Jan 17
maureen-pickellTrade Shows meeting education, pcma
Last Tuesday’s sessions at PCMA Convening Leaders “The Good (yes there is some!), the Bad, and the Ugly of Global Economies” and “Cracking the Life Code”, had the over 3,000 attendees assimilating some radical new life concepts as they continued to kick-start their year by taking in the broad spectrum of education.
Later in the day, your ConventionPlanit.com roving Ambassador attended the annual Global Reception sponsored by the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Center. Suppliers in Kilts mingled with international planners involved with meeting and catching up with colleagues from Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, Ireland, England and Asia – among others.
The networking part of the conference ended Tuesday evening with attendees uniting for an Urban Convergence on the historic Gaslamp Quarter. Creative elements of dining, music, art and entertainment merged to create a private urban block party highlighted by Kool & the Gang’s unique sound.
Gerry Kingston, Mgr. Meeting, Association & Incentive Sales for CP.com member Delta air Lines, checks her schedule on PCMA’s Convening Leaders final day.
Wednesday morning saw quite a few attendees still interested in participating in the last few sessions before the closing luncheon – featuring Life is Good Founder Bert Jacobs sharing the power of optimism with the audience. The PCMA Convening Leaders event couldn’t help but end on a high note as Bert illustrated how good vibes are contagious!
Wishing you all “”good vibes” for 2012 from your ConventionPlanit.com blogger!!
Jan 11
maureen-pickellTrade Shows meeting education, pcma
Ready to put on your thinking caps? Here are some quick quotes from yesterday’s PCMA Conventing Leaders education sessions. Match them to the corresponding session topics:
Don’t scroll down until you have made your choices…
| Session Quotes |
Session Titles |
| A.”Introductions happen in 9 seconds – people now have the same attention span as that of a goldfish.” |
1. Advocating the Value of the Meetings Industry |
| B. “40 million Chinese live in caves.” |
2. The Seven Triggers of Fascination |
| C. “Historical Data is key information that enables a CVB to determine the social and economic impact of your meeting.” |
3. Brain Rules for Meetings |
| D. “People don’t pay attention to boring things.” |
4. Why Games Make us Better and How They Can Change the World |
| E. “The total North American (U.S., Canada & Mexico) economic output for meetings amounts to 1.012 TRILLION dollars.” |
5. Do You Know the Value of Your Meeting? |
| F. “500,000 people play Angry Birds daily.” |
6. State of the Economy |
Did you make your guesses?
This is a fast way to show you the range of discussions covered in sessions attended by your CP.com blogger. The sessions were all excellent and it was hard to narrow down my choices!
The answers are: A-2; B-6; C-5; D-3; E-1; F-4
How did you do? I certainly learned a lot. Stay tuned for future issues of our e-Alert Newsletter for more information on these topics!
Jan 10
maureen-pickellTips for Meeting Planners, Trade Shows meeting education, pcma, San Diego
With this year’s theme of “Capturing Innovation” guiding the program, the PCMA Convening Leaders eduction organizers more than managed to compete with the lure of the San Diego “great outdoors” by presenting a new kind of Opening General Session.
“Rules for Epic Wins that Fascinate” was a tri- part program featuring a developmental molecular biologist, a game designer and a brand innovation consultant – three top thinkers who explain what naps, games and nine-second attention spans have to do with meetings.
In the process, they managed to keep the large audience riveted in a way that the customary solitary “talking heads” of previous conferences could never do. This was followed by a large list of choices providing world class education to the audience of knowledgeable and experienced meeting professionals. From tips on developing your authenticity and charisma to how to prepare hospitality students for the realities of the meetings industry, the most difficult job was choosing the best option from a myriad of relevant topics.
Also back was last year’s successful innovation, the Learning Lounge – where attendees can partake in “bite-sized” sessions of 15 to 30 minutes that include virtual demonstrations based on their particular interest areas.
All this contributes to PCMA’s idea of mixing things up in order to present a different style of conference – demanding an increased level of commitment by the attendees as participants rather than observers.
