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« Previous EntriesOur Most Demanding Audience
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Meeting professionals, meet your future audience.
Last week, amid the hype and humour that greeted the release of the Apple iPad, some of the most pithy assessments of tablet technology came from a group of keen observers who will probably begin attending conferences in the next 10 to 15 years.
By the time they start arriving in [...]
Top 10 Reasons to Attend the Sustainable Meetings Conference
Friday, January 8th, 2010With the 2010 Sustainable Meetings Conference coming up in Denver February 9-11, the Green Meeting Industry Council is circulating the top 10 reasons that this is a must-attend event.
This might just be the best, most in-depth green meetings conference the industry has ever seen. But the 10 reasons point to a bigger, wider value proposition [...]
The New Normal: 16 Meeting Takeaways and a Couple of Predictions
Sunday, October 11th, 2009This 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 was [...]
Recycle Your Conference for Fun and Profit
Thursday, October 1st, 2009A 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”
Sunday, September 27th, 2009Everywhere 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 World [...]
Control Your Content—or Someone Else Will
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009A 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 [...]
The Next Level of ROI
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009Meeting 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 come [...]
Can a Value-Add be Free?
Saturday, July 11th, 2009Recently 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
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009There’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 charge [...]
The Green Meetings Portal Goes Live
Thursday, April 16th, 2009The Green Meetings Portal went live earlier this week.
Earlier this year, we announced that The Conference Publishers was joining with the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) to launch the world’s first conference content portal. I’m tremendously pleased and proud to announce that the promise is now, finally, a reality.
The Portal begins life with coverage of [...]

