MAR 2012
SUSTAINABLE EVENT TOOLS
+
CSR GAMES
+
INDUSTRY PERSONAS
0312_InsideGate_7.5x10.875.indd 1
2/14/12 12:23 PM
0312_OutsideGate_7.5x10.875.indd 1
2/14/12 12:23 PM
0312_IFC_7.875x10.875.indd 1
2/14/12 12:22 PM
0312_Page1_8.125x10.875.indd 1
2/14/12 12:23 PM
®
March 2012 • Volume 5 • Number 2
EDITORIAL STAFF
EDITOR IN CHIEF David Basler, dbasler@mpiweb.org
It’s Not Easy Being Green
MANAGING EDITOR Blair Potter, bpotter@mpiweb.org
EDITOR Michael Pinchera, mpinchera@mpiweb.org
EDITOR Jason Hensel, jhensel@mpiweb.org
EDITOR Jessie States, jstates@mpiweb.org
REPORTER Stephen Peters, speters@mpiweb.org
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jeff Daigle, jdaigle@mpiweb.org
KERMIT THE FROG WAS WRONG when he said, “It’s not easy being green.”
It’s actually unbelievably easy when you have the right tools at your fingertips, as our cover story this month will show you.
MPI’s Sustainable Event Measurement Tool (SEMT) is a great example of what I’m talking about. It was launched in 2010 (made possible
through an investment by the MPI Foundation and InterContinental
Hotels Group) and has recently gone through an extensive upgrading,
making the tool even more robust and easy to use. When it was launched,
I thought it was going to be a game changer, and in a very short time, it has
proven to be exactly that—a simple, detailed way for you to measure and
report the environmental impact of each of your meetings.
Other tools at your fingertips that are featured in the cover story on
Page 62: webinars on the APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable
Event Standards; sustainable meetings conferences, where you can participate in various educational workshops; networking and brainstorming
with your peers at MPI chapter meetings and the annual WEC; numerous
books currently on the market; and the list goes on.
For some of you, designing a greener meeting may not be anything
new, but for most it’s a brave new world. It’s a term that has been folded
into CSR and has been floating around for the past few years. Many
meeting professionals have flirted with it, but few have really sat down
and realized jjust how much of a p
positive difference a green meeting can
make, not only to the environment, but also to the budget and
experience.
d to the attendee
atten
There are a ton of “Top 10” lists out there telling
ways to green an event,” but the best
you the “best wa
way to get started is to connect with your peers and
discuss with them what works and what doesn’t.
Think creatively, read voraciously, learn from the
knowledge of your peers and customize
first-hand knowled
your nex
next green meeting from there. Then,
once yyou take that first step, familiarize
yourself with the many tools at your
your
ngertips and put them to use. It’s as
finge
simple
simp as that.
Take that advice and you’ll find
T
that being green is easier than you
think.
thin
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jason Judy, jjudy@mpiweb.org
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Javier Adame, jadame@mpiweb.org
DESIGN AND PREPRESS Sherry Gritch, SG2Designs, sherry@sgproductions.net
COVER DESIGN Jason Judy, jjudy@mpiweb.org
MPI ADVERTISING STAFF
Denise Autorino, dautorino@mpiweb.org, Phone: (407) 233-7305
(FL, GA, HI, MA, ME, MI, NH, NY, RI, VT, Canada, Caribbean, Central America, Mexico,
South America)
Fredrik Ehrenborg, fehrenborg@mpiweb.org, Phone: +011.352 26 10 36 10 53
(EMEA Region)
Su Cheng Harris-Simpson, suchenghs@mpiweb.org, Phone: (10) 5869-3771 (Asia)
Katri Laurimaa, klaurimaa@mpiweb.org, Phone: (817) 251-9891
(AL, AR, CO, IA, IL, KS, KY, LA, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NM, OH, OK,
SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WI, WV, WY)
Jennifer Mason, jmason@mpiweb.org, Phone: (772) 233-0678
(AK, AZ, CA, CT, DC, DE, ID, MD, NJ, NV, OR, PA, WA)
Carolyn Nyquist, Manager of Client Services, cnyquist@mpiweb.org,
Phone: (972) 702-3002
MPI EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
Bruce M. MacMillan, C.A., President and CEO
Danya Casey, Vice President of Events and Certification
Diane Hawkins, SPHR, Director of People and Performance
Sandra Riggins, Chief of Staff
Didier Scaillet, Chief Development Officer
Junior Tauvaa, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketplace
INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Chairman of the Board
Sébastien Tondeur, MCI Group Holding SA
Chairman-elect
Kevin Hinton, Associated Luxury Hotels International
Vice Chairwoman of Finance
Cindy D’Aoust, Maxvantage
Vice Chairman
Craig Ardis, CMM, Meetings Analytics
Vice Chairwoman
Patty Reger, CMM, DePuy/Johnson & Johnson
Immediate Past Chairman
Eric Rozenberg, CMP, CMM, Swantegy
BOARD MEMBERS
Chuck Bowling, Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino
Jordan D. Clark, Caesars Entertainment
Paul Cunningham, IIMC International Information Management Corporation
Michael Dominguez, Loews Hotels & Resorts
Ricardo Ferreira, GRUPO ALATUR
Roel Frissen, CMM, Parthen
Chris Gasbarro, Community Connections LLC
Hattie Hill, CMM, Hattie Hill Enterprises Inc.
Kyle Hillman, CMP, NASWIL
Cornelia Horner, CMP, American Land Title Association
Carol Muldoon, CMM, KPMG LLP
Kevin A. Olsen, One Smooth Stone
Erin Tench, CMP, CMM, Penn State University
POSTMASTER: One+ (Print ISSN: 1943-1864, Digital Edition ISSN: 1947-6930) is printed
monthly, except the months of January and October, by Meeting Professionals International
(MPI), a professional association of meeting + event planners and suppliers. Send address
changes to One+, Meeting Professionals International, 3030 LBJ Freeway, Suite 1700, Dallas,
TX, 75234-2759. Periodicals postage paid at Dallas, Texas, and additional mailing offices.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: Members receive One+ as a membership benefit paid for by membership
dues. Nonmembers may subscribe to the publication for $99 annually. “One+” and the
One+ logo are trademarks of MPI. © 2012, Meeting Professionals International, Printed
by RR Donnelley
REPRINTS: Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without written
permission. To order reprints, call Wright’s Reprints toll free at (877) 652-5295 or visit
www.wrightsreprints.com.
CONTACT ONE+: Contact us online at www.mpioneplus.org or e-mail us at
editor@mpiweb.org. View our advertising, editorial and reprint policies online
at www.mpioneplus.org.
MPI VISION: Build a rich global meeting industry community
GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS:
Dallas, TX
DAVID BASLER is editor in chief of One+. He can be reached at
dbasler@mpiweb.org. Follow him at www.twitter.com/onepluseditor.
2
one+
REGIONAL OFFICES:
Doha, Qatar
Ontario, Canada
Luxembourg
Beijing
Magazine printed on FSC Certified Paper. The body of One+ is printed
on 30 percent post-consumer-waste recycled content. Please recycle this
magazine or pass it along to a co-worker when you’re finished reading.
0 3.12
Staff Page 0312.indd 2
2/27/12 1:28 PM
0312_003.indd 3
2/14/12 10:43 AM
0312_004.indd 4
2/24/12 9:44 AM
MARCH 2012
44 The End of an Era
The Time and Space Festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico,
invites everyone to witness the inception of the ultramodern age of Human Kind at the very source of the
Mayan Civilization’s motherland.
BY KIMBERLY KING
48 Southern Culture on the Rise
The American Association of Museums conference in
Houston last year was the most welcoming event the
organization has ever experienced.
BY KEVIN WOO
56 Hoosier Hospitality
Gen Con Indy 2011 saw attendance records shatter all
previous years, due to Indianapolis’ growing meetings
infrastructure.
62
BY ILONA KAUREMSZKY
62 It’s Easy to Be Green, When
You Have the Right Tools
These are the resources to turn to when you’re planning
and executing sustainable events.
BY TARA SWORDS
66 Sustainable Games
70
Game mechanics enable events to fulfill genuine human
needs for building connections, happiness, motivation,
community support—and sustainability.
BY ELIZABETH HENDERSON, M.E., DES.
70 The Interdisciplinarian
Cathy Davidson pulls lessons from far and wide to help
us understand how to make the most of our right now.
BY JENNA SCHNUER
48
74 Meeting Planner Personas
Adding Value to the Buyer/Seller Relationship.
66
44
mpiweb.org
March_TOC 1.indd 5
5
2/27/12 1:51 PM
0312_006.indd 6
2/14/12 10:57 AM
MARCH
SEPTEMBER
R 20
2
2011
02012
11
1
10
The BUZZ
ENERGY OF MANY
Designing Connectivity
16 EMEC is a Hit in Budapest
European meeting and event professionals see
what the industry has in store at the forward-thinking conference.
12
IMPRESSIONS
Your industry peers
discuss yesterday’s
magazine and today’s
issues.
16
26
19 Sound Off
Industry pros discuss what role they see gamification playing in the meeting and event industry.
26
TOP SPOTS
Indianapolis invests in
major infrastructure
improvement just in time
for the Super Bowl.
28
20 Carving Out a Niche
A look back at what put MPI on the map in the early
1970s and how one fundamental premise made a
huge impact.
28
32
CONNECTIONS
Web designers are
saving the world for
charities.
32
IRRELEVANT
Octopus purse.
78
34
36
YOUR COMMUNITY
ECOS builds human
connections to the local
and global marketplace
in which business is
done.
The MPI Foundation
examines the state of
CSR.
40
38
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Multi-tasking: a
blessing and a curse.
23 Purposeful Play
Infusing low-tech games into meetings or conferences can deliver increased engagement among
attendees.
34 I Know Where You Banked
Last Summer
BY DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
88
22 Agenda
Meet with existing suppliers, make new contacts,
discover new destinations and keep up-to-date on
industry trends and much more at the Gulf Incentive, Business Travel and Meetings Exhibition
(GIBTM).
Technology is more likely to provoke paranoia than
good feelings.
80
Growth in business,
employment and
competition continue
despite limited budgets
and economic
uncertainty.
21 Ask the Experts
With corporate social responsibility in focus the
question becomes, “What else can we do?” Paul
Bridle asks the experts to answer your questions.
Columns
79
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
19 Professionalizing for the Future
Events need to demonstrate their value more clearly and publicly than ever before.
36 Boost Your Productivity
By virtue of technology, we are becoming a more
efficient society and civilization.
BY DAWN RASMUSSEN, CMP
42
78
38 Pay Attention to Pinterest
Sites like MPIWeb.org illustrate that how we consume
information is changing rapidly.
Tag!
Want to see bonus coverage on the go? Whenever you see this
phone icon, get out your smartphone (it works with any Webenabled smartphone with a camera including iPhone, BlackBerry,
Android, Nokia, Palm and countless others), and with a click of a
button you’ll be instantly transported to bonus videos and much
more. It’s that easy. Here’s what you need to do:
DOWNLOAD the Microsoft Tag Reader app (free for all leading smartphones at http://
gettag.mobi).
LAUNCH the app on your smartphone.
HOLD your smartphone over the digital tag until you see the tag in the crosshairs on your
phone’s camera and let the device do the rest. You’ll be instantly transported to bonus
content.
BY CHRIS BROGAN
40 The Keys to Sweet Success
Always hire people better than you, and other tips
from 3 Women and an Oven.
BY DEBORAH GARDNER, CMP
42 Too Much Information
What can you do about information overload?
BY JON BRADSHAW
mpiweb.org
March_TOC 2.indd 7
7
2/28/12 9:36 AM
online:03.12
www.mpioneplus.org
Get Yourself Connected
We’re talking a lot about connectivity this month on MPIWeb.org. Here are a couple of
examples from our blogs. Read the full versions of these posts on the Your Industry blog.
Sense of Time Plays
Essential Role in Motivation
Are You Designing Connectivity,
or Just Planning Meetings?
For businesses around the globe, the most important quest is how to create
and manage human connections. Both internally and externally, this quest is the
reason for meetings and events.
We are no longer just planning meetings. We are designing human connectivity. It will take a combination of art, science and magic to be leaders in our field,
but with that recipe we will be creating the best kind of meeting interaction—the
kind in which humans truly experience and learn from each other and take away
relationships that keep the connection going long after the meeting’s close.
It begins with all of us teaching each other through discussion, critique and
mentorship to find the solution. Meeting industry innovator Ruud Janssen and
many collaborators have brought this to life at past MPI conferences with The
Solution Room, and unconference designer Misha Glouberman (featured in an
upcoming issue of One+) brings it to life at his events as well. In fact, MPI is
bringing connectivity to the forefront at this year’s World Education Congress
in St. Louis. It’s about humanizing relationships and connecting people in ways
never attempted before, learning from listening to each other and experiencing new cultures, curriculum and technologies. What comes of it is something
special—it creates lasting business and personal relationships, and that is the
real value of meetings.
So how do you create human connections? Are you a designer of human connections or just a meeting planner? There is a big difference.
—DAVID BASLER
If you follow any of my blog postings (hi Mom!),
then you know I’m very interested in the inner
workings of group gatherings.
I’d like to focus on the scientific aspect of making connections and give some insight into states
of being when people meet.
Laura L. Carstensen, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Stanford University, published a paper
in 2006 titled “The Influence of a Sense of Time on
Human Development.” In the paper, Carstensen explained that “the subjective sense of a future time
plays an essential role in human motivation.”
According to her studies, when time is constrained, a person’s motivation priorities focus on
emotional states rather than knowledge gathering.
“Young or old, when people perceive time as
finite, they attach greater importance to finding
emotional meaning and satisfaction from life and
invest fewer resources into gathering information
and expanding horizons,” Carstensen wrote.
Most meetings last two-to-three days. Agree?
If so, then it makes sense that people will want
to meet their emotional needs more than their
knowledge needs, because they’re under a time
constraint.
Knowing this—that limited time increases
a need for emotional connection—how would
you design a meeting? What kind of sessions
would you plan? How would you design networking events? How would you control time to your
advantage?
—JASON HENSEL
8
one+
03.12
pg008 TOC Online 0312.indd 8
2/28/12 9:08 AM
0312_009.indd 9
2/14/12 10:58 AM
>
THE ENERGY OF MANY
Designing Connectivity
DESIGNERS HAVE BECOME SOCIAL CELEBRITIES FOR THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS. The
imprimatur of a designer’s thinking (and name)
on everything from hotels to mobile phones to
toothbrushes reshapes perceptions and changes
value equations. Legitimately or not, “designed
by...” means that a unique and deliberate
approach beyond the routine and expected
has gone into the production or delivery of
a product or service. And that approach can
be worth a lot of money and/or equity in the
marketplace.
With the management of human connectivity being the most crucial management and
organizational imperative in today’s hyperconnected world, the application of designthinking to meetings and events is one of the
most interesting developments for our industry
in years...one that will elevate the strategic role
of meeting and event professionals and create
powerful results. It takes what we do out of
a production input-focused mindset into one
that puts user-outcomes, both pragmatic and
emotional, as the end game.
There aree libraries of text dedicated
to design-thinking
inking principles and
approaches. To me it comes down to
deliberate choices
hoices and planning actions
around threee mindset orientations: art,
science and magic.
In recent years, the science of our
profession has emerged as crucial
given the complexities
mplexities of
connection technology,
an increasingly
ngly global
and multicultural
ultural
Want to explore more about designing events for the new connectivity?
Be sure to check out WEC 2012 and
ongoing discussions on our Your
Industry blog (also see Page 8) at
MPIWeb.org.
society and developments in neuroscience and
multi-generational learning styles, to name
but a few. And, of course, there’s the business imperative (ROI, ROT, ROO) behind
bringing together the most precious resource
of all: people. The sheer complexities of
delivering performance mean we need to have
a fact-based approach to developing attendee
experience that drives measurable outcomes.
