All this month, The Edge will carry advance and onsite coverage of MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress, July 24-27, 2010 in Vancouver. With this posts, we introduce a series of case studies that are linked to an online community produced for MPI by Fusion Productions in partnership with The Conference Publishers, Clever Zebra, and master of ceremonies Glenn Thayer. Join the discussion today!
SMMP: Finding the Best Fit for Your Organization
By WEC10 Reporter | July 29, 2010
“There’s no-cookie cutter process for an SMMP [Strategic Meetings Management Plan],” said Ross VanDooser, director of value analysis at StarCite, during a panel at MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress. “The idea is to examine your organization’s culture and pick out what will work best.”
“Before you can begin any SMMP program, you need to go back to consolidation,” said Amy Doty of Doty Consulting. Kimberly Meyer, president of Meetings Analytics, added, “You have to start with reporting in mind. If you can’t report it, it doesn’t count.” Progressive organizations are incorporating corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores and meeting effectiveness into SMM reporting.
VanDooser highlighted the importance of an online tool for managing attendees and purchasing. “Most of the value in SMMP comes from sourcing,” he said. Meyer agreed that preferred vendors are very important: “It’s the only way you can begin to track and leverage your spend.”
Measuring meeting effectiveness is an important thread of SMMP, along with managing finances, risk and cost savings, said Ira Kerns, managing director of GuideStar Research. Pre-meeting research can be used to identify issues that should be emphasized at the meeting, and post-meeting research can track the meeting’s success at addressing targeted issues. “We call that ‘return on event,’” Kerns said.
Assessing the maturity of an organization’s SMMP “boils down to visibility and having a structured program in place,” said VanDooser. Not every meeting will follow the same workflow. “If you put an electronic workflow in place, the system will force them through the right process based on the registration numbers,” he said.
For a program of moderate maturity, “executive sponsorship is where you need to start,” said Meyer. Developing the components of SMMP is a matter of “baby steps,” VanDooser said, “and there will always be evolution.”
Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility, Meeting Design, Meeting Professionals International, Meetings ROI, News Capsules, Strategic Meetings Management | No Comments »
Out of Chaos: SMMP at Microsoft
By WEC10 Reporter | July 29, 2010
To move from “a state of chaos” and implement strategic event management at his organization, Jeff Singsaas, general manager of Microsoft Studios and global event marketing for Microsoft Corporation, said he focussed on building partnerships.
“We can’t do it all, and don’t want to do it all,” Singsaas said at a session Tuesday afternoon at MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress.
Staff from different areas of the corporation—all involved in event planning—were pulled together to form the central event marketing group. Moving toward a hub-and-spoke model, each product group is identifying a senior individual responsible for events who coordinates with the central group.
For the Microsoft central event marketing group, “we had to find the right people,” Singsaas said.
Kati Quigley, director of event marketing at Microsoft, said that in addition to event marketing experience and skills, the most important qualifications are broad experience and competence. In the future, Singsaas said, “the skill set will be about interpreting data effectively and then acting on it.”
Implementing a process to ensure a consistent and reliable approach to events “was the hardest thing I had to do,” Singsaas said. “They really loved the heroics required during an event to ensure it didn’t fall on its face. . . . I thought that was insane.”
A scalable event metrics tool, along with a heat map that’s currently in development, provides important software support. Sustainability is integrated into the tool and is on the project dashboard. A Microsoft event was the first in North America to earn certification under BS 8901, a sustainability standard developed for the events industry.
“We rely heavily on partnerships,” Quigley said, noting that she maintains a list of three to five of the best suppliers in each category. “When you have a complex business like events, at a certain point, nobody does it all well,” Singsaas said.
Topics: Green Meetings, Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules, Strategic Meetings Management | No Comments »
Green Meeting Standards Mark Industry Transformation
By WEC10 Reporter | July 29, 2010
After three years of rigorous debate and extensive input from more than 200 volunteers and pan-industry experts, a uniform set of green meetings standards is set for release before the end of this year.
A joint project of the Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) and the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM), the APEX/ASTM Green Meeting and Events Standards will articulate a set of policies and procedures for meeting planners and suppliers to implement sustainable practices in their business.
