can we agree that we need to design better meeting agendas? We already know that long meetings can become boring, but now there is evidence that “Death by PowerPoint” is actually possible.

Long Meetings are a Killer – No Joke

“Sitting is a dangerous risk factor for early death, on par with smoking and being obese,” according to Peter Katzmarzyk, a researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. “Sitting a lot doesn’t mean you’ll die earlier, but it increases the risk.”

The BBC reports that scientists say that reducing the amount of time you sit each day to about three hours can add about two years to your life. Shorter sessions = less sitting = no dead attendees. Dying doesn’t look good on a post-event survey. Even if there are no causalities, shorter and more varied session lengths improve participation, enhance retention, increase attention and ensure better results.

This just in. There is new evidence that’s even more devastating.

Long Meetings Make Your Butt Bigger

Israeli researcher Amit Gefen reported in the American Journal of Physiology that sitting down for too long may give you a big bottom. Researchers found that the area of your body that supports your weight while you are sitting down can inflate with about 50 percent more fat than other areas. Without getting too clinical, the fat cells in your fanny work their way into your muscles and the whole thing stretches … spreads and “broadens your horizons.”

Booty Reality Call

Fight the pain and embarrassment of Rumpa Mortis (Latin: rump “the butt or fleshy part of the human body that one sits on,” plus mortis “of death”). Help eliminate this crippling condition and make Rumpa Mortis a forgotten affliction.

• Don’t try to wedge as many speakers and topics as possible into a one- or two-day event.

• Design agendas more the value they present to the attendees than for the convenience of the presenters.

• Focus on content that matters, ideas that motivate, discussions that bring people together and information that generates results.

• If you question the value of any portion of your content – cut it.

Wouldn’t we rather have people dying to come to our conferences, meetings or workshops … than the other way around?

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