Letter from the President

Over the last several months, more and more of our clients have been paying closer attention to the practical value they take away from their meetings and events.

It turns out that integration is one of the common factors that make meetings succeed. Integration between onsite and virtual audiences. Between onsite messaging and social media. Between the conference itself and the 365 days of conversation in which organizers and participants engage all year.

If integration is one of your key objectives as a meeting organizer, you’ll probably find that onsite content is the golden thread that ties the conference to your organization, participants, and stakeholders. Once the meeting is over, online summary reports and news capsules are the content formats that give the largest number of participants the most convenient access to the knowledge and information they need, when and where they need it.

2011 was a year when this line of thought really began to take hold across the global meetings industry. The Conference Publishers has been at the centre of the discussion.

• In April 2011, we co-published an EventCamp 2010 case study that showed the power of onsite content to drive conversation—and tens of thousands of page views—after participants go home.
• In September, I talked with the Virtual Edge Institute about strategies for integrating the participant experience—before, during, and after an event.
• In January 2012, we took advantage of the Learning Lounge at PCMA’s annual conference to find out more about what integration means to meeting organizers and their clients. Watch this space for new ideas and content products based on those discussions.

The sustainability side of our work points to another aspect of integration—between business objectives onsite and the surrounding economy and environment that enable a meeting us to succeed. Since February 2011, it’s been my privilege to serve as founding chair of the GMIC Sustainable Meetings Foundation. In December, I co-authored an article on sustainable meeting trends that appeared in BizBash Media’s Best of 2011 collection.

There’s a whole lot more to be done, and it is the specialty networks within the industry—from the Green Meeting Industry Council, to the gloriously creative thinkers and practitioners behind the #eventprofs hashtag—where the momentum is building fastest. We’re proud and determined to be a part of a transformation that is making meetings more mature, effective, and sustainable.