Green Meetings Industry Council (GMIC) Executive Director Tamara Kennedy-Hill and Convention Industry Council (CIC) APEX Director Lawrence Leonard introduced the standards’ key objectives at a Tuesday afternoon session during MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress.
Green meeting standards mark a first for the meetings industry, following the tradition of other green measurement standards adapted by fields like the building industry, which uses the now-ubiquitous Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) certification to classify green buildings. Meeting planners and suppliers have previously lacked the tools and formal policy framework to measure event sustainability.
“We haven’t been able to measure what a green event looks like,” said Kennedy-Hill.
The APEX/ASTM standards will be voluntary, not mandatory for meeting professionals. They consist of four levels that measure sustainability. “It creates an entry point for everyone,” Leonard said. “We don’t say ‘this is the standard and you either adhere to it or you don’t,’ because we recognize [sustainability] is a journey.”
The consensus-based approach to developing the standards has resulted in slight delays in their release—the green standards were originally intended to be unveiled at #WEC010—but they’re close to completion. Leonard intends that they be adopted as practice shortly after their release.
“The commitment we have is ensure it’s implemented into practice,” he said. “It’s going to help organizations like MPI and GMIC.”
Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Meeting Industry Council, Green Meetings, Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules | No Comments »
Building an SMMP: Partnership, Collaboration Needed on All Levels
By WEC10 Reporter | July 29, 2010
Collaboration is essential to implementing a Strategic Meetings Management Plan (SMMP), so “don’t try to do it yourself,” warned Carolyn Pund of Cisco Systems in a Tuesday morning session at MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress.
“Change occurs when people believe change is necessary,” Pund said. “If you can make a value proposition that’s strong enough, they will come on board with you.”
Betsy Bondurant of Bondurant Consulting agreed that “you need to reach out to stakeholders who could easily stop your progress with a phone call.”
The 2008 economic downturn was “the megaphone for cost savings,” Pund said, and “SMM was given a platform.” She provided participants with lessons learned from her work integrating an SMMP at Cisco.
Internal collaboration is critical: “You’re always more powerful together than apart,” Pund said. To launch her plan, she targeted in-house departments responsible for travel, procurement, legal affairs and sales with SMMP education, and created “evangelism campaigns” that brought the message to regional offices.
“Change management is what you’re all about in SMMP,” Pund said. Aligning the global meetings and events and event marketing teams in a new collaborative group, titled the Global Meetings and Events Network, allowed for data sharing, while helping to build essential executive support. “You need to have executive air cover,” Pund said.
Changing general ledger (GL) codes is like moving the Rock of Gibraltar, she noted, but the new categories allow for the generation of specific reports on the spend in any one area. Pund also created an event approval tool for senior vice presidents which specifies event details, budget, and any areas where a program is non-compliant with policy.
“SMMP is not for wimps,” Pund said, but Bondurant encouraged participants to “be the one to raise your hand.”
Topics: Business Issues, Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules, Strategic Meetings Management | No Comments »
Tread More Lightly on the Planet: Advice for Meeting Planners
By WEC10 Reporter | July 28, 2010
Planning a sustainable event is about doing more with less, said Andrew Walker, Toronto-based founder and managing director of Eco-Efficient Events, who led participants in an interactive Tuesday morning session at MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress.
Participants discussed strategies for reducing the carbon footprint of the meetings industry, which has a reputation for unsustainable practices. Walker quoted environmental leader David Suzuki, who said the meetings industry leaves a heavy footprint on the planet.
“Planners can either try to lighten each footprint or try to reduce the number of footprints,” Suzuki said.
“Although we know [climate change] is a social issue and an environmental issue, it’s also a business issue,” Walker said.
He invited participants to identify areas of their work that could benefit from reducing carbon emissions. Energy, travel, waste and shipping were named as four key areas. Hiring local speakers, for example, can cut travel costs and reduce carbon emissions, while composting food reduces waste on site.
While most participants expressed interest in these and other initiatives to reduce their carbon footprints, they said their clients posed the most significant barriers to implementing green strategies.
“This is the biggest challenge we’re having on CSR (corporate social responsibility) with our clients,” a participant said. “Some are terrific, and others don’t care.”
Agreeing that not all clients are green, Walker highlighted the importance of communication and educational strategies to get reluctant clients on board with sustainable planning.
