When you are clear about why your group needs to meet and what you want to accomplish together, engagement is natural. Sadly, many meetings lack this clarity. The good news: Every meeting can be as focused, compelling and engaging as the high-stakes meetings listed above when you follow these five steps.
Project management
Need some insights and advice on projection management? Here you go!
Not finding what you need, let us know and we will point you in the right direction.
Travel bans hurt meetings & progress
In a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s travel ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority nations as constitutional. As such, it’s an important time to explore a prior travel ban for travelers to the U.S. and how it impacted significant meetings and, arguably, may have hindered important dialogue in the field of HIV/AIDS research.
Assessing and identifying meeting stakeholders
Building buy-in and more importantly, meeting the expectations of your stakeholders is an extremely delicate balancing act.
9 strategies for last-minute event planning
The booking window for your event may be last-minute, but you don’t have to lose your cool. Here are some tips for staying on top of the work.
All-too-common reasons speakers mess up
All-too-common reasons speakers mess up
When freeness is bliss…is it folly to resist?
Re-evaluating two industry practices: asking for RFPs with detailed creative briefs and asking speakers and trainers to work for free “to gain exposure.”
Weather planning for the perfect outdoor event
Taking weather for chance during your event is risky. Having accurate, real-time lightning weather information is critical to ensure attendee safety and event success.
Planning in the eye of the storm
Last week saw headlines about the destruction and flooding due to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and the monsoons in Mumbai. These events are an important reminder for event planners that disaster can strike anywhere and at any time.
5 tips for presenting financial information to company executives
These five tips will put you on the path to delivering a rock solid, controlled and insightful financial presentation to execs.
5 event planning traditions that will always be in style
Follow this framework and you’ll be on the path to hosting a successful event.
6 essential cross-platform apps
The top six platform-agnostic apps for meeting and event professionals.
Top tools for audience engagement
Let’s take some time to dig into the latest and greatest when it comes to getting our audiences engaged in the conversation.
10 ways to effectively streamline your event
When planning and executing an event, it is important to be efficient and keep things running as smoothly as possible. The following 10 tips will save you from many headaches.
Virtual reality for events: Who is using it?
A look at real-world examples of how virtual reality is currently being used in the meeting and event industry.
5 ways to motivate your team with recognition-rich meetings
Recognizing your team’s efforts is one of the best ways to keep them motivated, as they chase those business wins both big and small!
Tips for providing on site staff/volunteer orientation
Tips for providing on site staff/volunteer orientation
4 apps to help plan your next meeting
Four top apps for planning your next meeting–along with video overviews to help you get started.
3 reasons why your RFPs go unanswered
The No. 1 problem meeting planners have today is getting hoteliers to respond to their requests for proposal (RFPs).
The meeting professional and new overtime laws
New U.S. overtime rules may cost meeting professionals, corporate attendees and exhibiting companies more money to have a presence at events held over holidays and weekends.
Who are your meeting stakeholders and why are they so important?
In order to plan an effective meeting, you need to understand why it’s happening and what would make it successful. That’s where your meeting stakeholders come in.
The invisible minorities of the meeting and event industry
It is no secret that while the meeting and event industry is a female-dominated profession, senior positions still tend to go to males. Keynote speakers, judges and panelists also tend to be male…white male. Where are the minorities of the meeting and event industry? While the issue of male/female diversity has been explored from time […]
The goodness of propagating VR via event freebies
While you’re likely to see an ever-increasing number of Cardboard-style VR viewers at meetings and events and being given away at trade shows in the next six, 12, 18 months, it’s important to realize that what you should be focusing on is becoming comfortable with VR—and then learning VR content creation strategy and execution.
Discriminatory laws & the impact on meetings
Discriminatory laws & meetings – As with many things in our industry, it will continue to rear its ugly head in various forms.
Spring has sprung & the time for tidying up has begun
If spring cleaning seems like too big a task for you, maybe it’s time to adopt some new strategies to the annual ritual.
5 smart strategies for creating top event teams
When you are able to create an event team of your choosing, as Mom always said, “Make good choices!”
Make the most of mornings, you might work better
Just what you want to read first thing on a Monday morning: Studies show that most humans are most alert at 8 a.m.
Quick poll: How CVB savvy are you?
Do you know what a CVB is? Hint: It stands for “convention and visitors bureau.” Take this quick poll and see how savvy you are. The answers might surprise you.
12 tips toward creating a great pre-fam trip
When event industry professionals are already traveling to a trade show or conference, tourist boards and venues have an ideal opportunity to promote their destination.
4 smart ways to live it up by dialing it down
Be more comfortable with your work and personal lives by keeping it simple, choosing wisely, trusting yourself and recognizing completions.
ASAP, what?! Stop the insanity, say what you really mean
How much of the time is an assignment or task truly needed as soon as possible? Think about it …
Is your biggest obstacle you?
The most effective professionals control their time. Here’s how.
How effective is your pre-con?
Savvy planners know that scheduling a pre-con is in everyone’s best interest and, if run correctly, can make or break their success.