The popular evening foundation event “Party with a Purpose” was held aboard the USS Midway Museum, an aircraft carrier docked in the San Diego Bay. Anchors Aweigh and more tomorrow….
Jan 09
maureen-pickellTrade Shows hotels in San Diego, meeting experiences, pcma, San Diego
I am off again…this time to cover the 2012 Convening Leaders event in San Diego this week. 
As luck would have it, my plane touched down early enough on one of those glorious mornings where the fog has just lifted and the sun is still muted enough to present the downtown skyline as an impressionist painting.
Palm trees and Bird of Paradise lining the avenue from the airport to the harbor set the stage for what should be an energetic and progressive meeting at the San Diego Convention Center.
ConventionPlanit.com supplier partner, the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, is opening its arms and welcoming everyone as attendees reconnect with PCMA BFF’s or find new ones.
The Welcome Reception at the Manchester Grand Hyatt was truly an “Emergence of the Senses.” From the sumptuous cuisine to the sights and sounds of the innovative Mass Ensemble’s exotic blend of art, sculpture and music – everyone’s senses had no choice but to emerge energized for the days ahead.
More tomorrow….
Dec 07
maureen-pickellTrade Shows Event Industry Networking, meeting attendance, meeting industry, meetings quest
Last week I was on the road again, this time to sunny California for the Meetings Quest Anaheim Show!
Here are some photos I wanted to share with you all…
Our booth at the show – I gave lots of site tours!
Dawn Venters, Convention Sales Manager for the Anchorage CVB, talks to planner customers at Meetings Quest Anaheim. They also won the prize for the Best Booth based on both the design and friendliness of the sales team. We’re proud that they are loyal supplier partners of ConventionPlanit.com!
I hope you enjoyed my photo tour of Meetings Quest Anaheim. It was a very intimate show and I had the opportunity to speak to many meeting planners one-on-one!
If you attended the show, leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Nov 21
maureen-pickellTrade Shows imex, Las Vegas Hotels
I am looking forward to IMEX America 2012 but could not help share a few photos with you from the 2011 show last month – the show was worth a visual revisit.
Sales Team member Julie at our IMEX America stand
The ConventionPlanit.com Booth was a welcome resting spot for our Hosted Buyer group, who were off making business connections much of the day.
CP.com supplier member ACC Liverpool - talking to CP.com hosted buyers at IMEX America
Thanks to our great supplier members and hosted buyers, ConventionPlanit.com’s philosophy of putting buyers and sellers together was at work in the truest sense! See you next year, IMEX America!
Nov 16
Ashley ChalmersMember News, Tips for Meeting Planners, Trade Shows Event Industry Networking, meeting experiences, meeting ideas, national conference center, social media, Twitter
Please enjoy the following guest post from our friend Sarah Vinning with the National Conference Center, who hosted Event Camp DC earlier this month!
Seven. It’s the total number of Event Camp conferences that have been held in the past year.
The Event Camp series is a concept that first started with Jessica Levin, a meeting planner, and a few friends on Twitter who had the idea to host a bar camp for event professionals in New York City. Its intention was to offer meeting and event professionals an opportunity to come together in an unstructured format without a pre-planned agenda and “just be,” as Levin describes it.
The main selling point behind every Event Camp is that each one is different in its own unique way.
Conference organizers make decisions such as venue selection, conference format, if there’s a virtual component and the content (unless the organizers follow the peer conference concept in which attendees determine what happens).
“I’ve been to one, they’re all the same,” is not applicable to these conferences. Over the first weekend in November, there were two Event Camp conferences held over the same dates across the globe – Event Camp Vancouver and Event Camp East Coast (also referred to as Event Camp DC due to The National Conference Center’s proximity to the Nation’s Capital).
Event Camp East Coast was a genuine peer conference where the attendees reveal in a round table discussion their area of expertise, what they want to learn during the conference and how they hope to get there. The purpose of a conference like this is to ensure attendees learn what they intended to get out of the conference.
On the first night of Event Camp East Coast, we wrote topics we were interested in learning based on our own interests and expertise. Then, the conference committee established an agenda that was posted on GoogleDocs that night. Sessions included improv for eventprofs, exploring why some events sell out and others don’t, online community management, hybrid events and the impact on attendance and face to face shyness epidemic – making events warming.
