Event Roundtable

Meetings that Change the World

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 [...]

Orlando Underwater: Here’s What’s at Stake at Copenhagen Summit

Map of projected sea level rise from Carbon Solutions America, reposted on Climate Progress. How will climate change affect the meetings industry if we don’t slow down and reverse the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Start with a map that shows coastal Florida and Orlando underwater by 2100, and gives you an idea [...]

A Meeting Worth Holding

At a time when conferences are cancelling, participants are staying home in large numbers, and the flavour of the month is to replace live meetings with webcasts and virtual events, there are two sure criteria that still make it essential for groups to gather in person: • A clear, immediate purpose that is best served [...]

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: [...]

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 [...]

Does Demand from Meetings Drive Airlines’ Greenwashing?

Whether or not it’s deliberate, a major travel industry association seems to be applying a touch of greenwash to its members’ steadily growing carbon footprint. And it seems likely that continuing demand from meetings and events might be one of the underlying causes. Sometimes it isn’t clear whether an organization has set out to mislead, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]