How to create a mobile, paperless office
A five-part guide for telecommuters, wannabes and road warriors.
12 really useful websites for meeting planners
Each site listed here can help you work smarter or better in some way, and is worth at least a brief visit.
How to be a workaholic in 8 easy steps
Look at some of the worst workaholics within your meeting planning community and start doing what they do. Read on!
Grandma knew best: Work comes before reward
Much of human behavior can be explained by the phrase “behavior that is rewarded is repeated.”
Post-mortems: Details tell the tale, inform better events
If you don’t do one, you should. Here’s why.
Math with metrics: Convert with confidence!
When traveling abroad, the language changes even when English is spoken, but the real humdinger is making metric conversions.
Solve 3 minor annoyances a day, and triumph
Achieving something in one small area helps give us more focus, energy and direction for what’s next.
Room advances: Look out for what’s left behind
Room advances are common among planners who want to make sure that VIPs find their lodging in perfect condition. Here are some things to watch out for.
Growing from 10 to 10,000
Mega-meetings often mean more money for better venues, bigger-name speakers, and more creative events and staging. On the other hand, snafus can happen on a much grander scale.
Case study: The value of volunteers
You’re a nonprofit planner, and you know that with events, it’s all about the details. But who can focus on details with so many moving pieces, only one of you and no cash for extra help? The answer may lie in a volunteer program.
An organized approach to managing projects
Many people mix up the terms “task” and “project.” It’s important to understand the difference between them, because each must be managed differently.
Tips for taming the email beast: Part 2
Love it or hate it, email is part of your daily life. Last week we shared seven tips for taking control. Here are six more, collected over the years.
If your desk could talk …
“Manage me as if I’m one of the most important elements to staying in control and maintaining productivity, because I am.”
The crew eats, too
The production team is in the spotlight if a projector fails, sound quality is poor or if any number of other technical snafus occur. You want the best of the best.
Step out of the information shower
In evolutionary terms, we’re in the age of “over-information.” How do you cope? Get organized.
Details, simplicity help keep the channels clear
At a minimum, communication is a two-way street between the speaker and the recipient.
Tips for timelines, and maintaining your sanity
Even if you’re new to the planning industry, you already know that with every event line there’s a timeline for getting it done.
Remember, spreadsheets are our friends
Also keep in mind that procurement is a verb, and that means it requires action on your part.
7 tips for dealing with bullies at work
Feel like you’re surrounded by bullies? Here’s how to keep your cool and get what you need.
Today’s workforce is multicultural, are you?
With societal shifts, and the impact of new technology, the meetings industry is a whole new world. Our tips.
Boss vs. leader: Each has a purpose, which one are you?
Being a boss and being a leader are two entirely different things …
Meeting technology 105: Cutting-edge collaboration tools
Novelist William Gibson was right when he said that the future is already here — it’s just unevenly distributed. While some professional planners struggle with how to make time for social media initiatives, others are integrating science fiction-inspired technologies. Here are some hi-fi and low-fi ways to collaborate on the cutting edge.
Meeting technology 101: Tools that save time
Here’s a handy guide to three of the biggest technology timesavers out there: templates, online registration/attendee management systems and mobile applications.
Eight ways companies can save money on meetings and events
Meetings and event expenditures can represent up to 60 percent of a company’s transient business travel costs and 1.5 percent of its revenues, but many companies don’t have a cohesive meeting and event spending strategy. If they did, they could save an average of 10 to 25 percent of that meetings and event spend annually, […]
Ten essential competencies for relationship-centric executives, Part II
In part one of this article, I discussed how all kinds of organizations do all kinds of executive assessments and publish all kinds of fascinating reports on each individual’s core competencies, examining why and how he/she will undoubtedly succeed at their next job. Yet, isn’t interesting that the average tenure for most executives is often […]
How efficient is your event registration process?
A successful meeting, conference or special event all rely on one major component — registration. That’s because almost every aspect of an event is determined by the number of attendees, including: Hotel guest rooms Food and beverage for all functions and breaks Meeting space for general session, breakouts and other functions Registration hand-out material Printed […]
Ten essential competencies for relationship-centric executives, Part I
All kinds of organizations do all kinds of executive assessments and publish all kinds of fascinating reports on each individual’s core competencies, examining why and how he/she will undoubtedly succeed at their next job. Yet, isn’t it interesting that the average tenure for most executives is often shorter than expected? And the cost of a […]
Your questions answered: Meeting professionals speak up at MPI-CEC
Last month, I led a session called “Making Cents: Cost-Saving Measures to Improve Your Meeting’s Bottom Line” at MPI’s Cascadia Educational Conference (MPI-CEC) in Tulalip, Wash. During the course of the session, we tackled many challenges the meeting professionals in attendance were facing. Here are their questions along with some of the solutions we found. […]
Essential planning tips: From blueprints to budgets
Planning a basic meeting is not as cut-and-dried as everyone wants to make it, because every meeting has its own personality. Before you can plan one, you need to know three things: The purpose of the meeting. What you want to accomplish. How much you have to spend – a.k.a., the budget. Once you know […]
