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 [...]
Recycle Your Conference for Fun and Profit
A few years ago, archaeologists found a small Bronze Age spear point in England. I can’t remember exactly where they found it, but I do remember that they determined the bronze in the spear point had originated in Italy. In fact, an original larger spear point had broken, and then been melted down to make [...]
A Dynamic Dozen: The Making of a “Killer App”
Everywhere you turn these days, meeting professionals are searching for the “killer app” that will make social media and virtual technologies more an opportunity and less a threat for face-to-face events. The language of hybrid meetings, virtually unknown a year ago, is quickly gaining currency. MPI experimented with a Virtual Access Pass at its 2009 [...]
Control Your Content—or Someone Else Will
A friend of mine who is an experienced meeting planner told me of a recurring nightmare she’s been having lately. In her nightmare, she is standing in a 5,000+ auditorium, with a very expensive band playing under an elaborate light and laser show, but only about 100 other people are there, including her and the [...]
A Hybrid in Your Future
By now, they’re a familiar sight: hybrid vehicles that combine two separate power sources to squeeze maximum energy out of every drop of gasoline they use. Once considered an environmentalist’s fantasy, hybrids have made it into the mainstream, and for good reason—they’re a great, practical way to make your gas dollar stretch further, at a [...]
The Green Meetings Portal: A World First
PITTSBURGH – This week, our company marks an important and very exciting milestone. The Edge is a blog about conferences and content, not a promotional page for The Conference Publishers. But this is a moment when we’re generating industry news. And it has everything to do with the power of face-to-face meetings, the transcendent importance [...]
Downturn? What Downturn?
As a meeting professional, how would you have felt if you’d received the following RFP? Meeting dates: December 15-31 Scope: Nation-wide (United States only) Estimated participants: 50,400 Room nights: None Venues: 4,200 Average participants per venue: 12 Food and beverage: Provided Audio-visual requirements: None Air travel: None Carbon footprint: Local ground transportation; public transit and [...]
World AIDS Day and the Ultimate ROI
When it comes to assessing the return on investment (ROI) in large, face-to-face meetings, it’s hard to think of a more basic measure than 3.8 million years of life. With the approach of World AIDS Day December 1, the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative issued a verdict of sorts on the AIDS policies [...]
