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Building an SMMP: Partnership, Collaboration Needed on All Levels

Thursday, July 29th, 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 [...]

Play to the Positives of Workplace Politics: Workshop

Monday, July 26th, 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 [...]

Drive Branding, Align Meetings with Business Needs

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Like advertisers, meeting professionals should learn showmanship to drive branding and help sell the value of meetings, said Kate Lastinger, founding partner of Metaphrasis Group, during a Monday morning session at MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress.
Teresa Bria, managing partner of Phase to Phase Strategy, said, “People aren’t considering meeting planners on that strategic corporate level, [...]

Measuring Business Benefits Communicates Value of Meetings

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

Building professional capacity through face-to-face meetings is a cornerstone of the meeting planning industry, a field often praised for delivering intangible, values-oriented benefits to businesses and professionals. Theresa Breining, principal of Breining Group LLC in Encinitas, California, told participants that for the industry to progress and survive—especially in a challenging economic climate and an increasingly [...]

Case Study: The Better Buildings: Better Business Conference

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Name of Conference: Better Buildings: Better Business Conference
Host Organization: Energy Center of Wisconsin
Dates: March, 2005
Location: Wisconsin Dells, WI
Objectives:
The annual Better Buildings: Better Business Conference seeks to make midwestern United States homes more energy-efficient by delivering hands-on training workshops, technology demonstrations, and building science education to homebuilders and contractors. The Energy Center of Wisconsin conducted a [...]

Case Study: The NASC Sports Events Symposium

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Name of Conference: NASC Sports Events Symposium
Name of Organization: National Association of Sports Commissions
Dates: Annual, most recent April 13-15, 2010 in Columbus, Ohio
Objectives:
Through its annual NASC Sports Events Symposium, the National Association of Sports Commissions keeps its members up to date on trends in the sports events industry and how to maximize their resources when [...]

Meetings that Change the World

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

All this month, The Edge will carry advance and onsite coverage of MPI’s 2010 World Education Congress, July 24-27, 2010 in Vancouver. Posts 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!
At any hour [...]

What My Fathers Taught Me

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Our Father’s Day series continues with this post by Andrew Horsfield. Many years ago, we had a creative director who believed in celebrating birthdays for a full month. Andrew’s Father’s Day story wasn’t quite ready for last Sunday, but we still wanted to tell it.
First, to the very picky and very official editorial staff of [...]

Father’s Day Thoughts: How My Dad Helped Build Our Company

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

VANCOUVER—Father’s Day was a travel day for me this year, so this post is as close as I’m going to get to talking to my dad. That’s just as well, in a way, because I can’t think of a better way to start bringing our blog back up to date than by tracing some of [...]

Our Most Demanding Audience

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Meeting professionals, meet your future audience.
Last week, amid the hype and humour that greeted the release of the Apple iPad, some of the most pithy assessments of tablet technology came from a group of keen observers who will probably begin attending conferences in the next 10 to 15 years.
By the time they start arriving in [...]

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