The Conference Publishers
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Wednesday, March 11th, 2009BREAKING 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 touch a [...]
Linking on the links in Atlanta
Friday, February 20th, 2009On 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 [...]
Fond farewell
Thursday, January 29th, 2009The Conference Publishers is the best place I’ve ever worked. That’s exactly why I’m moving on.
This office has stiff competition when it comes to treating its employees well. As a former employee of a company that won the Globe & Mail “Best Small & Medium Sized Employer in Canada” award, I’m fortunate to know what’s [...]
Changing The World
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Last 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 the [...]
Leveraging Information
Monday, October 6th, 2008Much to the dismay of my significant other, I spent two hours on the phone yesterday with another woman—and the conversation was really good.
Okay, okay, it wasn’t like that. I had a really interesting discussion with a market analyst from the Detroit area who had some pleasantly pointed things to say about knowledge transfer, the [...]
Notes from CSAE 2008
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008So here I am sitting in my beautiful room at the Sheraton Wall Centre, at 5:45a.m. local time, cursing the gods of time zones. I have been up for a while so I thought I would try my hand at this blogging thing.
I’m in Vancouver to attend the annual Canadian Society of Association Executives (CSAE) [...]
The Power of Informal Exchanges
Monday, September 29th, 2008Later this week the Canadian Society of Association Executives holds its AGM in Vancouver. This year, I won’t be going. Nothing to do with the meeting, which I will be sad to miss. It’s just a scheduling issue.
But it got me thinking about why I will miss this conference and, more generally, about the value [...]
Drawing the Lines
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008There is nothing difficult about the concept of corporate social responsibility. It’s simply a matter of doing business in a way that respects the environment in which we live and the community in which we work.
It gets tough when we try to flesh out those easily described principles in a way that we can measure—in [...]
Tougher jobs than mine
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008I need to make a confession.
I am a principal of a firm that is absolutely reliant on notetaking. Without people who can take really good notes and render them into prose that is tailored to the precise needs of our clients, we couldn’t do business.
The best of those people are not just capable. They love [...]
What do you do?
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008Last 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 year, [...]