Archive for February, 2009
The Green Meetings Portal: A World First
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009PITTSBURGH - This week, our company marks an important and very exciting milestone.
The Edge is a blog about conferences and content, not a promotional page for The Conference Publishers. But this is a moment when we’re generating industry news. And it has everything to do with the power of face-to-face meetings, the transcendent importance of [...]
Linking on the links in Atlanta
Friday, February 20th, 2009On a lighter note, I managed to play a round of golf when I was in Atlanta last week. I went down a day early to try to arrange some meetings with prospective clients for the firm. That didn’t work out, so I had time to play golf. (Okay, so maybe I didn’t try all [...]
A Moment of Clarity
Thursday, February 19th, 2009There was a quiet moment of realization that I took away from MPI’s MeetDifferent conference in Atlanta.
One of the Monday morning breakouts was an Unconference session, where participants facilitated table conversations on the topics of their choice. As part of the coverage we were producing for MPI, I sat down at a table discussion on [...]
Debris in All Directions
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ now.
Is it a prepaid surprise, or C.O.D.?
The Music Man
Lyric by Meredith Willson
1957
The Wells Fargo Wagon is beginning to look like a train wreck in all directions.
Meeting professionals have been hearing all about the pushback Wells Fargo ran into, in the media and in the U.S. Congress, until it [...]
How Incentives Can Change the World (And How the World Can Change Incentives)
Friday, February 13th, 2009ATLANTA – A tantalizing question is emerging from the raging debate over incentive meetings, employee retreats, and the appropriate use of U.S. government bailout dollars:
Can the principles and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) help reassert the legitimacy of meetings, the industry that plans them, and the client organizations that are now weighing whether to [...]
Now It’s Up to All of Us
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009ATLANTA – In the nearly 12 years that I’ve been a member of Meeting Professionals International (MPI), I have never seen our industry so angry, energized, and ready to argue the value and business results of a well-orchestrated meeting.
As my mother might have said, in a reasonable imitation of some of our earlier-generation relatives: “Dahlink, [...]
First, Do No Harm
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009Some of the most transcendent moments I’ve seen onsite have taken place in carefully controlled settings, where every aspect of a meeting was engineered to get people talking to each other. And listening across the boundaries of language, culture, agenda, and organizational loyalties.
As meeting professionals, we don’t often talk about the incredible convening power that [...]