How do we find the proper balance
between art and science for a specific event or
attendee group? That’s where the magic comes
in...the magic supplied by the meeting and
event professional. It’s not something that can
be taught because it’s in the heart and soul of
why you do what you do. You want to change
the world by connecting people. It is your
unique insight and vision of how the meeting
or event will inspire your attendees to feel or
act. The choices around art, science, even your
partners, have to be driven by how they align
with the magic you envision. And you know
when you get it right because that’s when the
real magic happens.
2012—you’re
Welcome to 2012—yo
connectivnow a designer in the con
ity business.
The MPI Foundation continues its drive
to provide innovative, career-building
thought leadership development
through the following key industry
partnerships.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Future of Meetings
Value of Meetings
BRUCE MACMILLAN, CA, is president and CEO of MPI. He
can be reached at bmacmillan@mpiweb.org. Follow him at
www.twitter.com/BMACMPI.
10
one+
0 3.12
12
Energy of Many 0312.indd 10
2/27/12 3:38 PM
0312_011.indd 11
2/24/12 9:54 AM
IMPRESSIONS
>>
No More Rinse and Repeat
[Re: “New Approaches, Old Challenges,” Your Industry blog]
Wow…this is really a great analogy and a post people should ponder. The
meeting industry (and all industries, really) is facing changes. People are no
longer happy with the “same old, same old,” and we are all pushed to be
creative, try new things and leave an impact. Too many meetings just repeat
their agenda from previous years and plug in new speakers and desserts.
However, the events that are becoming “industry happenings” are twisting and turning the blocks to find a solution to cookie cutter meetings. The
Rubik’s cube is a great example. If you put it in your drawer and make no
effort, it never gets done.
—Thom Singer
EDITOR’S NOTE: We appreciate the feedback on MPI
and your magazine, One+.
Your ideas and thoughts
are important to us. Let
us know what you think.
E-mail the editorial team at
editor@mpiweb.org.
You Tell Us
What type of smartphone
apps do you use most
often and why: audio/
video, games, news, social
media or augmented
reality? Send an e-mail to
editor@mpiweb.org.
Technology Conundrum
Year-Round Greatness
Keep it Simple
[Re: “Are You Designing Connectivity,
or Just Planning Meetings?” Industry
Trends blog]
Technology can get in the way. While
we are learning to use the technology,
the opportunity for real dialogue with
real people goes away. I’m also into
quality, not quantity. Trying to impress
rather than connect doesn’t work, and
shuffling through tons of entries in a
database containing unrelated and
unwanted contacts is time consuming.
I also agree that I personally do not
want my contact information scattered
to the wind. I want to choose with
whom I connect. Those one or two
real contacts are the most important
to moving my agenda forward, not
someone else’s! And yes, as meeting
designers we need to find the methods to create those face-to-face opportunities. Sometimes the old fashioned
method of just getting people talking
works just fine.
[Re: “Central and Ideal,” Dec. 2011]
Budapest is truly an amazing city with
wonderful people. I can’t say enough
about it...even in the wintertime!
[Re: “Seven Event Venue Must-Haves
for 2012,” Dec. 2011]
Am I the only one who is bothered by
the fact that the State Bar of California
has their conference in Hong Kong,
flies everyone from the U.S. to Hong
Kong and then is concerned about the
carbon footprint their transportation
on site might cause? It’s mind boggling to think that the meeting planner
didn’t see the elephant in the room
(i.e. carbon footprint of flying to Hong
Kong instead of having the event in
California!).
—Amy Hightower
12
one+
—Misty Polihronakis
—Herbert Moller
Knowledge is Power
[Re: “The Knowledge Revolution
Now,” Professional Development
blog]
I think this is especially true given
today’s economic situation. As we’re
struggling with job growth, the one
plus in all of this is the educational
brain pool available to choose from.
—Andrew
0 3.12
Impressions 0312.indd 12
2/27/12 11:26 AM
0312_013.indd 13
2/14/12 11:07 AM
0312_014-015.indd 14
2/21/12 4:01 PM
0312_014-015.indd 15
2/21/12 4:02 PM
19
PHOTOS BY GYULA SZAFFNER, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
20
EMEC Shines in Budapest
EUROPEAN MEETING AND EVENT PROFESSIONALS SEE REIMAGINED CONTENT
AND DESIGN AT FORWARD-LOOKING CONFERENCE.
21
22
23
16
one+
March Buzz.indd 16
THE EUROPEAN MEETINGS AND EVENTS CONFERENCE (EMEC) 2012, Jan. 29-31 in Budapest, Hungary,
demonstrated for more than 300 industry professionals how leading-edge meeting design components,
new ideas in room layout, technology, collaboration techniques and even catering can be put into practice immediately to drive business performance and delegate success.
Solution Room Experiment
“We are committed to demonstrating innovation to our
Facilitated by Ruud Janssen, CMM, and Mike van
EMEC delegates because the business challenges facing
der Vijver, the EMEC 2012 Solution Room was a
meeting professionals are unprecedented,” said MPI Presihit, with more than 175 participants. Designed as
dent and CEO Bruce MacMillan. “Our array of speakers
an attendee-led session where each individual
walks away with an actionable plan to implement
and experts showcased unique new elements within EMEC’s
toward their goals after experiencing EMEC,
event design that compliment the educational program.”
the Solution Room is an exceptional example
Building on innovation, delegates experienced a Meeting
of why face-to-face meetings can never be
Design Area with demonstrations of meeting-room innovareplaced. Janssen crafted a video that depicts the
tions and opportunities to participate in a meeting design
experience: http://vimeo.com/36096360.
experiment focused on the impact of physical positions on
groups of participants. This is one of the ways hands-on
experience leads to learning, as the area was complemented by education sessions such as “Designing
Interaction for High Attendance Events.”
Elevating the mobile experience, EMEC 2012 smartphone apps allowed delegates to evaluate speakers and sessions in real time, access social networking sites, direct message other delegates and maintain
03.12
2/28/12 9:33 AM
0312_017.indd 17
2/14/12 11:11 AM
Experience EMEC
2012 Again
Watch education sessions from
Budapest. Dozens of sessions
from EMEC 2012 were archived
by Streamdis and can be
freely accessed at http://bit.ly/
WatchEMEC12.
a customized diary for the conference. Many of
these elements and experiences were designed so
European event professionals could experience
live what they learned about in sessions such as
“The Revolution Starts Where?” and “Make Virtual Presentations Inspiring & Engaging.”
The Flash Point program during EMEC 2012
brought forth speakers in a showcase of rapidfire presentations on forward-thinking topics that
impact events and business, including author and
model-turned-chef Christian Bitz, who also consulted on the EMEC’s entire menu.
For information on EMEC 2013, visit www.
mpiweb.org/EMEC.
EMEC Sponsor List
HOST COMMITTEE SPONSORS
Accor
Budapest Congress & World Trade
Center
Hungarian Convention Bureau
GOLD SPONSOR
Co-mana
SILVER SPONSORS
IMEX 2012
IMEX America 2012
Reed Travel Exhibitions
QuickMobile
Streamdis
BRONZE SPONSORS
CAT Publications
Switzerland Convention & Incentive
Bureau
Fairmont Monte Carlo
CONTRIBUTING SPONSORS
CIM - Conference & Incentive
Management
German Speakers Association
Mash Media
Media Biz
Conventa
Budapest Underguide
DüsseldorfCongress
My Meeting Professional
BBT Online
OFFICIAL AIRLINE NETWORK
Star Alliance
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE PARTNERS
IMEX America 2012
GLOBAL PARTNERS
IMEX 2012
IMEX America 2012
Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts
EUROPEAN PARTNER
IMEX 2012
IMEX America 2012
18
one+
March Buzz.indd 18
BLOG BITES FROM THE SCENE
One+ Editor in Chief David Basler brought EMEC 2012 to the masses online through
on-the-scene blogging. The following is a focused glimpse into two of his experiences.
(To read these EMEC posts, and more, in their entirety, visit www.mpiweb.org/blog.)
New Approaches, Old Challenges
I learned last night at the Opening Night Reception of the EMEC 2012 in Budapest,
Hungary, that the reason most people don’t solve the Rubik’s Cube is that they always
approach the problem the same way. You have to be nimble to solve it. You have to think
in innovative ways that get you to a common goal.
At last night’s reception, there were two “cube experts” who could pick up a jumbled
(by someone else) cube and solve it in less than 20 seconds. Every single time.
CSR @ EMEC
On Sunday, a group of EMEC delegates was bussed to the Szobi Street Shelter in Budapest where, in collaboration with Budapest Underguide, MPI led a community service
project aimed at helping the local population while meeting in this wonderful city. Delegates were taught the technique of cooking the traditional Hungarian stew, Goulash, by
a local chef and then served the food to the homeless—150 portions of Goulash and 400
pre-packaged lunches.
03.12
2/27/12 4:33 PM
SOUNDOFF
Jackie Mulligan, director of enterprise, International Centre
for Research in Events, Tourism and Hospitality, Leeds
Metropolitan University
Professionalizing for the Future
Calls for professionalization
are loud and clear from the
thought leadership projects
commissioned by MPI, highlighted by the importance of
design, the need to provide
evidence of value and ROI,
the requirement to be more
responsible and, of course,
the need to innovate for the
future, short and long term.
The research is demonstrating
that the meeting industry is
undergoing seismic shifts from
its traditional construction,
where its competitor is not
only real, but virtual, and
where ‘offline’ events need to
demonstrate their value more
clearly and publicly than ever
before.
The Abu Dhabi Tourism
Authority has been quick to
seize the opportunity of the
new knowledge emerging
from the studies to enhance
their competitiveness in the
global meeting industry.
This is a wise move as the
sector moves from logistic
to strategic, from tourism to
business, from high touch to
high tech. According to the
latest future of meetings study,
the world is getting smaller,
but competition is bigger than
ever—hyper competition is a
critical factor which will call on
meeting planners, suppliers
and venues to differentiate
their propositions, focusing
on value and distinctiveness
and developing inclusive
packages, and all while
clearly understanding the
needs of clients. As Sahar
Hashemi, founder of Coffee
Republic, said recently at
the opening ceremony of the
MPI European Meetings &
Events Conference 2012, one
key factor in success is the
ability to “immerse yourself
and get under the skin of the
customer.”
But that is not so easy.
Customers are changing. More
and new generations are
entering our workforces and
attending our conferences,
and they have very different
and sometimes instant
expectations. Different
businesses and industries are
coming to the fore, as others
step back due to regulatory
and financial constraints, and
new nations are entering the
marketplace fast. These are
unstable times, and our
delegates feel increasingly
overloaded and insecure,
which will mean a need to
focus on keeping things
simple and safe. Crisis
management skills will help
the sector to become
future-proof, as planners will
increasingly need to reassure
and navigate delegates and
businesses in new waters.
Simplicity will mean developing
strategic alliances and
integrating our offers to
develop packages and
products in one click.
Leeds Metropolitan
University has been commissioned by MPI to develop
new training programs based
on the research to support
the sector. The programs are
focused on common themes
of flexibility, strategic thinking,
crisis management and CSR.
Once the programs are in place,
a new step in professionalizing
the industry will begin—one
with a firm focus on the future,
strategic knowledge, innovation
and the changing nature
of how and why we meet,
because while “environmental
forces wax and wane. Success
may lie in anticipating these
changes.” Abu Dhabi Tourism
Authority is aiming to do
just that, and will be one
of the first destinations to
prepare their workforce for
the changes, challenges and
opportunities ahead.
What role do you see
gamification technologies playing in the
meeting industry?
“Gamification is playing a role
especially as
technology
becomes
more a
part of the
world. But
the success
of gamification at an event does seem to depend
upon the industry. Some groups seem
to be more adaptable to it than others. Adequate Wi-Fi speed at facilities
can make or break the success of any
type of gamification tools. Conducting plenty of advance testing helps the
overall success for attendees and meeting planners alike.”
—Julie Blankinship, president of
B Distinct Events
“Gamification definitely has a
place in
the future.
Anything
that increases
attendee
engagement, for
that matter,
will certainly play a role. Whether it’s
rewarding people for checking in to a
certain number of breakout sessions or
giving virtual currency to those who
ask the best questions during Q&As,
game-design techniques can make
these events more fun and rewarding.
However, the key to great meetings is
and will always be good content. With
that said, if gamification is to be integrated, then the content of the meeting
must be intriguing and relevant to optimize attendee engagement.”
—Joyce Russell, director of East Coast
sales at the Indianapolis CVB
Read more blog articles at MPIWeb.org.
mpiweb.org
March Buzz.indd 19
19
2/27/12 4:23 PM
Carving Out a Niche
HOW A GROUP OF
PLANNERS AND
SUPPLIERS CAME
TOGETHER IN THE
1970S TO ENSURE
THE CREATION OF
A SUCCESSFUL
PROFESSIONAL
ASSOCIATION.
LATE IN 1970, A GROUP OF MEETING PLANNERS
BEGAN DISCUSSIONS about the need for an
organization that would provide opportunities
for the exchange of ideas and information
among those who planned meetings and those
who provided the facilities and services for those
meetings.
By February 15, 1972, on the last day of
the World Meeting Planners
Congress & Exhibition
(WMPCE, or “Wump-key”
for short) at the Hyatt Regency
O’Hare in Chicago, MPI
began its mission: “to build a
rich global meeting industry
community.”
“The old image of
attending meetings back
then was packing up your
water balloons and whoopee
cushion—meetings were not
seen as serious things,” Douglas
Heath, CAE, a charter member
of MPI, explained in 1992.
“MPI has helped identify the
seriousness of meetings and
their importance by the size of
the organization alone.”
In the 1970s, there were
only niche organizations for insurance planners,
trade show managers, hotel salespeople and
association planners—on a limited basis through
the American Society of Association Executives.
“When I got into meeting planning in the late
1960s, you learned about how to do meetings
from the hotel people where you were having
your meetings—and you had to learn by the seat
of your pants,” Heath added. “You really didn’t
fit in anywhere if you were a meeting planner.
MPI came along and really filled that niche.”
An aspect that made MPI stand out from
other niche associations was a rule implemented
by Howard Feiertag, another MPI charter
member and instructor at Virginia Tech
University. Feiertag came from a different
background than other charter members—the
supplier side.
“One of the things we first
discussed was how we were
going to decide membership,”
said Feiertag, who represented
suppliers on the board in the
beginning. “If we were going
to open it up to everyone, we
would have been overloaded
with suppliers. So I suggested a
rule that said suppliers should
bring a meeting planner as
well, if they wanted to become
a member. That way you keep
the membership at 50-50.”
This rule fueled MPI’s
emergence in a new, yet evergrowing industry. Through
early MPI events, planners
and suppliers began learning
from each other, which was a
key factor in the association’s ability to improve
the function of meetings. MPI was the first
meetings-related organization to make planners
and suppliers equals in the process of facilitating
effective meetings.
“Nobody was out there identifying the
function of their meetings and their competence
until MPI,” said Raymond Hall, a charter
member, MPI president from 1978-79 and
“Nobody was
out there
identifying the
function of their
meetings and
BY STEPHEN PETERS
their competence
until MPI.”
20
one+
March Buzz.indd 20
03.12
2/27/12 4:25 PM
>>
former CEO of the Electronic Representatives
Association.
“When we had our first meetings, we
brought together people involved in all aspects
of planning meetings and we found out that
we had many common interests and could
learn from each other.”
According to other charter members,
this equality between suppliers and planners
benefited all tremendously. A mere suggestion
from Feiertag is something that has stuck with
MPI through its first 40 years.
“I didn’t think it would be something that
would stay so long,” Feiertag said.
Rodney Abraham remembers the
beginning of MPI fondly. Abraham, at the
time with the American Society of Chartered
Life Underwriters, was essentially clueless to
the scope that meeting planners comprised.
“This was all before email, but I got a flyer
about WMPCE, and that’s where I met Doug
Heath,” Abraham said. “I had no idea of the
dimension of meeting planners. A group of
us sat around and thought, ‘We really, really
need this.’”
Abraham, in MPI’s infancy, was
responsible for volunteer training programs,
the annual meeting and management and
promotion of services and publications.
