Linking on the links in Atlanta
On 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
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 [...]
How Incentives Can Change the World (And How the World Can Change Incentives)
ATLANTA – 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 [...]
Now It’s Up to All of Us
ATLANTA – 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: [...]
Changing The World
Last summer, Hugh Lee, President of Fusion Productions of Rochester, New York told a seminar at MPI’s World Education Congress, “a conference can get you excited about change, but it won’t make change happen.” If a conference won’t make change happen, what will? How do we initiate change? And how do we make sure that [...]
A Virtual (R)Evolution-Part 1
Part 1: A Recipe for Disaster Start out with a well-rounded, well-founded measure of enthusiasm for the latest virtual meeting technologies. Add a healthy dose of concern about climate change, with a dollop of unintended greenwashing. Factor in a preoccupation with cutting meeting costs to the bone, without pausing to consider what may be lost [...]
A Time to Renew
SAN DIEGO COUNTY—I spent much of the weekend in awe-inspiring company, attending the semi-annual meeting of the Concepts Worldwide Advisory Board (CAB). And, as it happened, not a moment too soon. Concepts is a company that formed 20 years ago, and has positioned itself as a world leader in the corner of our industry offering [...]
What do you do?
Last month, a hyperkinetic speaker named Douglas Rushkoff told a roomful of MPI members at the World Education Congress in Las Vegas that “the problem with outsourcing is that the thing you do is no longer the thing you do.” Rushkoff illustrated his point by noting that during the tainted dog food crisis earlier this [...]
‘People Will Still Have to Meet…’
The fact that he came over to chat had very little to do with me. I was sitting on the patio at Bridgehead Trading, the funky, fair trade coffee shop that serves as an informal meeting room and home-away-from-home for our office two blocks away. One of the counter staff came over to visit with [...]
