After Copenhagen: How Meetings Can Kick the Carbon Habit
By the end of this week, the 192 countries represented at the Copenhagen Summit may or may not reach a global deal to control climate change and reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. But whether or not humanity rises to the challenge, the science doesn’t lie. With or without an agreement, this is the moment for industrialized [...]
And Then, I Joined the Circus
For all the planning and deliberate effort behind a successful conference, sometimes it’s the random moments that bring home the importance of what happens onsite. I’m in Toronto this week, working with a team of local writers at a two-day meeting on refugee health. This morning’s opening session highlighted the profound health and social challenges [...]
The New Normal: 16 Meeting Takeaways and a Couple of Predictions
This guest post is excerpted from Midcourse Corrections, the meetings blog produced by Jeff Hurt, director of education and events with the Dallas-based National Association of Dental Plans. It appeared shortly after Jeff returned from his association’s 2009 annual meeting in September. Reprinted with Jeff’s permission. In 15+ years of planning conferences and events, this [...]
The Conference Publishers Turns 25
I still remember exactly how things unfolded on October 5, 1984, the day The Conference Publishers was born. I had been in my job for 3½ months, after reluctantly leaving Canada’s Parliamentary Press Gallery and a career in freelance journalism. I had joined a small policy consulting firm as its publications director, hoping to spend [...]
Is a “Good Enough” Meeting Good Enough?
What would happen if meetings were scaled back to the barest of essentials, on the principle that the best event is the one that is just good enough? It isn’t an idle question. There’s an emerging trend that is reshaping everything from long distance telephone to video cameras, from the design of military aircraft to [...]
Preparing for a Pandemic
At our regular staff meeting last week, we introduced a standing agenda item that will be a part of our working lives for the foreseeable future. Our COO, Woody Huizenga, unveiled an advanced draft of our pandemic preparedness plan, and summarized the best available information on what we can expect during this year’s flu season: [...]
Fight Like Hell for the Living
SAN FRANCISCO – In the week since Terri Breining announced the closure of Concepts Worldwide, the San Diego County firm she built into a meetings industry icon, I’ve been thinking about the capriciousness of a market that rewards the most arbitrary successes, while devaluing or ignoring the most genuine achievements. When we celebrate flash over [...]
Why We Don’t Upsell
When we discuss our services with prospective clients, we don’t upsell. Not ever. For some time, I felt this was a matter of basic principle, that the practice of trying to bundle a second sale on top of a first one was simply abominable. I still think it’s wrong for our kind of service. But [...]
The Next Level of ROI
Meeting professionals have made great strides over the last few years in measuring the return on investment (ROI) that clients and participants receive from some types of meetings. But solid as that work has been, the limited scope of the analysis is coming back to haunt the industry, at a time when any meeting might [...]
The Meetings that Elected a President
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Meeting Professionals International (MPI) kicked off its 2009 World Education Congress today with an opening general session that cemented the organization’s focus on the threats the meetings industry has faced over travel, incentives, and the value of meetings. But along the way, participants heard some ideas on the structure and [...]