Bob Green was also part of MPI’s beginning at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in 1972.
“In the early days, we were just crawling
along,” Green said. But he was “just glad to
have a chance to visit with other meeting
planners and get to know suppliers a little
better.”
“Computers weren’t a factor then,” Green
said with a chuckle. “Each of us learned
about the others’ needs. We didn’t really
know we were negotiating with one another.
It was a very educational process. Some of the
best friends I have, I met through MPI.”
James “Jim” Jones, who was introduced to
MPI at WMPCE as a guest speaker and, at the
time, was director of conference planning for
Connecticut General Life Insurance Company,
said in 1992 that he believed the fledgling
organization survived because “fortunately, it
had both association and corporate meeting
people. We needed both types to learn how
to form and build an association. It was vital
to have people who knew about bylaws and
charters, information which made it possible
for the organization to take hold.”
The basis of MPI started 40 years ago by
a group of planners and suppliers coming
together to address a big need in their soonto-be-booming industry. Their visions paved
the way for MPI successes then and in the
future.
Paul Bridle
Asks the
Experts
The International Standard for Sustainable
Event Management is due to launch this
year. As a result, a number of members have
wondered, “what else can we do?”
I talked with Mike Goodfellow-Smith
(mike@questforfuturesolutions.co.uk), director at Innovating for Sustainability, and
he said, “Sustainability, to date, has been
about reducing energy, waste, the carbon
footprint, etc., which tends to be superficial.
Organizations need to be far more strategic
and address social, economical and environmental issues and ensure all their strategies
(business, HR, leadership and management,
training, etc.) are aligned and contribute to
sustainability
and that, most
importantly,
‘people’ understand how they
can contribute.”
GoodfellowSmith explained,
“Taking it to the
people at every
Mike Goodfellow-Smith
level in an organization is quite
a task. It is a known fact that an additional
25 percent financial savings can be gained by
simply changing people’s behavior.”
I followed by asking how organizations
were doing this.
“As a result, forward-thinking organizations are implementing ‘sustainable living’
education for their people. This new initiative provides people with tips that they
can implement straight away, based around
health, food, transport and energy at home,
which impacts socially, economically and
environmentally.”
I then spoke with Trevor Lui (tlui@inter
nationalcentre.com), director of operations
at the International Centre in Toronto, about this
topic. His first comment
was, “There is no such
thing as 100 percent
achievement in sustainability.” Although he
said he feels they have
moved forward through
Trevor Lui
30 percent of
their plans,
this is not a signal they will achieve 100
percent.
“There will always be ways to improve,
and the 100 percent you can aim for is in
commitment,” he added.
Lui explained that commitment has to
come from the ‘C’ suite and work down.
The International Centre used a three-step
process including putting together a business case and plan, which shows ROI, and
then working at changing the culture of the
company. They have a task force made up
of 25 volunteers, who meet monthly and are
ambassadors to the rest of the company.
One of the challenges that organizations
in the meeting and event industry face is
with the sales team. The sales team say, “It’s
hard enough to get the business without imposing sustainability on the client.”
Lui acknowledged this could be an issue,
but training the sales team has helped. This
was the third step: educating the customer.
They created a “Sustainable Events Guide”
and encourage the customer to think along
these lines. They also use soft marketing
approaches such as magazines in the coffee
shop to drip feed the thinking and show
their commitment.
“It has been proven that educating the
sales team and, in turn, the prospective clients on how they can contribute to the sustainability plan results in substantial savings
being gained for both parties,” GoodfellowSmith added.
It is everyone’s responsibility and it is a
long journey, but we cannot simply ignore
it. So educating everyone is the name of the
game, and we should not be afraid to do so.
Paul Bridle is an information conceptualizer
who has researched effective organizations
and the people who lead them for 20 years.
He writes and speaks on his research and
business trends. Reach him at info@paul
bridle.com.
STEPHEN PETERS is a reporter for One+.
mpiweb.org
March Buzz.indd 21
21
2/27/12 4:25 PM
FILMART
March 19-22
Wan Chai, Hong Kong
In it’s 16th year, FILMART is the leading event in Asia and an important film
market in the global film calendar. It attracts renowned producers, distributors,
investors and professionals from around
the world to launch full-scale promotion,
network with key industry players and
negotiate deals. More than 600 exhibitors and 5,000 visitors from 54 countries
and regions attended last year’s event.
Pacific Dental Conference
March 8-10
Vancouver, British Columbia
The Pacific Dental Conference is one of
the largest dental conferences in North
America, offering a varied and contemporary selection of continuing education
programs. With more than 100 open
sessions and hands-on courses covering topics relating to clinical excellence,
practice excellence and personal development, you and your entire dental
team are covered.
Coffee Fest
March 9-11
New York, New York
Coffee Fest is viewed by many as the
best trade show in America, and around
the world, specifically for those involved
with retailing coffee, tea and related
products. It remains the industry’s topperforming show, consistently providing
retailers with relevant information to
hone their business skills and up their
bottom line. It also allows manufacturers and service companies face-to-face
opportunities to build their businesses.
22
one+
March Buzz.indd 22
ad:tech Sydney
March 14-15
Sydney, Australia
It’s the leading event for the digital
marketing and advertising community
in Australia and New Zealand, delivering content that educates and promotes
the industry, thought leadership keynote
addresses that inspire and enthuse,
vibrant and contentious panel debates,
well respected platforms showcasing the
best in new technology and numerous
unique networking opportunities to
expand and deepen critical industry
relations.
Paris Book Fair
March 16-19
Paris, France
The 32nd Paris Book Fair will be even
more international in outlook, with
Japan as its guest of honor and Moscow as its guest city of honor. Nearly
200,000 visitors, 30,000 professionals,
some 1,200 publishers and 2,500 authors are expected to converge on Paris
Expo Porte de Versailles to attend meetings and book signings and participate
in talks and discussions.
TUR-Travel, Tourism & Meetings
March 22-25
Gothenburg, Sweden
The intention for FUR 2012 is to create
a forum and the prerequisites for an
even greater number of profitable business meetings and engage the attention
of exhibitors and visitors to matters concerning travel destinations, travel trends,
the morals and ethics of travel and much
more. As the travel trade arena for Scandinavia, TUR 2012 will try to create an
ultra-modern, highly efficient venue with
many new features.
GIBTM
March 26-28
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
The Gulf Incentive Business Travel &
Meetings Exhibition (GIBTM) will
provide solutions and new ideas for
you to take your meetings, incentives,
conferences and events to the next
level. Benefits range from meeting with
existing suppliers and making new contacts and discovering new destinations,
products and services to expanding
your knowledge through the professional education program and keeping
up-to-date with industry trends.
03.12
2/27/12 4:59 PM
device, their answers are anonymous—part of
the collective. Walter suggests, instead, that
gamers answer questions by waving flags, or
even more simply, colored paper in the air. Or
shake things up by having people rise to vote
with their bodies.
Why does this matter?
“When we are kinesthetically involved in
activities, our brains process experiences on a
deeper, more lasting level,” Walter said. “Such
physicality associated with answering questions
also taps our natural herd instincts. We get
more emotionally bought into the experience.
Beyond that, the exchange is also visual—the
best way to learn new information. We more
deeply believe in ideas associated with a multisensory experience, and form deeper bonds
with others who play with us.”
Purposeful Play
THE POWER AND POINT OF LOW-TECH MEETING GAMES
By ANDREA DRIESSEN
A QUICK POP QUIZ: WHAT ONE MEETING TOOL
DELIVERS INCREASED ENGAGEMENT, teamwork,
retention, problem-solving ability, goal attainment, cross-generational connections, risk taking and even a sense of control
over one’s work environment—
plus a substantial dose of fun?
If you said a well-designed
game, you’re a winner!
Given its many positive results, there’s no wonder gamification—bringing participatory
games, apps and sophisticated
play to work and meetings—has
garnered a worldwide fan base.
With myriad options, where
do you begin? Even the word
gamification itself (five syllables!) is intimidating. But
integrating games into a meeting needn’t be complex, and it
doesn’t even have to involve technology.
Designing a low- or no-tech game for an
event, versus a customized game application, is relatively more manageable and affordable. Most can easily be tied to business
objectives. And if you’re bringing games to
your meeting for the first time, start small
and score a big win—for you, your attendees
and your organization.
After staging countless educational events for
adults, I’ve found that what separates the great
events from the mediocre are planners who are
genuinely game for punching up how they engage and educate. I believe
play is a serious, crucial success factor—not a fluffy, addon extra. In fact, brain science
now shows that when learning
is combined with simultaneous movement, we remember
more.
So whether you plan events
for the Fortune 500 or you simply want to better engage your
direct reports, when you purposefully integrate games into
the workplace you boost participants’ attention, participation, learning and productivity.
Designing a lowor no-tech game
for an event, versus a customized
game application,
is relatively more
manageable and
affordable.
The Disproportionate Power of Low-tech Games
We’re surrounded by technology, so it’s natural to default to a tech mindset. Brian Walter,
founder of Extreme Meetings and designer of
hundreds of games for audiences from five to
7,000, says going old school by using low-tech,
analog or prop-based games becomes disproportionately powerful. For example: When participants share input via, say, an audience-response
The Currency of Great Ideas
Good ideas always have currency. Here’s a
straightforward way to amplify idea generation
via gamification. You’ll also incite brilliance,
create more engagement and boost learning.
All for a few pennies or dollars per person, and
for any meeting size—from huddles to conventions. Simply give each participant some form
of fake currency that, during the course of a
meeting, they can award at their discretion to
fellow attendees based on how much they liked
someone’s ideas. The currency can be as basic
and low-cost as, say, chocolate coins, or lowvalue gift cards (a reduced-tech variant of Flattr.
com). As the gathering ends, award the person
with the most currency (the best ideas) a round
of applause or a more substantial prize.
Want to keep playing? Check out these additional resources:
• Read the Green Meeting Industry
Council’s robust gamification case
study: http://meetingchange.wordpress.
com/2011/06/08/gamification-casestudy
• Attend the Gamification Summit set
for June 19-21 in San Francisco:
www.gamificationsummit.com
• Explore the intersection of learning, creativity and play at InterplayInc.com
Now go get your low-tech game on—and
let us know about your winning ideas!
ANDREA DRIESSEN is chief boredom buster
for No More Boring Meetings based in Seattle,
Washington. Driessen has been busting boredom
and building engagement in events for more than
20 years. Visit www.NoMoreBoringMeetings.com
and follow her on Twitter at @nomoreboring.
mpiweb.org
March Buzz.indd 23
23
2/27/12 4:25 PM
0312_024-025.indd 24
2/14/12 11:15 AM
0312_024-025.indd 25
2/14/12 11:15 AM
TOP
Spots
Indianapolis
Convention Center
Just in time for Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the
city recently invested more than $275
million that doubles the size of the Indiana Convention Center (ICC). The
expansion project propelled Indy from
the 32nd- to the 16th-largest U.S. convention center. The ICC now offers
more than 566,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space and 749,000
square feet when combined with the attached Lucas Oil Stadium.
The center offers 11 exhibit halls,
71 meeting rooms, 48 loading docks
and three ballrooms—including the
33,000-square-foot, column-free Sagamore Ballroom that can accommodate
up to 3,400 guests in a theater-style setting.
In addition to the ICC, the world’s
largest JW Marriott rose above the Indianapolis skyline, offering 1,005 luxury guest rooms in the heart of downtown. This hotel offers 54 meeting
rooms and the Grand Ballroom, with a
seating capacity of up to 4,200, totaling more than 103,000 square of feet
of space. It’s part of the 12 hotels and
4,700 rooms connected to the ICC
via climate-controlled skywalks—more
than any other city in the U.S.
Hilton Hawaiian Village
Waikiki Beach Resort
The iconic Rainbow Tower completed a $45 million makeover in early January.
Renovations included all 800 guest rooms, from furnishings and bathrooms to
drapery and artwork. Work also was put into the Rainbow Suite, which can seat
up to 180 in a banquet setting and more than 270 for receptions. The suite can
be divided into three separate rooms that adjoin the Rainbow Patio, offering an
outdoor venue for pre-function cocktail parties.
26
one+
03.12
pg26-27 Top Spots 0312.indd 26
2/24/12 3:27 PM
The Gasparilla
Inn & Club
Groups, meetings and associations are drawn to the hotel’s
genuine hospitality and “old
Florida” feel. The property was
under renovation for the past
five years, which included refurbishment of all building exteriors
and updates to all guest rooms
and cottages. Updates also included the meeting facilities at
The Inn, which can now hold up
to 300 in more than 6,000 square
feet of space. Distinctive outdoor
venues are also available at the
Beach Club, Croquet Lawns and
Golf Club Gazebo.
Fairmont Grand
Hotel Kiev
Opening this month, the first true luxury
hotel arrives in the city of Kiev, Ukraine,
ahead of the highly anticipated UEFA Euro
2012 soccer tournament. The hotel features 257 guest rooms, including 35 suits.
The new hotel will also feature 13,000
square feet of meeting and function space,
counting a 5,000-square-foot ballroom.
Other hotel amenities include a Fairmont
spa with six treatment rooms, a chic cigar
lounge and a range of dining options.
The Ritz-Carlton Wuhan
As part of four new properties in Asia Pacific, The
Ritz-Carlton Wuhan will open in 2016 at the top
of the 1,988-foot-high Wuhan Greenland Centre.
The hotel will feature 330 guest rooms, a health
club, a swimming pool, a spa and more than
269,000 square feet of meeting space. The top
floor (the 119th) features a glass dome where diners can enjoy their meals more than 1,780 feet
above the city.
Hotel Missoni Mauritius
Hotel Missoni, synonymous with the luxury lifestyle, plans to build an 80-room hotel
in Mauritius. All 80 guest rooms will be suites offering unobstructed views of the
ocean. The new property, scheduled to open in 2014, will feature more than 2,500
square feet of dividable meeting space with the latest in audiovisual technology.
mpiweb.org
pg26-27 Top Spots 0312.indd 27
27
2/24/12 3:28 PM
> CONNECTIONS
>
Developing Care
WHO:
Chris Koenig, GiveCamp Founder,
Microsoft
Shawn Weisfeld, GiveCamp Organizer
EVENT:
Dallas GiveCamp
CTREC Hilton, Dallas
Friday, October 21, through Sunday,
Oct. 23, 2011
28
one+
BY STEPHANIE DURHAM
THEY AREN’T SECRET MILLIONAIRES OR SUPERHEROES,
but some Web developers are saving the world for charities, with
leaps and bounds achieved in the form of bits and bytes.
GiveCamp was founded by Chris Koenig, a senior developer
evangelist for Microsoft and an experienced volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and various homeless resource organizations,
who conceived of an even better way to make a difference.
“I’m not good at hanging drywall, but I am good at building
apps,” he said. “So I came up with the idea of building apps for
charity.”
GiveCamp is an international weekend event where software
developers, designers, marketers, Web strategists and database administrators volunteer time and expertise to create custom software and websites for non-profit organizations. Since its inception
in 2007, GiveCamp programs worldwide have provided design
and developer services into the tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of charities.
And, what happens at GiveCamp stays at GiveCamp, so while
03.12
March Connections.indd 28
2/27/12 1:53 PM
0312_029.indd 29
2/14/12 11:17 AM
participants don’t charge for their services, they are also
not obligated to maintain the project after the event is
finished.
“Volunteers are in and out through the weekend—
not committing to leaving their families for a month or
a year,” said Shawn Weisfeld, who organized the most
recent Dallas GiveCamp event in October 2011 at the
CTREC Hilton IT Academy.
Dallas ASP.NET User Group leader Toi Wright organized and ran the inaugural GiveCamp, calling the event
“We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge Weekend” in January 2008. At that event, the weekend served 18 charities with more than 80 developers.
Although Microsoft remains a major sponsor, organizers eventually took the company’s name out of the
title.
“We wanted to change people’s perceptions, not
move units,” Koenig said.
At the first official Dallas GiveCamp in January 2011,
participants donated more than 2,000 hours to 13 charities and consumed more than 1,000 drinks and 500
slices of pizza.
