Virtual Meetings
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Friday, July 3rd, 2009Call it an age thing.
I realized the other day that I spend an inordinate amount of time playing golf, or attending golf tournaments, or talking about golf, or organizing my own golf tournament just so I can play golf. And I don’t even golf all that well!
But when I look around at a [...]
A Line Drawn in Time
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009CHICAGO – My, how the face of meetings and events has changed in the last five years.
Last spring, the Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) set up a permanent council to review and periodically update the procedures and definitions that help our industry stay consistent, relevant, and professional. APEX is a project of the 34-member Convention Industry [...]
Pandemic II: Preparing for a Dangerous World
Thursday, May 7th, 2009With this post, we’re pleased to welcome Nelson Fabian as a guest blogger. Nelson is the Executive Director of the National Environmental Health Association in Denver, Colorado.
As counterintuitive as this may sound, I believe the swine origin H1N1 outbreak may soon prove to be one of the best things that could have happened to us.
It [...]
Pandemic I
Friday, May 1st, 2009So 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, the [...]
‘It Sounds Like Fun’: I Beg to Differ
Saturday, March 21st, 2009The reaction from friends and colleagues when I mentioned an upcoming trip to a conference in California speaks volumes about the gap between meeting professionals’ experience onsite and the way it’s perceived back home.
It isn’t too big a leap from this particular tale to the perception of meetings as elaborate parties that has helped to [...]
Get your mojo working
Monday, January 19th, 2009I have difficulty staying out of bookstores. Call it a weakness. So last summer, when Kathleen and I were on vacation, I found myself browsing the shelves of a Borders in Clifton Park, New York. And I stumbled across Small Giants, by Bo Burlingham.
I’d never heard of either the book or the author, but I [...]
A Higher Bounce
Friday, December 5th, 2008I really hate to admit it. But lately, I’ve begun to see a degree of wisdom in one of my all-time most hated phrases.
The phrase and I collided almost a decade ago, in a suburb of Dallas, TX. I was attending one of the annual chapter leaders’ conferences hosted by our professional association, Meeting Professionals [...]
World AIDS Day and the Ultimate ROI
Monday, December 1st, 2008When 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 pursued [...]
A Virtual (R)Evolution-Part 2
Monday, November 24th, 2008Part 2: Greater Than the Sum of the Parts
There’s a tremendous opportunity brewing for meeting professionals and the organizations they serve. Some parts of it trace back to recent U.S. election campaigns that have become a proving ground for an unprecedented mix of live and online learning, persuasion, and mobilization.
It’ll be a while before we [...]
A Virtual (R)Evolution-Part 1
Friday, November 14th, 2008Part 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 along the way.
Subtract [...]