For Event Camp Vancouver, the conference ball-game was another story. Their agenda was established prior to the conference and posted on their website, which can be an easier sell for someone when approaching their supervisor about attending. It also helps them set personal expectations prior to arriving.
Vancouver had a virtual component like Event Camp Twin Cities did for attendees who couldn’t attend. The pre-determined sessions at Event Camp Vancouver included the future of hybrid, what does fair trade mean and how do we find it in our sourcing, room for thought, think before you eat, defining yourself and your brand in the age of social media.
Throughout the entire conference, attendees played Get Your Green On, a gaming app based on sustainability that was initially built for GMIC’s 2011 conference; the app presents attendees with green challenges and they can earn as many points as possible by performing different acts of green.
The Room for Thought at Event Camp Vancouver, a green space designed for participants to have a place to reflect and rejuvenate. Photo provided courtesy of Greenscape Design & Decor.
The sessions in Vancouver and in D.C. had differences but prove for an interesting case study.
Session topics at Vancouver were pre-determined while those at D.C. were created on-site, yet there was clear overlap: brain-friendly food for meetings, where we’re going with hybrid and the future as well as improv.
With unique organizers for both Event Camps and unmatched conference formats, it’s fascinating to see perhaps we’re all influencing each other through social media in the #eventprofs community and as a result, we’re interested in similar topics within the industry.
To find out more about Event Camp conferences, visit EventCamp.org.
Thank you to Sarah for writing this post for us! To contact Sarah with questions about these events or the National Conference Center, please call 703-724-6263 or email her at svining@conferencecenter.com.
Oct 12
Ashley ChalmersTrade Shows imex, meeting experiences, meeting trends
This week several members of the CP team have headed to Las Vegas for the first ever IMEX America! We can’t wait to hear about all of the networking and learning going on at the event.
Until our staff has time to send us some updates, the IMEX team has shared a few updates with us from the 2020 Fast Future Research session. Director of the study, Rohit Talwar, shared the following popular trends among Gen Y and Gen Z conference attendees:
- short keynotes and breakouts: kept to 15-20 minutes followed by breakout opportunities with the speaker
- action-oriented formats like speed networking and meetings
- more time spent in Q&A with presenter (prefer this to occupy majority of session)
- shorter sessions repeated more frequently
- one-on-one access to creators of new products and services
Are these methods appealing to you as an attendee? As a show organizer, have you incorporated any of these practices into your meetings or do you plan to?
More on IMEX throughout the week!
Sep 20
Ashley ChalmersMisc Tidbits, Trade Shows cvbs, hsmai affordable meeting, town crier
If a town crier sounds like something straight out of an historical novel, you may be surprised to know your town or city may have one! The American Guild of Town Criers is spreading the word about this ‘honorable position’.
The Annapolis, MD town crier (Squire Frederick) even made an appearance at HSMAI’s MEET National show earlier this month!
Katherine Markham, CHME, ConventionPlanit.com's Co-Founder, poses with Squire Frederick at HSMAI's MEET National
Historically, the role of the town crier was to spread the news of the day. The job has changed a little – according to Squire Frederick’s website, town criers celebrate a city’s rich history, achievements and struggles for liberty and civil rights for citizens.
Town criers across the country are available to make appearances at events. They’ll pose for photos, too. Check out Squire Frederick’s website for more information.
Aug 09
maureen-pickellTrade Shows ASAE & the Center, Event Industry Networking, st. louis
Followers of the CP.com blog who are restaurant connoisseurs – take a look at this menu:
White mac with spinach and artichokes, grilled vegetable and faro salad, pistachio and prickly pear salad, and ancho roasted chicken with pineapple salad.
No, I wasn’t dining at one of St. Louis’ finer restaurants…this was actually the lunch served Sunday at the ASAE Conference in the Expo Hall. Kudos to the catering service – and especially to their chef who came out from behind the scenes to see how everyone was enjoying the fare! Just another glimpse into the splendid hospitality extended by St. Louis and its provider partners.
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