But it takes more than pizza power to successfully
produce GiveCamp. From the beginning, organizers embraced the “camp” concept and ideology, striving for a
productive event, but one without stringent rules and
processes.
30
one+
“It’s a way to motivate and mobilize software developers into their communities,” Koenig said.
The result is that GiveCamp has expanded, first to
Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now operates in 30 locations,
including England and Australia. Individual GiveCamp
weekend planners are given basic information and branding tools, but have control over their own event. GiveCamps have been successfully produced with as many as
120 people, and as few as six.
“The event has been shown to be infinitely scalable,”
Koenig said. “We have a set of logos available and a
starter website. Otherwise individual organizers can run
with it.”
Koenig also maintains a GiveCamp informational email address and locations map, and collects the events’
best practices to share on the Web.
“It’s a ‘cookbook’ to bake a GiveCamp,” he said, and
it encourages individual planners to keep it local. “People ask ‘When is it coming to my area?’ and I say, ‘When
you run one!’ We want to impact our local community,
the people in our neighborhoods. We want to build a
strong community tie.”
Projects ranged from a new website for Jubilee Park,
a Dallas nonprofit, to an HTML 5 mobile application
03.12
March Connections.indd 30
2/27/12 8:45 AM
for the YouthWorker
Movement to a variety
of data collection, database and donor services
software.
Since
GiveCamp’s
mission is to make a
difference, it’s very important to find the right
charities, get them involved and make sure
that the teams building
their applications can
focus on providing the highest value in a short time
frame. The number of charities chosen is based on the
number of participating developers, the size of the venue
and the requests of the charities themselves. It is also important to ensure that participating charities are official
non-profits and/or charities, with well-defined requirements that GiveCamp teams have a good chance of completing by the end of the weekend.
To foster a sense of community between the volunteers and nonprofit clients, Koenig encourages representatives from participating charities to attend as much of
the event as possible.
“Having representatives from the charities on site
makes a big difference not only in the quality products
produced, but to help raise the morale of the development teams,” he said. “The
happiest development teams
At the first official
were those that got to spend a
large amount of time with their
Dallas GiveCamp
charities.”
in January 2011,
Weisfeld, a local developer
and
longtime volunteer with
participants donatFirst Robotics, first attended
ed more than 2,000 Dallas GiveCamp as a general
volunteer and then as a coder
hours to 13 charibefore assuming his leadership
ties and consumed
role. His responsibilities included managing facilities,
more than 1,000
food and volunteers, as well as
drinks and 500
making sure that the weekend
ran smoothly.
slices of pizza.
“It’s like organizing a twoday wedding!” Weisfeld said,
noting that it was a challenge
to find a facility that met each of the group’s unique
needs.
“We need a space large enough for us, where people can
get together and talk in groups without overpowering each
other,” he said. “Internet and power are also important.”
Koenig went on to say that volunteer designers are
also hard to find, but he has recruited—and retained—
some in unconventional ways. For instance, when a
GiveCamp event room was being used by a group that
was slow in vacating the space, Koenig was able to turn
the challenge into an opportunity.
“It was a job fair for designers, and I went in and made
an announcement about our event. Two people stayed
with us the whole weekend. One has come back,” he said.
Although volunteers for Dallas GiveCamp have assigned roles, they will also adapt to meet the needs of
the charity, and have partnered with other organizations,
as well. For example, the group’s developers teamed up
with designers from marketing agency IMC2 to produce
a website.
The collaboration available when being part of an international network is another positive resource.
“GiveCamp national has value in sponsorships and
networking opportunities,” Weisfeld said. “We participate
each year in a big conference call to brainstorm and trade
questions and answers. There are also opportunities for
group buys. Those types of things boost credibility.”
While other GiveCamps have an official process and
timetable, Dallas GiveCamp prefers a more organic approach. The event isn’t promoted year-round, but leading up to the weekend, they use social media and update
their website, sometimes up to 30 times per day.
At GiveCamp, team spirit trumps even the friendliest
competition. In the beginning, GiveCamp was a contest,
but they moved away from that concept because organizers felt that it went against the weekend’s charitable
spirit.
“The downside of a competition is that people lose,”
Koenig said. “After spending 36 hours coding, people
want to feel like a winner. Now, instead of a competition, we have a big reveal where we show our work.”
Weisfeld describes the atmosphere as one of “friendly
professionalism.”
“If someone has a WordPress problem, they can go to
the Wordpress expert, no matter what team they’re on,”
he said. “It’s all about the passion of helping charity.”
Koenig says that GiveCamp has been “life changing.”
“People give, keep giving and keep giving,” he said.
“People don’t come way from this mad.”
Weisfeld writes software every day, and is passionate
about it.
“To leverage that passion to impact my friends and
my community—that’s what goes so far. And not just for
me, but for each of the participants.”
STEPHANIE DURHAM is a freelance writer based in Dallas.
mpiweb.org
March Connections.indd 31
31
2/27/12 8:46 AM
T
N
A
V
E
L
E
R
R
I
Octopursey
Sloth is the new cat. Is octopus next? Yes, if this purse is any indication.
(etsy.com/shop/galafilc, US$49)
32
one+
0 3.12
pg32 Irrelevant_Mar.indd 32
2/24/12 11:34 AM
0312_033.indd 33
2/21/12 4:05 PM
> > H I G H -T E C H H U M A N I T Y
I KNOW WHERE YOU
BANKED LAST SUMMER
BY DOUGLAS R U SHKOFF <<
MY CELL PHONE RANG…a rare occurrence since people usually ping
me by email or SMS or Facebook or
Twitter.
Anyway, it rang, so I checked
the callerID (assuming it was my
wife or one of the other handful of
people who have that number). But
it was some random 800-number,
and I let it go to voicemail. The
majority of calls I get from numbers
like that are from alternative utility
billing companies looking to hijack
my account by getting me to reveal
the customer number on my statement.
A few minutes later, the same
34
one+
800-number called my home
phone.
“OK. This might be something
important,” I thought.
I picked it up and the air went
dead (you know, that robo-dialing
pause during which some machine
detects that the call has, indeed,
been answered by a real human being). It assigned an operator to my
case, and she greeted me by name.
She identified herself as the
representative of a very large U.S.
bank. She wanted to know about
my last experience with one of her
company’s tellers. Suspicious. She
went on to tell me the location,
date and time of my recent in-person
interaction with a bank employee.
Was the teller helpful? Appropriately
attired? Knowledgeable?
She asked questions and I evaded,
as I googled the phone number. Was
this legit? Had others received such
calls? Yup. There were pages filled
with complaints about spooky calls
from this bank, in which the caller
shares knowledge of recent live transactions and whereabouts.
I eventually told her I was busy
and hung up.
A couple of days later, I had to go
to the bank again.
The ATM’s new check scanner
03.12
March_Column_Rushkoff.indd 34
2/24/12 3:40 PM
always spits mine out as “unreadable,” and now that the upgraded
machines don’t accept deposits in
envelopes, I have to go inside the
bank (when it’s open) fill out a
deposit slip and hand it to a teller.
When I got back to my office, the
cell phone rang: the bank representative, telling me she knows where I
was and asking about my experience.
I offered to tell her exactly why I
needed to interact with a teller, but
she didn’t care. That wasn’t on her
checklist. She needed to know about
social interaction, courtesy and politeness. The bank wasn’t interested
in the one thing it actually needed to
know about my experience.
So why is this financial institution tracking down and calling
people who use their tellers…to
discourage people from going into
the bank? If I (the customer) know
that speaking with a teller means
answering some employee performance survey call, I’m going to be
even less likely to go in the bank.
So, the bank saves money—or even
adds to its revenue stream by charging for debit cards and ATMs (as
some banks have been attempting).
The actual effect, of course, is
scaring people out of the bank altogether, making them wonder if their
account information is secure, and
leading customers (as it has me)
away from banking with a firm that
already felt like part of the “Big
Brother” network.
The bank is leveraging its
tremendous networked database
and capability in exactly the wrong
direction, punishing customers for
making contact and believing that
the best way to gain information
about the customer experience is
through telephone calls rather than
speaking with frontline employees—whose judgment the bank
obviously doesn’t trust. If this is the
way the bank tracks and interrogates its customers, imagine what
it’s like to work there.
Of course this bank isn’t the
only company using technology in
this ass-backwards way, but their
example is illustrative for us all, on
many levels:
1. Technology is more likely to
provoke paranoia than good feelings. The normal human reaction
to being told “I know what you did
last summer” is not one of being
understood, but being spied on.
Don’t use the information you have
on people to prove that you know
who they are. It really just proves
you have no idea.
on multiple phone lines, and then
leaves emails and SMS’s when he
can’t find you? A stalker, that’s who.
It smacks of Fatal Attraction. Just
because a person has multiple points
of contact doesn’t mean you should
utilize them all simultaneously except in a true emergency. Anything
else is an abuse of the network, and
the nervous system.
3. Most importantly, follow the
example of legendary Disney Parks
CEO Judson Green and get your
feedback about your human interaction from human interactions, not
from random, disembodied questionnaires over a network. If you
have a real-world point of sale or
customer service, then everything
you need to know is already happening right there. If you’re using a
customer satisfaction technology to
gauge customer response after the
fact, that’s because you have disconnected yourself from the living intelligence that is your front-line staff.
Instead of using technologies
to alienate your customers and
compensate for your lack of communication, learn how to speak to
your employees who, in turn, will
be able to tell you what’s going on
with your customers. Save the calls
and emails for the folks who are
already interacting with you through
those channels. Tell your technologies to leave the rest of us humans
alone.
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
is the author, most
recently, of Program or
be Programmed: Ten
Commands for a Digital
Age and Life Inc: How
Corporatism Conquered
the World and How We
Can Take it Back. He can
be contacted at www.
rushkoff.com.
2. Don’t chase people through their
technologies. Who calls someone
mpiweb.org
March_Column_Rushkoff.indd 35
35
2/24/12 3:40 PM
>> ON THE JOB
BOOST YOUR
PRODUCTIVITY
BY VIRTUE OF TECHNOLOGY, WE
ARE BECOMING A MORE EFFICIENT
SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION.
And as many companies demand more
and more of their employees, it’s becoming even more imperative to work
smarter and faster. Lean business has
taken root, as companies search for
increasing efficiency. Try these tips to
boost your workplace productivity.
1. Keep IMs, emails and texts at bay.
Social media are demanding mistresses
once you fall under their spell. Scientists have found that smartphone users
react the same way to buzzes, dings
and notifications as Pavlov’s dogs—an
adrenaline rush perceived as positive
reinforcement. But each message can
be a detour and suck minutes away
from more pressing work.
2. Use templates. If you don’t have
them, you should. Templates allow
you to call up frequently used information, which you can then customize as
needed.
3. Organize, organize, organize. Create
quick-access folders for often-used
documents, and organize your files
in ways that make sense to you (and
anyone else who might be using them).
You won’t end up wandering through
files wondering exactly where you hid
that one contract…you’ll zing right to
it. And structure each day with prioritized tasks.
4. Communicate. When in doubt, pick
up the phone. Recently, one of my cli36
one+
ents was joking about something in an
email, but it came across as offensive.
After a short call, everything quickly
cleared up. Bad communication causes
misunderstandings, which generate
venting and griping, and often a series
of long-winded emails (when a short
conversation will suffice). Call first if
it’s complicated or sensitive, and then
follow up with an email.
5. Avoid distractions. If the Internet easily averts your attention, attach a sticky
note to your computer to keep you focused. Log on, find what you need and
log off. It will increase your efficiency—
and many employers use spyware to
track your movements anyway.
6. Set meeting agendas. Meandering
meetings cause attendees to check out
and are a waste of time. When you
call a meeting, set a focused agenda
with specific timelines. You want
participants to engage, but it’s up to
you to keep topics on task. If you have
a colleague who can’t control meeting
tempo, offer to help facilitate next time.
Not everyone is a great meeting leader.
7. Stop the interruption. Office banter
and rapport are vital for good working
relationships, but if you find yourself
on the social rounds, chatting at the
“water cooler” or stopping in to just
“visit,” you need to re-examine your
time. Your work is your top priority.
8. Don’t fix their mistakes. Time spent
on other people’s errors takes away
from time you spend on work that
BY D A W N R A S M U SS E N , C M P < <
you are ultimately accountable for. If a
subordinate errs, take the opportunity
to mentor/coach on performance improvement. If it’s your colleague, have a
frank, tactful sit-down. You want them
to succeed, and don’t want them to get
into trouble. If it’s your boss? Act as a
problem solver. Suggest ideas to fix the
problem without making it personal.
9. Cry uncle. You say “yes” because you
want to keep your job, but you end up
getting pulled in too many directions.
If this sounds like you, it’s time to have
a conversation with your supervisor to
figure out a solution.
DAWN RASMUSSEN, CMP,
is the president of Portland,
Ore.-based Pathfinder
Writing and Careers, which
specializes in hospitality/
meeting professional
résumés. She has been
a meeting planner for
more than 15 years and
an MPI member since 2001.
Contact Rasmussen at www.
pathfindercareers.com.
03.12
March_Column_Rasmussen.indd 36
2/27/12 11:29 AM
0312_037.indd 37
2/21/12 4:06 PM
> > M E D I A M AT T E R S
BY CHRIS BROGAN <<
PAY ATTENTION
TO PINTEREST
WE’RE DROWNING IN INFORMATION. WE’RE OVERSATURATED. We don’t read long form
posts or emails. Heck, this article
is too long for most of you. Sites
like Pinterest.com illustrate that
how we consume information is
changing rapidly.
38
one+
MPI Online
The new MPIWeb.org is bite-sized.
It’s visual. It’s engaging. It begs you
to browse around, see something
that excites you and click your
way deeper. It’s the opposite of a
magazine. It’s a scrapbook.
Like Pinterest. There. I said it.
MPIWeb rips off Pinterest, and I
mean that in the most loving and
homage-filled way. It’s brilliant. It’s
what I wrote about recently on my
own site. Pinterest is the hottest
website out there right now (and if
you have no idea what I’m writing
03.12
March_Column_Brogan.indd 38
2/24/12 3:51 PM
USA Today was colorful when newspapers were
black and white. It was bite-sized when respectable newspapers were not. Info-graphics were
a mainstay for USA Today back in the 1980s.
Decades later, the world is admitting their value.
about, why have you not paused,
gone to Pinterest.com and looked
around?).
USA Today
When USA Today came out, critics
hailed and reviled it. It was colorful
when newspapers were black and
white. It was bite-sized when respectable newspapers were not. Infographics were a mainstay for USA
Today back in the 1980s. Decades
later, the world is finally admitting
their value.
MPIWeb, Pinterest and my favorite
Gentlemint.com (like Pinterest for
dudes) all point out that the Web isn’t
just an electronic academic journal
any more. It’s visual. It’s bite-sized.
It’s a place where we can choose an
entry point and dig in.
Your Turn
Your website, your media, your
email newsletter are not designed
like MPIWeb or Pinterest or USA
Today. Many of you hate your
company website, which is just
now adopting the new methods and
ideas from four years ago. It’s time
to consider how you communicate:
How long are your emails? How
text-laden are your Web pages?
What are you doing to share information visually? How much video
have you adopted?
First Steps
This isn’t as hard as you think.
1. Make a mobile version of your
site. You must develop a mobile-
friendly (at worst) version of your
website. Shoppers this holiday
season purchased more tablets
and smartphones than laptops
and desktops combined. We take
the Web to the toilet and into the
hallways between meetings. If your
site is only built for laptop viewing, you’re losing the game.
2. Make your first page bite-sized.
Design it so people know what
you want them to do immediately.
Give them a way to start small
on everything else thereafter.
Need design inspiration? Go
to MPIWeb.org (and MPI isn’t
paying me for the praise).
3. Use photos and video. If you’re
not getting into the visual game,
you’re missing out on how many
(most?) humans process information. We react to graphics, to movies, to color. Start simple. Use photos
with every article. Shoot a short
(under-two-minute) video instead
of an article or a post. Use these for
your event materials, as well.
