Can a Value-Add be Free?
Recently a lot fingers have been doing a lot of typing regarding the Virtual Access Pass as proposed by Meeting Professionals International (MPI) for the upcoming World Education Congress (WEC). The dedication and earnest concern of the various bloggers should be commended, for this debate about using the Internet to extend the reach of conferences [...]
The Tempest Over MPI’s Virtual Access Pass
There’s quite a tempest brewing over the Virtual Access Pass that our professional association, Meeting Professionals International (MPI), has introduced for its 2009 World Education Congress (WEC), which gets under way this weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conversation is an echo of a wider debate about when it’s legitimate—or whether it’s ever legitimate—to [...]
Why I Consider My Golf Club an Essential Business Tool
Call it an age thing. I realized the other day that I spend an inordinate amount of time playing golf, or attending golf tournaments, or talking about golf, or organizing my own golf tournament just so I can play golf. And I don’t even golf all that well! But when I look around at a [...]
A Line Drawn in Time
CHICAGO – My, how the face of meetings and events has changed in the last five years. Last spring, the Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) set up a permanent council to review and periodically update the procedures and definitions that help our industry stay consistent, relevant, and professional. APEX is a project of the 34-member Convention [...]
Pandemic I
So this is what a Level 5 pandemic alert feels like. I walked home along Ottawa’s scenic Rideau Canal Wednesday afternoon, just hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the global pandemic threat level to five on a six-point scale. In WHO parlance, Level 5 means a global pandemic is imminent. For practical purposes, [...]
Solutions in the Eye of the Storm
An interesting thing is happening on the way to the economic recovery. We certainly aren’t there yet—in the economy as a whole, or in meetings and events. The sheer, accumulating weight of cancellations is setting off alarm bells across the industry, and the U.S. Center for Exhibition Industry Research has just reported the first decline [...]
‘It Sounds Like Fun’: I Beg to Differ
The reaction from friends and colleagues when I mentioned an upcoming trip to a conference in California speaks volumes about the gap between meeting professionals’ experience onsite and the way it’s perceived back home. It isn’t too big a leap from this particular tale to the perception of meetings as elaborate parties that has helped [...]
A Couple of Million Jobs at Stake
BREAKING NEWS: On March 10, The Huffington Post published my blog item on the meetings industry crisis and the Kerry bill now before the U.S. Congress. The central argument, drawing on data from MPI Foundation Canada’s study of the economic impact of meetings and events, was that the attack on meetings in the U.S. could [...]
A Moment of Clarity
There 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 [...]
Debris in All Directions
O-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 [...]