To get started with measuring and reducing a meeting’s carbon footprint, Walker recommended the online Zero Footprint Calculator, which can help planners set green goals and educate clients on why carbon emissions matter.
Topics: Carbon Footprint, Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Meetings, Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules | No Comments »
Action Against Carbon Emissions will Raise Travel Costs
By Mitchell Beer | July 28, 2010
The end of cheap oil could affect the meetings economy in a number of different ways, but panelists in a Tuesday morning breakout on peak oil agreed that the industry must adapt to an era of volatile energy prices and drastic reductions in the carbon emissions that cause climate change.
Economists may debate whether oil prices will hit US$150 or US$200 per barrel—and if they do, whether they’ll stay there—but meeting and travel costs will be affected either way.
“We’re going to destroy the planet long before we run out of fossil fuels,” said economist Mark Jaccard. “If we don’t, it will be because we take severe action, not against the use of fossil fuels but against emissions from fossil fuels. That action is going to drive up the cost of travel.”
Marge Anderson, associate director of the Energy Center of Wisconsin, said meetings must generate the greatest possible value from every activity that relies on fossil fuels. “When we do hop on a plane or burn up something to get somewhere, we [have to] actually get the results. This is a huge charge that only we can carry out.”
She suggested a hub-and-spoke model of regional meetings as an alternative to large global events, noting that Cisco Systems, Inc. had replaced a single, 19,000-attendee meeting with three continental hubs linked by technology. Details were presented at a breakout session earlier in #WEC10.
“I think that’s really, really cool, and it might be where we’re going,” Anderson said. “The economy is going to push us into that, fuel prices are going to push us into that,” but if meeting professionals can adopt hybrid meeting strategies and relentlessly measure their return on investment, “I think we’ll be okay.”
Former British Columbia Premier Mike Harcourt traced the growing shift to sustainable cities, with “dead downtowns and sprawled ‘burbs” giving way to communities that have “re-energized downtown and reinvented the idea of suburbia.”
For meetings, the difference shapes what a destination can offer when participants come to town. “We’re really talking about what choices we want to make into the future—as cities, as nations facing the peak oil challenge and the whole issue of climate change, and as event organizers and planners.”
Topics: Airlines, Carbon Footprint, Future of Meetings, Meeting Design, Meeting Professionals International, Meetings ROI, News Capsules, Oil Prices, Strategic Meetings Management | No Comments »
Gutsche Shares Secrets of Irresistible Meetings
By WEC10 Reporter | July 28, 2010
“You don’t need people to go to more meetings,” Trendhunter.com founder Jeremy Gutsche told participants in Tuesday morning’s general session at MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress. “You just need them to go to your meeting.”
Noting that “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” Gutsche gave participants a series of tips to make their meetings and events stand out from the crowd. “What will take you an extra mile is the culture you have at your events,” he said.
“Change equals opportunity,” Gutsche said, noting that many companies were founded and thrived in times of economic uncertainty. For instance, during the Great Depression, Kellogg’s surpassed Post Cereals by doubling its advertising budget. To take advantage of the opportunity created by the global financial situation, Gutsche said “you need to become irresistible to a specific group of people.”
He encouraged participants to concisely articulate the specific goals of their meeting. “How you articulate this will have an impact on all the decisions that make your event happen,” he said. Careful word choice attracts attention and empowers word of mouth. “Relentlessly obsess about your story.”
Presentation style is important, he said, suggesting planners should book engaging keynote speakers rather than “boringly brilliant” ones.
“Portray your event as average, and that’s all it will ever be,” Gutsche said.
Earlier, participants heard from Ken Cretney and Dave Gazley, co-chairs of the WEC 2010 host committee, and Ken Sanders, chairman of the MPI Foundation Board of Trustees, who thanked attendees for their support of the Foundation. Rick Antonson, president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver, thanked Bruce MacMillan, MPI president and CEO, for suggesting that Vancouver bid to host the 2010 Olympic Games.
Topics: Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules | No Comments »
Venue Set-Up Can Limit Meeting Design Options
By Mitchell Beer | July 26, 2010
The influence of venue on a planner’s options on site is one of the hottest topics in meeting design, meeting designer John Nawn told a Monday evening session on the meeting of the future.