4. Implement social sharing on all
articles, posts and newsletters.
You know those little buttons that
let people tweet or Facebook or
add something to Google+? Add
them to your website or newsletter.
What’s the benefit? You’ve made it
easy for people to share information about your company or meeting. Provided your info is worth
sharing, you’ll gain quickly.
5. Try infographics. You need a
talented designer for this one.
Want some inspiration? Check out
http://infographics.alltop.com.
Snack Away
Media snacking is here to stay,
whether you’re still reading this
article or not. You’re much more
likely to skim the first two paragraphs and bookmark it to read
later (which rarely ever comes).
The smaller the article, the more
bite-sized the page, the simpler for
people to engage and find elements that matter to them.
Be wary of clutter. Just because
you’re at a buffet doesn’t mean
you need one of everything.
See what comes of it. Millions
of people have rushed to Pinterest.
I think you and I (and MPI) are on
to something here. What do you
think?
CHRIS BROGAN is president of
Human Business Works, a
media and education company dedicated to helping companies improve customer
acquisition and communitynurturing efforts by amplifying the human digital channel. He is The New York Times
bestselling author of Google+
for Business: How Google’s
Social Network Changes
Everything. Connect with
Brogan at Chrisbrogan.com.
mpiweb.org
March_Column_Brogan.indd 39
39
2/27/12 1:54 PM
> > CO M P E T I T I V E E D G E
BY D E B O R A H G A R D N E R , C M P < <
THE KEYS TO
SWEET SUCCESS
MOST COMPANIES WOULD LOVE TO
HAVE A REALITY SHOW. THIS COMPANY TURNED ONE DOWN.
Remember when Grandma made
desserts from scratch? Stacey Webb
and Jayne Torline enjoy baking the
way people baked before fast food.
Both proudly say that roughly 500
pounds of confectioner’s and cane
sugar, 300 pounds of flour and 10
cases of eggs a week are reality enough
for them.
Besides, they say, “we are protective
of our positive, encouraging culture.
Who needs that kind of publicity? Ten
years and still baking!”
Another reason Kansas-based 3
Women and an Oven didn’t pursue a
40
one+
reality show: A desire to remain unique.
“We don’t focus on the competition;
we focus on the prize—our customers,”
Torline says. Restaurants, coffee houses
and specialty food stores throughout
Kansas City Metro carry 3 Women and
an Oven products. And the business is
growing and expanding, shipping products to 48 other states.
Knowing their customers helps the
ladies prepare for when customers
express unique ideas or requests. When
companies focus on competition, Webb
says, they become followers of that competition. “Not a good way to operate a
business.”
So, who is No. 3?
“It’s everyone we work with,” Tor-
line and Webb say. “We are blessed with
amazing women and men, who are not
afraid to wear pink at the bakery every
day. Our inspiration comes from our
customers and our employees.
“As our business started to elevate,
so did our orders, and we have managed
the growth well. We make educated
decisions, taking baby steps in some
cases, to thrive. After years in business,
we have served 1 million and counting.”
The key to success: “When we finally
accepted the reality that we couldn’t do
it all ourselves,” Torline says. “When
you get to the point where you step
back and look at the big picture of your
business, but you don’t have the time
or skill set to accomplish more. When
you become humble enough to admit
that maybe there is a better way. Being
humble is hard, but it is much better
than humiliation.”
And the secret to maintaining that
success: “Always hire people better than
you,” according to Torline and Webb.
“When you hire highly skilled people,
they make you, the company and everyone look good, so you concentrate on
the specific tasks you need to. You grow
when you discover the newfound luxury
of stepping out of ‘doing’ and into ‘overseeing.’
“Just be open to all possibilities and
make the best decision.”
In the kitchen, Torline and Webb
know what works best for them. And
no reality show can deliver a dessert
experience that invokes fond memories
of a time not so long ago. One new customer agrees, “3 Women and an Oven
are so good! I’m from the South, and
when something is this good we joke,
‘It made me want to slap my momma
twice!’”
DEBORAH GARDNER, CMP,
is a competitive performance expert who challenges companies, organizations and individuals to
think and act. She is a past
president of the MPI Arizona
Sunbelt Chapter and a
member of the National
Speakers Association. Visit
www.DeborahGardner.com.
03.12
March_Column_Gardner.indd 40
2/27/12 1:55 PM
0312_041.indd 41
2/21/12 4:07 PM
> > R E B OO T Y O U R B R A I N
BY JON BRADSHAW <<
TOO MUCH
INFORMATION
HERE IN THE U.K., IF YOU’RE UP
EARLY ENOUGH, YOU CAN WITNESS AN INTERESTING SUNDAY
PHENOMENON.
Starting around 6 a.m., people
surface from their homes, blink in
the early morning light, scurry to
their local newsagents and hurry
home with milk, tea and a relatively
odd package. Often wrapped in plas-
42
one+
tic, it can weigh up to three pounds
(1.4 kilograms), is cumbersome to
carry and contains as many words
as several novels. Welcome to the
British Sunday newspaper.
Recently, I’ve made a concerted
effort to join these early risers—
and buy and read a quality Sunday
paper. But it’s almost impossible. I
spread the sections (world news,
business, politics, sports, home and
garden, culture and gadgets) across
the living room floor and by 3 p.m.,
as I pause to eat, I note that not
only have I not tackled the meatier
sections, the only information I’ve
retained is what we 375 million
03.12
March_Column_Bradshaw.indd 42
2/24/12 4:02 PM
Find some thinking time and switch everything off. It
will take some getting used to, but science says it may
be just what you need to work smarter, not longer.
Capricorns have to look forward to
in the week ahead.
Instead of a relaxing pastime that
allows me to keep abreast of world
affairs, review the weekend’s sports
and understand why I’d best not
leave the house (Venus is rising),
reading the Sunday newspaper has
become a stressful chore, another
job to complete by the following
weekend, by which time I’ve made a
concerted effort to forget everything
anyway to make room in my brain
for the next edition.
So, I stopped. I stopped buying a Sunday paper and thought
no more about it…until last week
when I shared the reason behind
my decision with a few friends. The
conversation that followed was enlightening. Most of us confessed to
struggling with the amount of printed and digital information available
to us. We admitted to feeling under
pressure, struggling to find the right
balance, “missing out” and being
“left behind.”
These days, purveyors of information interact with us on an intimate level. Until recently, TV, radio
and print served as the channels for
information from media outlets or
marketers. Then came email and
news sites—as long as we logged
onto a computer and dialed up the
Internet, we could be contacted. But,
the advent of smartphones introduces another level completely. They are
third arms, through which we run
our lives and make ourselves available 24/seven.
Watching just one TV channel
is old school now, too. At a conference in New Orleans last year, I
ate breakfast surrounded by no less
that eight screens, each showing dif-
ferent channels—at least three with
corresponding audio. The impact of
any brand messaging was lost in the
white noise of communication, news
and information.
On planes, too, we are bombarded. Recently, 20 minutes before
landing, we watched a three-minute
advert for the city—not on small
screens with headphones, but on
large drop-down screens at high volume. We had no choice but to listen.
In 2011, The Economist ran a
fascinating article on information
overload, noting the variety of names
given to the subject including “data
asphyxiation,” “data smog,” “information fatigue syndrome” and
“cognitive overload.” British journalist Johann Hari emphasizes that
“wired” means both “connected to
the Internet” and “high, frantic and
unable to concentrate.”
If you manage other people, you
know the effects this can have. The
Economist article quotes a survey by
Reuters in which two-thirds of managers said that data deluge made their
jobs less satisfying or hurt their personal relationships. One-third even
said it had damaged their health. Research has shown that information
overload can make people feel anxious and powerless (scientists have
even discovered that multi-taskers
produce more stress hormones).
And Teresa Amabile of Harvard
Business School, who has spent more
than a decade studying people’s work
habits, found that people are more
likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for
some time without interruptions.
So what can be done about information overload? You can rely on
those who created the problem to
solve it. Google, for one, is trying to improve its online searches by taking into
account more personal information.
Popular computer program Freedom
disconnects you from the Web at preset
times.
Or you can try willpower. Turn off
your smartphone, reduce your access
to the Web. In January, Newsweek suggested throwing your smartphone away
as one of its 31 ways to get smarter, saying that checking email “disrupts focus
and saps productivity.”
Easier said than done, since receiving email makes us feel important—
academics Edward Hallowell and John
Ratey argue that we are addicted to the
“dopamine squirt” we get when we receive messages.
I’ll repeat a suggestion that I made
in 2009: Find some thinking time and
switch everything off. It will take some
getting used to, but science says it may
be just what you need to work smarter,
not longer. If you’re still reading this, it
means you chose to take five minutes
out of your busy day to read my column. Bearing in mind the variety of alternative information available, I’ll take
that as a compliment. Thank you!
JONATHAN BRADSHAW
speaks, writes and consults
on maximizing attendee
performance at meetings.
His work with behavioral
psychologists, coupled with
his experience in extreme
sports performance, has led
him to launch Meetings
Mindset and the Meetology
Research Institute. He
can be contacted at jon@
meetingsmindset.com.
mpiweb.org
March_Column_Bradshaw.indd 43
43
2/24/12 4:02 PM
ALL PHOTOS: ISTOCKPHOTO
44
one+
03.12
Destination_Mexico.indd 44
2/23/12 12:14 PM
The End of an Era
The Time and Space Festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico, invites everyone to
witness the inception of the ultra-modern age of Human Kind at the very
source of the Mayan Civilization’s motherland.
B Y K I M B E R LY K I N G
I WAS PREGNANT IN TIMES SQUARE EATING
AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH ON THE DAY THE
WORLD WAS SUPPOSED TO END. It was May
21, 2011, and for months I had strolled past
Harold Camping’s Family Radio followers on
my way home from work, their Armageddon
dioramas and tri-fold displays lining the sidewalks like a doomsday science fair. My favorite
thing about living in New York is the juxtaposition of beliefs and general open mindedness,
but I certainly felt a sting every time I refused
a rapture leaflet on my way to pre-natal yoga
or waddled past someone preaching my unborn child’s doom from behind a Grim Reaper
mask. Warning a very pregnant woman that
the end is nigh goes over about as well as buying her a book about crib death for her baby
shower.
Apocalyptic thoughts are nothing new—in
every generation, regardless of religion, location or culture, there are those who believe the
world will end during their lifetime. A 2009 article in Psychology Today traced humans’ cataclysmic obsessions back more than 2,000 years
and even posited the theory that these beliefs
are genetic. From the Inuit Eskimos to Japan’s
Aum Shinrikyo cult, all have their suspicions as
to how, when and why the end is near.
There were two types of people in the streets
that May day at 5:59 p.m., t-minus one minute
to supposed Judgment: those waiting for rapture and those waiting for nothing. A kind of
anti-New Year’s countdown commenced, and
some people started taking off their clothes
(perhaps they figured they wouldn’t need them
where they were going) while looking up at the
sky. I don’t have to explain how it ended, or
rather how it didn’t, and I’d like to say that I
gloated past the stunned, semi-nude believers
with my belly out, but really I just felt their
disappointment. People streamed in different
directions, I ate my ice cream, life went on.
“Maybe the Mayans were right!” a woman
shouted as she threw a stack of flyers into the
trash. And for many, the countdown started
anew.
Next Last Chance
The world will really end, according to some,
on the winter solstice, December 21, 2012, at
11:11 a.m. This date comes from the cyclical
Mayan calendar exactly 5,125 years since the
last calendar began, allegedly the time at which
all creation as we know it will cease to exist.
From polar shifts to solar storms to alien takeovers, several cataclysmic results have been
predicted.
Patrick Geryl, author of the book How to
Survive 2012, suggests storm shelters far inland on high ground, water purifiers, vegetable
seeds and gas masks will be necessary to prepare for the simultaneous volcanic eruptions,
massive tidal waves and searing solar radiation
on the way. With almost 100 similar survival
books on Amazon.com, it seems that many
people share Geryl’s fears. There are some,
however, who see December 21 as a notable
date, but not one to fear.
“In the Maya archives, there is no mention
of the world coming to an end,” said Dr. Mark
Van Stone, Ph.D. in Latin American Studies at
Southwestern College in California. “Not in
2012, not at any other time. December 21 is a
day to look forward, it’s a day to make promises for the future, it’s a day to party and…to
hopefully make new beginnings.”
Mexico-based record label Maia Records
sees the upcoming date as a cause for celebration and rebirth and is taking Van Stone’s ad-
mpiweb.org
Destination_Mexico.indd 45
45
2/23/12 12:14 PM
Warning a very
pregnant woman that
the end is nigh goes
over about as well
as buying her a book
about crib death for
her baby shower.
more beautiful locale and a more festive
group of people with which to spend your
final moments on Earth.
vice to party to heart. Founded in 2001
and responsible for classic psychedelic
trance anthems and high-end electronica
by Mexican artists, the record label is hosting Time and Space 2012: Dawn of a New
Era in Riviera Maya, Mexico. They invite
“everyone on this planet…to witness the
inception of the ultra-modern age of Human Kind at the very source of the Mayan
Civilization’s motherland.” The party is in
the early stages of planning and a venue
has yet to be secured, but organizer and
artist DJ Arturo Maia says the festival will
start December 20 and will continue “with
people dancing on the beach until the early
morning hours of the 22nd.”
Paralleling the Caribbean coastline, the
Riviera Maya is known for crystal blue
waters, flawless white sand, ideal weather
and the nearby Mayan ruins at Tulum. The
three major structures of interest at the Tulum site are El Castillo, the Temple of the
Frescoes and the Temple of the Descending God. It is believed that music served a
major purpose in ancient Mayan ceremonial functions, from funeral processions to
sacrificial soundtracks. Composed largely
of drums and percussion, this music was
thought to provide a trancelike state to
46
one+
deepen spiritual connections. It seems
logical then that the trance or psychedelic
trance genre of electronic music is what
many Maia Records artists (such as Blue
Lunar Monkey) specialize in.
Dance is at the center of this musical
genre, and a distinctive resonated bass
beat throbs throughout psytrance tracks.
Typical trance song structure involves the
layering of different rhythms and addition
of new musical elements every eight bars.
New layers continue to be added to the
consistent bass line until the song reaches
an eventual climax. The song will then
break down and an entirely new rhythmic
pattern will emerge. This musical representation of rebirth and new beginnings
seems to be the perfect accompaniment for
December 21, 2012.
“Maia Records is proud to unite an elite
force of Mexican electronic artists,” Maia
said. “But ultimately our label has been deconstructed and rebuilt to allow for meaningful change over the years. We want to
break paradigms and create a space where
different people from all over the world can
connect. We want to create a new global
standard of musical diversity.”
One would be hard-pressed to find a
We Are Still Here
Harold Camping later revised his prediction to say that the end of the world would
be October 21, 2011, and claimed that
May 21 was the “spiritual judgment” and
that in the months between the two dates
there would be a slew of disasters. On August 23, 2011, the day my son was born
(the exact hour in fact), Manhattan felt the
effects of a 5.8-magnitude earthquake, the
first in New York in more than 130 years.
A few offices were evacuated but I, like
most, didn’t feel a thing. A week later, my
husband and I were taping our windows
up and stockpiling diapers and water for
Hurricane Irene, the first to move through
the city in decades. It rained all night and
the following morning I saw a fallen bird’s
nest on the sidewalk, but that was all. In
true jaded New York fashion, people took
to their Twitter and Facebook accounts to
complain about Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to shut down the trains.
Apocalypse obsession makes more
sense to me now that I’m a mother: Predictions give the illusion of control. For a
certain type of person, there must be something comforting about knowing when
your time will come, something soothing
about being one of millions. Life is so precious—and the thought of leaving so unbearable—that perhaps there is some solace in being prepared.
The world didn’t end, and then it didn’t
end again. It probably won’t end in December either, but I have some great stories
for my son’s baby book.
KIMBERLY KING is a New York-based freelance writer.
03.12
Destination_Mexico.indd 46
2/23/12 12:15 PM
0312_047.indd 47
2/21/12 4:12 PM
48
one+
03.12
Destination_Houston.indd 48
2/24/12 10:00 AM
Southern Culture on the Rise
The American Association of Museums conference in Houston last year was the most
welcoming event the organization has ever experienced.
ALL PHOTOS: GREATER HOUSTON CVB
BY KEVIN WOO
WHEN YOU THINK OF THE WORLD’S GREAT
CULTURAL CENTERS, CITIES SUCH AS CAIRO,
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON, D.C., ARE LIKELY TO IMMEDIATELY COME
TO MIND. Inquiries into why Houston is conspicuously absent from this list may be met
with a scoff or an odd look. But for those in
the know, the question would be legitimate, because Houston has quietly (and with much success) become an arts and culture powerhouse.
Last May, the American Association of Museums (AAM) held its annual meeting in Houston. The AAM is the largest service organization for museums. It establishes standards and
best practices for the industry, provides professional development and, most importantly,
serves as an advocate on Capitol Hill so museums can continue to receive financial assistance
from the federal government.
“The AAM conference in Houston was the
most welcoming meeting we’ve had in terms
of physical layout of the convention facilities
and the warm reception we received from the
people we worked with at the various museums,” said Dewey Blanton, AAM director of
communications. “Houston’s host committee
really bent over backwards and made this a big
deal. When we arrive in town we’re not there
to make news, but in Houston we were all over
the TV and on the front page of the Houston
Chronicle three times during our five-day convention.”
Monica Rhodes was the local meeting planner hired by the AAM to coordinate all the
activities and logistics between the AAM staff
in Washington, D.C., the various museums in
Houston, the army of 400 volunteers, the convention center and the hotels. Rhodes, who is
a native Houstonian, says that the local arts
and culture scene has grown organically over
the years but more often than not Houston is
overlooked as a cultural center.
“We have more than 150 museums in the region, 18 in the Houston Museum District—10
of which are free all the time,” Rhodes said.
“We also have another 130-plus museums outside the district, many of which are also free.
Houston shines in the performing arts, too. We
have more theater seats in Houston, second
only to New York City, than any other city in
the country.”
mpiweb.org
Destination_Houston.indd 49
49
2/24/12 10:00 AM
All 18 of the city’s major museums are
located within three miles, or a 10-minute ride on the light rail, from the center
of downtown Houston and the convention
center (and within a mile or so of each other). The anchor museums are the Museum
of Fine Arts and the Houston Museum of
Natural Science. The Museum of Fine Arts
is the Southwest’s largest art museum, and
its Menil collection is widely considered to
be one of the most significant in the world.
The Museum of Natural Science has one
of the world’s best collections of gems and
minerals.
Conference tracks for the AAM conference were held at the George R. Brown
Convention Center, where 150 sessions
took place over five days, covering topics
ranging from helping small museums estab-
Destination_Houston.indd 50
Know Before You Go
There’s only one way to describe Houston’s summertime climate:
brutal. The heat and humidity combine to drive up daytime temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But Houstonians
are also quick to point out that theirs is the world’s most air-conditioned city. Air-conditioned underground tunnels and aboveground walkways allow folks in the downtown area to move
around without having to brave the scorching heat. Any outdoor
event held during the summer is likely to result in some very uncomfortable guests.
2/23/12 1:30 PM
0312_051.indd 51
2/14/12 11:36 AM
lish a social media program to educating
museums on the parameters for selling
pieces from their collections.
Rhodes says that one of the most popular sessions allowed the general public
to sit in and interact with museum
personnel.
“The work that folks in museums perform is ultimately for the public, and we
realized that we get all of these museum
professionals in the same place but there’s
no opportunity for them to interact with
the public that they serve,” Rhodes said.
“The museum professionals found these
tracks especially helpful because they had
the opportunity to meet one-on-one with
their target audience and gather feedback.”
“The AAM conference in Houston was
the most welcoming
meeting we’ve had in
terms of physical layout of the convention
facilities and the warm
reception we received
from the people we
worked with at the
various museums.”
The Museum District members also
pulled together to play host to some
spectacular events that took place in the
evening. Attendees had the opportunity
to purchase a ticket for an event at a specific museum or a collection of museums.
On the first night of the conference, the
Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum
of Contemporary Art partnered to host a
Texas block party. The museums are located across the street from each other so
AAM members were able to go back and
forth freely between the venues, view the
collections, listen to live music and, most
importantly, network with colleagues.
“Everyone who attended the evening
events not only felt they were worthwhile
professionally, but it was a prime opportunity for the attendees from across the
country to network,” Blanton said.
Looking from the outside, it might
seem a bit strange that cultural centers
that rely on the same sources for funding
52
one+
03.12
Destination_Houston.indd 52
2/23/12 1:30 PM
0312_053.indd 53
2/14/12 11:44 AM
would be spending so much time networking and sharing information. But in these
tough economic times, Blanton says working together is the only way to survive. Museums around the country now routinely
share ideas, best practices and, for those in
the same city, frequently work cooperatively to attract visitors.
In Houston, for example, the 18 museums within the museum district each
contribute to a general fund that helps to
promote all of them. The results have been
nothing short of spectacular. In 2010, more
than 3.3 million people visited the district,
more than the total attendance of all three
of Houston’s professional sports teams
combined.
As for the museums outside the district, some are a little quirky (the Beer Can
House), some serve a very niche audience
(the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and
Museum) and others are a bit macabre (the
National Museum of Funeral History). But
like the bigger museums they are available
for group tours. The National Museum of
Funeral History is even available for corporate parties.
KEVIN WOO is a frequent One+ contributor
residing in California.
Woodlands
54
one+
03.12
Destination_Houston.indd 54
2/23/12 1:30 PM
San Luis
mpiweb.org
Destination_Houston.indd 55
55
2/23/12 5:16 PM
ALL PHOTOS: GEN CON LLC
56
one+
03.12
Destination_Indianaplolis.indd 56
2/23/12 1:52 PM
Hoosier Hospitality
Gen Con Indy 2011 saw attendance records shatter all previous
years, due to Indianapolis’ growing meetings infrastructure.
BY I LO N A K AU R E MSZ KY
SURROUNDED BY COSTUME-CLAD NINJA,
SABRE-CARRYING NARNIA TYPES and others
valiantly sporting the latest new role-playing
characters, downtown Indianapolis looked
primed for Halloween.
Except it was August, and the crowd was
there for Gen Con Indy, the biggest consumer hobby, fantasy, sci-fi and adventure game
convention to hit this side of the tumbleweed—and the organizers couldn’t be more
pleased.
In 2011, the four-day consumer event saw
attendance records shatter all previous years.
Last year, 36,733 attendees experienced
Gen Con Indy with its theme, Release Your
Inner Gamer, in full force. It helps that the
convention dubs itself the “Best Four Days
in Gaming,” but the other big bonus was Indianapolis’ newest infrastructures.
No stranger to big shows, Indianapolis
first got into the keeping-the-crowds-happy
business when the notion of high-speed automobiles became the new fangled widget that
spawned the birth of the Indianapolis Speedway. Whoever said, “If you build it, they will
come,” was right. And judging by the latest
account, that familiar phrase rings loud and
clear again.
“The city was in jeopardy of losing Gen
Con, as they were outgrowing our facilities.
They are a key reason we expanded the convention center, to retain them,” said Chris
Gahl, vice president of marketing and communications with the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association (ICVA), explaining the city’s commitment to client retention.
According to the ICVA, Gen Con generates more than US$25 million in economic
impact annually.
In addition, Indianapolis recently completed $3 billion in new tourism-related infrastructure that includes the $725 million
Lucas Oil Stadium (host venue for Super
Bowl 2012); a $275-million expanded Indiana Convention Center (566,500 square feet
of contiguous exhibit space); and the opening of the 1,006-room JW Marriott Place Indianapolis, a $450-million property (reportedly the state’s tallest hotel) that houses one
of the world’s largest Marriott ballrooms.
“Also, our current hotel core has invested
$75 million in expansions and renovations in
the last three years, polishing up for the city
hosting the Super Bowl,” Gahl said, adding
that Indianapolis has 4,700 connected hotel
rooms, more than any city in the country.
For the meeting industry, the ICVA looked
into its product inventory vault and tore out
mpiweb.org
Destination_Indianaplolis.indd 57
57
2/23/12 1:52 PM
a page from its own supplier history books,
completely redoing a new, state-of-the-art
convention center alongside a slew of hotels.
“Basically, the recent expansion of the
convention center and addition of the new
JW Marriott were critical to extending our
contract through 2015,” said Megan Culver,
Gen Con Indy marketing director and event
planner.
“You could put three ‘True Dungeons’
in the third-floor ballroom with room to
spare,” wrote Randall Porter, the keeper of
the ancient Gen Con Lore, describing the JW
Marriott venue on his blog. “Besides the larg-
58
one+
er event spaces, there are about 30 smaller
function rooms scattered on all three floors.”
Indianapolis—known for its Hoosier hospitality—warmly greeted the many fellow
gamers at its annual convention. On the first
day, more than 18,000 gamers came through
the convention center to pick up their “will
call” items at registration or purchased badges and event tickets before the show even
opened.
“With attendees from all over the world,
Gen Con Indy has become a mecca for anyone who is into hobby gaming. Attendees can
get lost in a phantasm of art exhibits, stare at
jaw-dropping costumes or, better yet, wear
one of their own, meet the movers and the
shakers in the gaming industry and check out
the newest games and get a sneak peek at the
latest editions,” said Adrian Swartout, Gen
Con’s CEO, describing Gen Con as the longest-running, best-attended gaming convention in the world, which started 44 years ago
in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, as a war games
convention. Hence the name Gen Con, the
shortened version for Geneva Convention.
Supporting local communities through
CSR programs is a huge part of the convention’s equation. A series of charity events oc-
03.12
Destination_Indianaplolis.indd 58
2/23/12 2:05 PM
“The city was in jeopardy of losing Gen Con, as
they were outgrowing our facilities. They are a key
reason we expanded the convention center, to retain them,” said Chris Gahl, vice president of marketing and communications with the Indianapolis
Convention & Visitors Association (ICVA), explaining the city’s commitment to client retention.
curred, including an annual charity auction in
which rare items were sold, with proceeds donated to a local charity.
“We take our charity involvement very seriously. It’s one of our core values to give back
and have a positive influence with the local
community. We have several dedicated events
at the show in which the proceeds go to that
year’s charity,” Swartout said, adding the latest
charity of choice was School on Wheels (SOW),
an organization that provides tutoring and educational support for homeless children in the
Indianapolis area.
In 2011, Gen Con helped raise $19,000 for
SOW. Gamers built giant structures from trading cards at Cardhalla, in which Saturday night
attendees gathered to fling change at the structures and knocked everything down.
“The first toss went to the highest bidder,
which was $1,200,” Swartout said, describing
the previous year’s event.
At the Klingon Jail and Bail, attendees saw
their friends arrested by Klingons in full gear.
“The prisoners must then convince other attendees to bail them out,” Swartout said.
With plenty of offerings and diversions ideal
mpiweb.org
Destination_Indianaplolis.indd 59
59
2/23/12 2:05 PM
for the pre- and post-convention crowd, Indy has ample activities: the
revitalized, $50 million Cultural Trail encompassing five downtown
districts; the only urban cultural state park in the country, White
River State Park, with its Venetian-style canals; and tree-lined Broad
Ripple, familiar among David Letterman fans (he grew up here).
In addition, Swartout says Indianapolis was chosen as the event
host city because of its central location, the large volume of hotel
rooms within walking distance of the convention center and the vibrant downtown business community.
Despite all these pluses, she explained the convention was sadly
outgrowing Indy. So with the writing on the wall, the Indiana Convention Center went into expansion overdrive.
“We improved upon the current Indiana Convention Center to
accommodate big conventions like Gen Con,” said Donna Hill, na-
tional sales manager at the Indiana Convention Center and Lucas
Oil Stadium. “In addition to retaining a lot of the larger meetings,
expanding the convention center allows Indianapolis to attract
new groups and events of all kinds that previously would not have
considered Indy due to lack of space.”
It helps that Indianapolis is at the crossroads of America, with
more interstate highways bisecting the state’s capital than any
other U.S. city—not to mention half of the country’s population is
essentially a day’s drive away. Hill says there isn’t another venue in
the Midwest of its size with the amount of hotel rooms connected
via skywalk.
“Attendees can check into their downtown hotel and never
have to get into their cars again until it’s time to leave,” Hill said.
“On top of that, there are tons of activities for those interested in
touring the city before or after Gen Con: the zoo, the children’s
museum, the canal walk…there’s so much to do and see in the immediate downtown area.”
In planning Gen Con Indy, Culver noted their partnership with
the ICVA was vital as the association helped forge relationships
with the downtown community and local businesses.
“From coordinating meet-and-greets with the local restaurant
community to assisting us make crazy promotional plans a reality,
their passion for what they do is apparent,” she said.
Downtown businesses rolled out the red carpet for Gen Con
attendees—restaurants offered extended hours, convention specials, collectible Hard Rock Cafe pins and, Culver says, “Some
businesses even themed their menus with a fantasy twist during
the show.”
Sponsors also played a huge role in the event’s success.
“Our 2011 co-sponsors, Mayfair Games and Wizards of the
Coast, went all out for the show,” Swartout said. “The Wizards
booth was an amazing interactive experience that delighted fans.”
The final nugget to this success story rests in the economy.
“With the nation experiencing an economic downturn over the
last few years, the hobby gaming industry has actually seen an
upturn during this time,” Swartout said. “As people tighten their
belts, they often look to more economical forms of family entertainment. More families and friends are getting together to enjoy
game nights. While your favorite games may change, it’s a hobby
that one can never outgrow.”
ILONA KAUREMSZKY is an award-winning travel journalist and
a regular One+ contributor. Follow her pursuits on Twitter and
YouTube @mycompasstv.
60
one+
03.12
Destination_Indianaplolis.indd 60
2/23/12 5:49 PM
0312_061.indd 61
2/23/12 4:19 PM
IT’S EASY
BEING
GREEN
WHEN YOU HAVE
THE RIGHT TOOLS
62
one+
03.12
BY Tara Swords
Turn to these resources to get schooled when
planning and executing sustainable events.
Y
ou know how easy it is to waste resources if you’ve ever had a backyard barbecue.
Maybe you print invitations. You stock up on bottles of water that people half-drink.
The thought of all those dirty dishes, silverware and linens leads you to the paper aisle
in the grocery store, and soon you’re spending a lot of money on what will eventually
generate a small mountain of trash.
Expand the size of your gathering to a few hundred or thousand people, and it’s
easy to see why the meeting and event industry has a reputation of waste.
Things are changing, however, and meeting professionals shouldn’t ignore sustainability practices,
says Amy Spatrisano, principal of MeetGreen and co-founder of the Green Meeting Industry Council.
“If you truly want to be working at the peak of your game and be on top of what’s going on in your
game, you have no choice but to engage in sustainability,” Spatrisano said.
mpiweb.org
63
Experts at the forefront of the CSR and sustainable meeting
and event movement say they hope green knowledge will soon
become a competitive differentiator in the industry. People who
know how to plan and execute sustainable events also know how
to save money, says Amanda Gourgue, CMP, and founder of
Meeting Revolution, a company that specializes in environmentally friendly meetings. And saving money—in any kind of economy—is always a competitive differentiator.
“There’s still that myth that green meetings cost more to do. I
wonder, how is that possible? If you’re not doing transportation
or bottled water, those are cost-saving measures right off the bat,”
Gourgue said. “If you’re reusing signage, that’s cost savings.”
Green best practices go far beyond transportation and beverage
costs: site selection, exhibit design, accommodations and many
other aspects of events are all potential areas to reduce waste and
cut expenses. But many professionals don’t know where to start
learning about those possibilities.
“There’s still a lot of misinformation and confusion in the marketplace,” Spatrisano said. “People don’t really know how to
start, and they resist change. When you’re really busy and trying
to create things with fewer resources, the thought of having to do
something different—you don’t tend to do that.”