Too often, venues “define the kind of meetings we can have, as opposed to us designing the meeting we want and the venue supporting that,” said Nawn, founder of The Perfect Meeting. If meeting professionals are to create comprehensive experiences and collaborative contexts for their participants, “we really need to spend more time thinking about where we meet and why we meet there.”
Nawn defined meeting design as “the creative use of meeting elements, driven by measurable business objectives, which result in a framework for an event,” then listed the design characteristics he’d gleaned from a recent social media discussion among meeting professionals. Keywords included: strategic; collaboration; stakeholders; sharing; venue; audience; objectives; the “how” of getting things done, and participants’ physical, social and emotional needs.
Asked what an effective meeting design would look like in practice, the online respondents talked about participatory keynotes and panels, peer-to-peer learning and sharing of content through multisensory experiences like songs, skits and game shows.
Using a World Café format, session participants circulated through the room to identify key design elements for the periods before, during and after a meeting. At the end of the session, the top three items in each category were:
• Before: Clear, measurable goals and objectives; audience polls and review of past meeting results; and efforts to generate buzz and excitement “through every kind of meeting you can think of”
• During: Taking the meeting outdoors; using bicycle power to recharge electronics; open meeting formats and Unconference sessions where participants set and run the agenda
• After: Online forums that extend beyond the onsite participant group; case studies to capture practical applications of onsite learning; incenting case study submissions by offering sessions at future conferences to present the best ideas.
Topics: Conference Content, Future of Meetings, Meeting Design, Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules, Onsite Learning | No Comments »
Play to the Positives of Workplace Politics: Workshop
By WEC10 Reporter | July 26, 2010
Workplace politics have overwhelmingly negative associations for most people. “Frustration,” “dysfunction,” “stress” and “unaccountability” were just some of the terms participants offered during a Monday afternoon workshop at MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress.
David Bancroft-Turner, founder of the Academy for Political Intelligence, noted that businesses suffer when people don’t trust each other. Reduced productivity, decreased morale and loss of valuable talent are among the fallout of workplace politics.
Bancroft-Turner developed the concept of “political intelligence,” (PI) to describe how power and influence function in organizations, and he said workplace politics don’t have to be negative: they can actually be a positive, powerfully transformative force to influence your own—and your client’s—organization.
“Organizations are just big families,” Bancroft-Turner said. “I believe that everything that gets done in a large organization is done through informal channels.”
Just as a child figures out how to get what he or she wants by watching the family dynamics, employees can decode their organization’s “system.” Understanding how the behind-the-scenes decisions are made will boost workplace success.
We must accept that we are all political animals, Bancroft-Turner said. Considering everyone else to be the problem is not useful, as negative beliefs will drive behavior and dictate the outcome.
“Politics isn’t what I do, it’s why you think I’m doing it,” Bancroft-Turner said.
Topics: Business Issues, Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules, Value of Meetings | No Comments »
Change from the Ground Up: How Meetings Can Lead Sustainable Thinking
By WEC10 Reporter | July 26, 2010
Building an environmentally sustainable world is a massive undertaking, but big change starts with individual action. Panelist Marge Anderson said the meeting and event industry holds significant potential to shape how we think about, talk about and implement sustainable practices in our personal and professional lives.
“Our events can really change what people want and what people demand,” she told a Tuesday afternoon breakout session. The U.S. Green Building Council member, longtime MPI volunteer and associate director of the Energy Center of Wisconsin described how the meetings and events industry can play a key role in shaping behavioral changes and dialogue around environmental sustainability. Anderson introduced participants to a range of recent popular trends that have resulted in environmentally minded behavioral changes.
Water bottle use, for example, has shifted significantly from mass-produced plastic to reusable stainless-steel models in only a few years. Meetings and conferences have reflected the trend—once-ubiquitous plastic bottles are gone, and tap water is everywhere. Re-usable canvas grocery bags also have shot up in popular use during a short time period. Anderson said these trends inspire voluntary action—change spurred by individual action.
“The big question for sustainability is, how do we define our next voluntary action?” Anderson said. The work of meeting professionals can drive new support for sustainable action like energy conservation, supporting local industries and supporting food security initiatives.
While change comes with compromise, the effects can change the world.
“We’ve been making budget trade-offs for years,” Anderson said. “With green, we’ll just apply the same skill set.”
Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Meetings, Meeting Professionals International, News Capsules | No Comments »
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