Fortunately, plenty of education on the subject is available to
meeting professionals, much of it for free or at low-cost. Education isn’t aimed strictly at newbies, either. As Gourgue notes, best
practices are developing and evolving all the time.
“A lot of us in the CSR part of the meeting
industry have seen that people have green fatigue because they’ve heard about it so much
or they think they’re experts,” Gourgue said.
“That’s frustrating, because no one is an expert. We can all learn about it, and things
change daily.”
Here’s a roundup of opportunities to learn
more about planning and executing sustainable, responsible events.
ONLINE
MPI offers webinars and research on CSR
topics—supported by the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). In January, MPI released The State of Corporate Social Responsibility, detailing how the meeting industry
must apply CSR practices to everyday business practices and investment in long-term
change.
Multiple MPI white papers have also addressed pressing issues in meeting and event
CSR, including two supplements to The
State of Corporate Social Change: Fuel for
Change (CSR drivers) and Need Rules Apply (CSR regulation). The drivers of CSR blend personal values with business sense. MPI’s CSR research
results show that these drivers range from
strong personal beliefs in ethical practices to
commercial advantage in stronger relationships with communities, suppliers and stakeholders.
A recent free webinar focused on the
APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable
Event Standards. The APEX/ASTM standards (most of which are now available) offer
the industry’s first set of standards for environmentally sustainable meetings. Spatrisano
says the standards will finally provide professionals with an objective way to assess sustainability and help prevent people from advertising wasteful events as “green.”
“Everybody will be starting with the same
frame of reference, and that will avoid ‘green
washing,’” Spatrisano said.
64
one+
03.12
Gourgue encourages professionals to adopt the new APEX/ASTM standards
as soon as they can or face the possibility of government regulations.
“Our industry is pretty wasteful, so it will be something we self-regulate or
[regulation] will be forced upon us,” she said. “I don’t know whether people have
thought that far out, but it’s something we have to think about or we will have
people telling us how to do our jobs.”
With social media, it’s easy to integrate education into your daily routine. Let
the experts curate the news and trends that matter to the industry, and all you
have to do is follow along. On Twitter follow socially responsible event pros such
as @AVGirlMidori and @rog_simons. On Facebook, “like” green groups such as
the USGBC, Meeting Revolution and MeetGreen.
In an effort to provide the clearest and most valuable reporting of sustainability measurements, MPI’s Sustainable Event Management Tool (SEMT) is being upgraded to the Evolution platform this month! With Evolution, the SEMT enables
you to measure and report the environmental and social impact of your events
better now than ever before.
2012
Launched in 2010, the SEMT was deWorld Education Congress
July 28-31 • St. Louis, Missouri
veloped by the Triple Bottom Line Alliance with a founding investment through
the MPI Foundation by IHG, and guided by MPI’s CSR advisory council with
Join your peers July 28-31 in St.
members from Oracle, the United NaLouis for inspired CSR education
tions, IHG and Microsoft and in collabosessions and research at MPI’s
ration with the Green Meeting Industry
2012 World Education Congress. For
Council.
more information or to register now,
The tool is free to all MPI members.
visit www.mpiweb.org/WEC.
Want more CSR help?
IN PERSON
Large MPI events, such as the World Education Congress and the European Meetings & Events Conference, offer all level of CSR education and opportunities for
attendees to “test drive” and experiment with new and innovative options. Your
local MPI chapter provides ample education opportunities. Check your chapter’s
upcoming events schedule for up-to-date happenings.
The GMIC holds an annual Sustainable Meetings Conference, a four-day event
that offers different educational tracks and workshops on subjects that range
from the theoretical (“The Evolution of Green Meeting Design”) to the practical
(“Green Strategies that Create Business and Attendee Value”).
The annual Opportunity Green Business Conference is not aimed at meeting
professionals specifically, but it’s open to anyone interested in the intersection of
sustainable practices and business profits. The 2012 event unfolds Nov. 8-9 in
Los Angeles.
IN PRINT
Gourgue recommends three books to help meeting professionals understand the
value of responsible events.
Simple Steps to Green Meetings and Events, by Amy Spatrisano and Nancy J.
Wilson, provides basic education and practical steps to inject sustainability into
events at every stage of the process.
Saving Green by Going Green, by Nancy Zavada, by Amy Spatrisano and
Shawna McKinley, makes the case that green meetings save companies money and
provides step-by-step instructions for saving money.
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value and Build Competitive Advantage, by Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston, gives companies a roadmap for satisfying the need to be sustainable while meeting bottom-line demands.
TARA SWORDS specializes in business, technology, lifestyle, women’s issues and travel topics.
Certified Expertise
The LEED system (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an internationally recognized standard for
rating buildings on the sustainability of their design,
construction and operation. The U.S. Green Building
Council (USGBC) created the LEED system in 1998, and
it later established the Green Building Certification
Institute (GBCI) to provide professionals with a way to
test and certify their knowledge of the LEED system and
its principles.
Today, more meeting professionals are seeking LEED
credentials to attest to their understanding of sustainability issues, particularly when it comes to venue
selection. Professionals interested in a LEED credential
have several options.
• LEED Green Associate. The GBCI offers the LEED
Green Associate credential for professionals who support green building design, construction and operations.
This entry-level credential requires an exam and fees of
up to $250 ($200 for members).
• LEED AP with specialty. The GBCI offers five LEED
specialty certifications in different areas, including
homes, neighborhood development, operations and
maintenance and interior and building design and
construction. Applicants must sit for two exams: the
Green Associate exam and the specialty exam. Fees can
reach up to $450.
Amanda Gourgue, CMP, LEED AP, and founder of
Meeting Revolution, a company that specializes in
environmentally friendly meetings, says the LEED designation sets her apart because it’s not predominant in
the industry.
“I use my LEED to help educate people on what it is
and how to use it within the industry,” Gourgue said.
“The CMP and CMM are so well known in the industry, it
is great to have something else behind my name. It is a
great conversation starter.”
Exam preparation resources for LEED exams are
available from the USGBC and third-party providers.
GET YOUR GREEN ONLINE
Knowledge of CSR and “green” is available 24/7, free to
MPI members, at Professional Development OnDemand
(www.mpiweb.org/Portal/OnDemand).
Preview of The Complete Guide to Greener Meetings
and Events
In January, author Sam Goldblatt offered an online
discussion of his latest book, the first major textbook on
sustainable event management. Check out this webinar
to learn about the theory of sustainable meeting management, the contributions from ecotourism and other
markets and more.
APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Event
Standards
In this webinar, Katherine Manfredi, CMM, senior director, strategic event management & CSR for Conference
Partners Inc., explains the format and structure for the
standards, identifies how the standards will benefit you,
your organization and your stakeholders and more.
Decarbonating Your Events
In this recorded session, Mariela McIlwraith and Elizabeth
Henderson, of industry consultancy Meeting Change, help
meeting pros learn the science behind an event carbon
footprint, understand how they can reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and debunk some green myths.
mpiweb.org
65
66
one+
03.12
March Feature_CSR Games.indd 66
2/21/12 2:55 PM
SUSTAINABLE
GAMES
Game mechanics enable events
to fulfill genuine human needs for
building connections, happiness,
motivation, community support—
and sustainability.
BY ELIZABETH HENDERSON, M.E., DES.
S
erious fun through the integration of game mechanics can add power, impact and focus to a
meeting or event, a message I’ve been relaying
to you these past couple of months in One+.
This integration brings buzz and the thrill
of friendly competition to a conference program; builds stronger, more intense bonds among onsite
teammates; and drives concrete action on specific meeting
objectives such as corporate social responsibility and
sustainability.
Too many business meetings and events focus strictly
on motivating people to sell more, the bottom-line results
or the ubiquitous ROI. The language of business suggests a direct link from onsite programming to financial
success. Yet, there is a small community of well-respected
economists (such as Herman Daly, former chief economist in the environment department of the World Bank)
who are trying to re-align our understanding of economics and wealth with their original meaning. The original
meaning of wealth was about wellbeing, the condition of
being happy and prosperous, while economics meant the
management of a household, family or community as stewards of communal wellbeing.
Game mechanics help events adapt to fulfill genuine human needs for connections, happiness, motivation, community support and sustainability. As author, speaker and
game designer Jane McGonigal states, people turn to games
because “reality is broken.” Meetings and events are all
about creating human connections and community, both of
which grow out of the purposeful learning and action of an
onsite game.
The Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) pioneered
the use of sustainable games at its 2011 Sustainable Meetings Conference in Portland, Oregon, the first industry event
targeting meeting professionals to explicitly integrate game
mechanics, increase engagement and change behavior. It also
served to build intense onsite bonds and collaboration, a concrete example of creating human connections and a sense of
community. Since this innovation, other meetings and events
have followed, working game mechanics into their own
designs.
Event Camp Vancouver (ECV) was another one of these
early adopters. They experimented with a competitive game
to drive learning about green meetings and create socially
responsible activity in the conference environment. ECV creator Tahira Endean, director of creative and production at
mpiweb.org
March Feature_CSR Games.indd 67
67
2/21/12 4:19 PM
Cantrav Destination Management,
says organizers decided to incorporate a game into the event in a
quest to experiment with formats to
achieve their learning objectives.
“A game that could be wellintegrated without taking over the
other learning seemed ideal,” Endean said. “We knew that we wanted
to showcase responsibility from
the beginning. We wanted to show
meeting professionals that with a
few tools they could integrate sustainability into their meetings, but
more importantly, by engaging individuals in the process from beginning to end, we can take small steps
together to achieve greater good.”
Shawna McKinley, director
of sustainability with MeetGreen, joined forces with Judy
Kucharuk, principal of Dawson Creek, British Columbiabased Footprint Management Systems Inc., to create and
manage the game Get Your Green On. In McKinley’s opinion, the sustainability focus came first; the decision to create
a mobile application to deliver the game came second, for
three main reasons.
“First, the atmosphere of Event
Camp, like many events, is one of
collaboration; we didn’t have a lot of
command and control of the sustainable practices of our collaborators,”
McKinley said. “Second, we heard
from the planning committee that
there was a lot of uncertainty about
how to integrate sustainability into
events. Many people think that this
is too complicated and difficult. They
wanted simple, easy steps. Third,
we wanted to make sustainability
attendee-focused, not about what the
supply chain was doing on their behalf. We wanted to experiment with
how much influence an attendee
could have in reducing footprints,
while having fun doing it.”
Kucharuk added: “An overriding consideration through the
whole design process was to keep it fun and not overwhelming for the participant. We wanted to respect the experience of
the audience, be new and interesting, have fun and introduce
them to the concept of sustainability without being intrusive.
We wanted to influence our attendees to make better choices.”
McKinley says she wanted to demonstrate the power of
“WE WANTED TO SHOW
MEETING PROFESSIONALS
THAT WITH A FEW TOOLS
THEY COULD INTEGRATE
SUSTAINABILITY INTO
THEIR MEETINGS.
A GAME THAT COULD
BE WELL-INTEGRATED
WITHOUT TAKING OVER
LEARNING SEEMED IDEAL.”
68
one+
03.12
March Feature_CSR Games.indd 68
2/21/12 2:56 PM
attendees to contribute to event sustainability.
“So much work in event sustainability focuses on supply
chain and planner actions, and this is largely invisible to attendees,” she said. “This project allowed us to shift that focus,
to make it very visible, active and an engaging part of the attendee experience. At the end of the game, we could measure
specific reductions in our footprint because attendees voluntarily chose to do something.”
Get Your Green On attempted to shift attendee awareness
about sustainability and motivate them to make better, more
sustainable choices through a simple, fun, but also challenging interface. It also had an overt community-focused side;
for every act of green, CAD$1 was donated to the British
Columbia Cancer Foundation, up to a maximum of $1,500
($1,000 was donated by MeetGreen and $500 by Oracle’s
Paul Salinger, president of the Green Meeting Industry Council). This goal was exceeded thanks to 1,715 acts of green.
Results included the elimination of 178 single-vehicle trips
through the use of public transit and a lanyard re-use rate of
60 percent.
The wellbeing of the community through ECV has had
lasting impacts beyond the onsite game and donation to the
British Columbia Cancer Foundation. Endean asserts that its
legacy includes more awareness of the ability of game mechanics to support and enhance learning.
“We showed the participants how easy it is to integrate
sustainable choices into their own meetings and events, and
this was the desired impact,” Endean said.
McKinley added: “I would like to think that, at a minimum, we helped familiarize event professionals with a lot of
new tools: sustainability, game mechanics, mobile application
technology and social networking. By keeping things simple
and fun and making the game voluntary, people were less intimidated to try things out. If that makes them more comfortable to dive deeper into any one of these skills or tools, I would
consider that constructive.”
Get Your Green On enriched the meeting professional
community through the introduction and development of new
ideas, tools and skills and increased its capacity to improve the
wellbeing of everyone through more sustainable choices.
Kucharuk provides a thoughtful last word on using game
mechanics in meetings and events to motivate, meet human
needs and build community wellbeing by referring to an old
proverb.
“‘Give a man a fish, and you have fed him for today. Teach
a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime.’ I look at
this experience as a fishing lesson.”
ELIZABETH HENDERSON, M.E., DES., is the chief sustainability strategist
with Meeting Change, a consultancy that uses sustainability to increase
heart-share, mindshare and market-share for effective business results.
She can be reached at elizabeth@meetingchange.com.
mpiweb.org
March Feature_CSR Games.indd 69
69
2/24/12 4:51 PM
BY JENNA SCHNUER
Cathy Davidson pulls lessons
from far and wide to help us
understand how to make the
most of our right now.
MARC FORMEISTER
70
70
one+ 03.12
one+ 03.12
March Feature_Davidson Profile.indd 70
2/27/12 11:30 AM
INTERDISCIPLINARIAN
I
THE
t’s practically a requirement to raise an eyebrow at
a person who calls herself an innovator. Innovator.
It’s such a grand word. Isn’t that something we get
to brand a person, not something she gets to call
herself? Yet, every once in a while, somebody gets
a pass. Or more than a pass. Every once in a while
you come across a person who really should have
“innovator” bedazzled on all of her shirts and printed on her
license plates.
Take, for instance, Cathy Davidson. After a few minutes
of eyeballs a-jumping through her bio, “innovator” sounds
downright humble: co-founder of the 7,000-member Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory
(HASTAC); former Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies
at Duke; current English professor at Duke; author and editor of books covering territory from understanding Japanese
culture to the rise of the American novel to neuroscience.
And, considering Davidson’s inspiration for finding a way
to describe herself, it’s clear that she’s also a bit of a hoot.
“I watched America’s Next Top Model last night, and a
branding expert was on and gave each model a brand,” Davidson says. “If I had a brand, [it] would be innovator. I really
have never fit a mold including, I would say, one of the most
important molds of the 20th century, which is specialization.”
Davidson’s reality TV admission may, in many ways, help
sum her up better than her bio or a list of her books ever
could. She walks away with lessons from everything she encounters and isn’t afraid to merge the ideas from one world
into another.
Her latest book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science
of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and
Learn, looks at what we need to do to leapfrog current-day
workplaces and schools into the digital age. With all of the
new tools and technology we’ve developed, why are we still
working and learning based on, ahem, old school ways?
To the Future, Now
Innovator isn’t just Davidson’s brand, it’s a centerpiece of
her belief system. She believes innovation itself must be top
of mind for all of us if we want to put the technology we’ve
already got (and the goodies to come) to work. At the
moment, we’re playing catch up to the technology when it
should be working for us.
Take, for example, the idea “the Internet is making me
stupid. I just Google things when I need to know them.”
Ever say it? Think it? Hear somebody say it? (No shame.
It’s a common modern-day refrain. Breaking the fourth wall
here: Even the writer of this piece will cop to uttering it on
a forgetful day. Feel better?) But Davidson thinks the notion of the Internet dumbing us down is hogwash—the same
brand of hogwash that caused widespread fear when mass
production of books first became available.
mpiweb.org
March Feature_Davidson Profile.indd 71
71
2/27/12 9:40 AM
Davidson walks
away with lessons
from everything she
encounters and isn’t
afraid to merge the
ideas from one world
into another.
“It was at the time of the founding fathers when steam-powered presses and machine-made paper and ink made books available to real readers—middle class, working-class readers—for
the first time in human history,” Davidson says. “Our founding
fathers were so worried about it. What would it do to a democracy that people could read these cheap books that no preacher
or governor was translating for an audience in a very specific
way? How wild would they be if they had all these things? How
distracted would they be if they had all this stuff?”
72
one+
Turns out, they were fine. Much better than fine, even.
(Really, can you imagine our world without books?)
But that didn’t stop the powers-that-be at institutions aplenty from going all fidgety when the Internet rolled around.
“When I was Vice Provost…people were saying, oh, the Internet ruins their brains,” Davidson says. “It makes us distracted.”
All of the talk of distraction is a fear thing, she says. Kids
who haven’t known a world without the Internet don’t talk
about getting thrown off. It’s just always been their way of
03.12
March Feature_Davidson Profile.indd 72
2/27/12 9:40 AM
thinking and working. And it hasn’t made them into the
non-reading, texting monsters we’ve come to think they are.
Davidson cited a recent study that found that 15-year-old
kids today read more books outside of school than their parents read at the same age.
So if the kids can handle it, isn’t it time us adults find a
way to stop blaming and start embracing technology just that
much more? Isn’t it time we stop offering up fear and blame
and, instead, find ways to make it work?
While the mass publication of books led to the development of new institutions and ideas—compulsory education,
for one—and we’ve seen changes in our personal lives because of the Internet, our institutions haven’t kept up. Davidson thinks it’s high time we saw some rejiggering.
“What innovations can we do to our standard institutions
of work and school to make them fit the world, not of the
future, but the world we all ready live in?” she asks.
Concentrate (For a Bit)
Still not convinced that the Internet isn’t making you stupid?
OK, forget the kids. Davidson also cited a recent study on
worker productivity.
“[It found] that people who think they are unproductive
because they are spending too much time on social media
at work…are more productive than people who say, ‘I shut
out all the social media because I want to be productive at
work,’” Davidson says. “[That is] if you measure their actual
productivity by months instead of by day.”
And that’s information you can put to work.
“We know after three minutes of sustained work, sustained focus, you start losing focus. At five minutes you’re
kind of gone. Forget 20 minutes,” Davidson says.
And the fix isn’t in switching to some other task. It is, quite
possibly, Facebook (or Twitter).
“What we’re finding with social media is that a little refresher where you wander away from the computer screen
and do something fun is, in fact, better for attention than
if you try to focus on your screen—because you’re actually
not,” Davidson says.
So, how about it? Baby steps toward innovation (and doing your part to turn the workplace into a place that really
uses technology)?
Of course, there’s much more thinking to do before the
workplace revolution can take place.
“The Industrial Age needed Emily Post to teach it rules of
etiquette,” Davidson says. “It needed Frederick Winslow Taylor to teach it about productivity and workplace productivity
and efficiency. We haven’t yet invented our Emily Post for the
digital age, or the Frederick Winslow Taylor for a digital age.”
Seems Davidson might need a little more time before she’s
willing to give herself those titles. That’s OK. We’re happy to
handle that task for her.
JENNA SCHNUER is a contributing editor at Entrepreneur and writes for
magazines including Viv and National Geographic Traveler. She is based
in Nashville, Tennessee (for the moment).
mpiweb.org
March Feature_Davidson Profile.indd 73
73
2/27/12 9:40 AM
Meeting
Planner
Personas
Adding Value to the Buyer/
Seller Relationship
he evolution of the meeting industry continues. Meeting professionals increasingly respond to cut budgets
with documented ROI and seek strategic partnerships
with their suppliers to accomplish this. But, suppliers
often lack a keen understanding of each meeting professional’s individual needs and priorities when they
need more than anything to custom-tailor sales strategies.
This new normal in the meeting industry has increased the competitiveness of the sales environment as the channels meeting planners use to collaborate and communicate become more plentiful.
Traditional sources for gaining information about a venue (websites, national salespeople, CVBs, word-of-mouth) now compete
with social media, third-party tools, online travel agencies and other
review websites.
Proof of this comes from MPI’s own FutureWatch 2011, which
identified strategy, technology and relationships as key trending topics for meeting professionals to consider as they work to meet stakeholder expectations.
It’s the third of these trends, professional relationships, that
spurred the research herein. The MPI Foundation commissioned
Vantage Strategy to investigate methods for enhancing buyer-supplier
relationships. Vantage built a framework based on psychographics,
which is commonly used in consumer marketing to help firms make
emotional connections with consumers by gaining a deeper understanding of their underlying attitudes, opinions and preferences.
The resulting study created a psychographic program designed specifically for meeting professionals. The aim: to “personify” meeting
planners using key attitudes that differentiate them from each other.
These meeting planner personas combine planners with similar attitudes into buying groups, so that suppliers can better tailor their
sales and marketing efforts to individual planners.
T
Members can read the study
in its entirety for free. Visit
www.mpiweb.org/store/5625.
74
one+
According to FutureWatch 2011:
TECHNOLOGY. “Technology, it
seems, has finally gone mainstream in an industry that has
long pushed back against what
was viewed once as a direct
threat to in-person events. Meeting professionals maintain that
face-to-face meetings are far better equipped to forming lasting
relationships, business partnerships and revolutionary ideas but
acknowledge the sufficiency of
online meetings, especially in some
sectors such as education.”
STRATEGY. “An increasing number of meeting professionals will
embrace SMM programs in the
near term. Budget limits and
organizational expectations make
‘strategy’ imperative, as meeting
professionals begin to define and
develop meetings and events as
expenditures, which must in turn
produce acceptable returns—in
education, sales and/or morale.
RELATIONSHIPS: “During the past
two years, the global financial
crisis forced meeting planners
and suppliers to work together to
address budgets, cancellations,
attrition, service levels, property
maintenance and staffing. Planners and suppliers who were able
to resolve issues together proved
the most successful.”
03.12
Buy-Sell Relationship Feature 0312_kmulti.indd 74
2/27/12 10:59 AM
INNOVATORS
Innovators are a lucrative meeting segment. They highly value creativity in
service and an understanding of their
client’s objectives. Innovators are open
to using new technologies such as event
management tools. They are comfortable using a multitude of communication
channels including phone, email, text
message and social media. However,
don’t discount face-to-face interaction—
it’s their preferred mode of communication. They expect tailored and strategic
partnerships. Service is much more
important than cost. They seek innovative and creative ways to create value for
their clients and expect the same from
their supplier-partners.
Engaged Innovators
Average Age
48
Key Decision Makers
46%
Salesperson Very Important to
Success
71%
Plan Over 20 Meetings a Year
32%
Plan Meetings Internationally
47%
Social Media Important to Work
73%
Win Innovator Business
20%
Creativity in service
An understanding of my client’s objectives
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
How to Engage Innovators
• Perform a diagnostic on their shortand mid-term objectives, goals,
concerns and opportunities
• Identify interests, likes and dislikes
• Brainstorm innovative events and
partnerships to achieve their objectives
LOYALISTS
Loyalists are collaborators who prefer
predictability in their lives and careers.
They place high value on supplier responsiveness and transparency. Loyalists
typically have large networks of suppliers that they work with. They are loyal
to those relationships and prefer to work
with people they know and trust. This
can be a difficult segment to penetrate,
but it provides higher lifetime value for
suppliers who provide the value they
seek. Service and stability are paramount. Loyalists want clearly defined
expectations and will measure your
value against the achievement of those
expectations.
4%
2%
0%
Innovators
Loyalists
Analysts
Independents
Achievers
Established and Loyal
Average Age
46
Key Decision Makers
32%
Salesperson Very Important to
Success
68%
Plan Over 20 Meetings a Year
34%
Plan Meetings Internationally
44%
Social Media Important to Work
68%
Win Loyalist Business
Prompt attention/responses to emails/calls
Complete transparency
45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
How to Engage Loyalists
• Prepare a detailed scope of work in
writing to avoid surprises
• Enforce short-time response targets
• Ask if you are meeting expectations
10%
5%
0%
Innovators
Loyalists
Analysts
Independents
Achievers
mpiweb.org
Buy-Sell Relationship Feature 0312_kmulti.indd 75
75
2/27/12 11:00 AM
Careful Buyers
Average Age
ANALYSTS
44
Key Decision Makers
33%
Salesperson Very Important to
Success
34%
Plan Over 20 Meetings a Year
29%
Plan Meetings Internationally
37%
Social Media Important to Work
46%
Win Analyst Business
50%
Best offer, first time
Price concessions
45%
40%
35%
30%
Analysts are an analytical group. Suppliers should be prepared for price
concessions. Analysts prefer simple
and straightforward approaches to the
planning process. Competitive price is
the key to gaining Analyst business. Any
claim of success must be validated by
data, so providing examples of previous successes can validate the sales
proposition. Suppliers should automate
the RFP process and showcase delivery
by exposing Analysts to real-time events
at their venues/properties.
How to Engage Loyalists
• Prepare proposals with best offers
(no-bargaining policy)
• Enforce short-time response targets
• Ask if you are meeting expectations
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Innovators
Loyalists
Analysts
Independents
Achievers
Stalwarts
Average Age
INDEPENDENTS
51
Key Decision Makers
34%
Salesperson Very Important to
Success
62%
Plan Over 20 Meetings a Year
28%
Plan Meetings Internationally
48%
Social Media Important to Work
49%
Win Independent Business
Price concessions
Understanding of Salesperson’s role
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
Innovators
76
one+
Loyalists
Analysts
Independents
Achievers
Independents are tenured meeting
planners who value stability. These
planners can be difficult for suppliers to reach, as they prefer to make
decisions more independently than the
other personas. This segment needs to
clearly see the “win” and understand
how the sales proposition has been
tailored to amplify success. Suppliers
who provide support, but defer to the
experience and decision-making skills
of the meeting planner win out. And
peer endorsement is key. Independents
are interested in data to support any
and all claims and look for guarantees
that are both meaningful and realistic.
Whenever possible, involving a senior
executive in the negotiations will help
solidify the deal.
How to Engage Independents
• Perform diagnostics on their shortand mid-term objectives, goals,
concerns and opportunities
• Identify their interests, likes
and dislikes
• Brainstorm innovative events and
partnerships to achieve their objectives
03.12
Buy-Sell Relationship Feature 0312_kmulti.indd 76
2/27/12 11:00 AM
ACHIEVERS
Young Achievers
Average Age
Achievers are ambitious and value financial success and validation of their work.
They expect personalized service and
price concessions. Forming relationships
with the young planners in this segment
will pay dividends later as they move into
roles with increased responsibility and
larger annual budgets. Achievers prefer
the convenience of email communications
to phone or face-to-face meetings. In
order to gain their trust, suppliers must
clearly communicate simple and convenient options. Achievers want suppliers
who can support them in the planning
process and demonstrate a concise
analysis of ROI that can be used to sell to
management.
34
Key Decision Makers
25%
Salesperson Very Important to
Success
48%
Plan Over 20 Meetings a Year
29%
Plan Meetings Internationally
38%
Social Media Important to Work
51%
Win Achiever Business
Price concessions
More personalized service
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
How to Engage Loyalists
• Perform diagnostics on short- and
mid-term objectives, goals,
concerns and opportunities
• Plan for personalized service
• Give regular updates in writing and
program phone calls
• Clearly express price concessions and
value-add
0%
Innovators
Loyalists
Analysts
Independents
Achievers
Prospecting
Qualification
Needs Analysis
Value Proposition
ID Decision Maker
Perception
Analysis
Proposal/
Price Quote
Innovators
Mostly Boomers
Face to Face
Important
Creative, Highly
Values Social
Media
Excited by New
Technology
46% are the Decision Maker
Values Service
Over Price, Most
Trusting of Salespeople
Faces Highest
Pressure on
Budget Constraints
Loyalists
Mostly Boomers
Previous Relationships Very
Important
Complete
Transparency,
Punctuality
Short Response
Times
32% are the
Decision Maker
Prefers
Predictability
Ensure Quote is
in Writing
Analysts
Gen X and
Boomers
Not Extremely
Trusting of
People
Price-Sensitive
Very Analytical,
Interested in
Details
33% are the Decision Makers
Prefers to Make
Decisions Independently
Most Proposals
for Long-Term
Future Events
Independents
Older Boomers
Not Interested in
Technology
Nearly 50% of
Meetings International
Best Offer, First
Time
34% are the
Decision Maker
Prefers to Make
Decisions
Independently
Most Proposals
for Long-Term
Future Events
Achievers
Mostly Gen X/Y
Not Extremely
Trusting of Salespeople
Having Very Small
Teams, Requires
More Support
Most Personalized Service
25% are the
Decision Makers
Prefers
E-Communication
Favors Price
Concessions
This table presents a basic framework for applying the personas on an organizational level, helping suppliers apply the process to their
current sales processes.
PERSONAS ACTUATE
This is an excerpt from
“Meeting Planner Personas:
Adding Value to the Buyer/
Seller Relationship.” To read the
report in its entirety, visit www.
mpiweb.org/portal/research.
This study wasn’t just designed as an informational tool, but as a way for
suppliers to increase ROI by better understanding where to invest resources
and how to deploy those resources. Now suppliers can:
• Create a more robust understanding of each persona group
• Understand the research’s strategic implications internally
• Increase ROI by training sales to better target, communicate,
build relationships and close deals
• Identify unique personas targets by scoring prospects and
clients
mpiweb.org
Buy-Sell Relationship Feature 0312_kmulti.indd 77
77
2/27/12 11:00 AM
>
YOUR COMMUNITY
ECOS Off to a Fast Start in Year 3
N
ow in its third year, Events for Communities of Sustainability, ECOS, is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program
launched in Canada by the MPI Foundation,
MPI Canada chapters and AVW-TELAV. It was
initiated as an outline to support sustainability
in the communities where MPI members and
partners live and do business.
The essence of ECOS is building human
connections to the local and global marketplace
in which business is done, which ties in well
with MPI’s overall mission.
Susan Prophet, chair for the MPI Foundation Canada Council, who is spearheading
In addition, the Toronto Chapter had their
annual gala and fundraiser in December. The
chapter was able to contribute CAD$13,500
to Breakfast with Santa—the highest single
contribution to date.
MONTRÉAL-QUEBÉC
In December, 16 MPI Montréal-Quebéc and
AVW-TELAV volunteers, partnering with Sun
Youth for the third year, gathered at the Sun
Youth/Jeunesse au Soliel warehouse for its
annual food bank drive. As Sun Youth’s most
popular program, nearly 18,000 people received
food hampers this year.
EDMONTON
MPI Edmonton had its first ECOS project at
its annual Christmas event, which involved
collecting toys for less fortunate children in the
Edmonton area. Toys were collected for Santa’s
Anonymous, an organization that collects
and distributes toys for 25,000 children in the
Edmonton area.
ATLANTIC CANADA
The MPI Atlantic Canada Chapter raised more
than $25,000 to help provide Christmas gifts
and gift certificates for the 104 families whose
loved ones have been out of work since the
White Point Beach Resort’s main lodge burned
down in mid-November.
MPI Atlantic Canada Chapter also sorted
through 10 pallets of food at the Feed Nova
Scotia reclamation warehouse, which equated
to more than 1,000 pounds of food.
the ECOS program this year, says there is not
much awareness within the member community outside of Canada, and she’s trying to
change that.
The program is based on the principles of
people, planet and profit and focused on supporting community groups related to food, water, shelter and education. The 2011-12 ECOS
term has taken off with great initiatives.
Here are a few examples of the ECOS
project in action:
TORONTO
This year’s project is to host a charity bike build
in the spring, supporting the Boys and Girls
Club of Toronto.
CALGARY
Over the holidays, the MPI Greater Calgary
Chapter coordinated a massive effort with the
Calgary Interfaith Food Bank. With 56 pick-ups
over two days, the team collected more than
10,300 pounds of food to support less-advantaged community members.
OTTAWA
The MPI Ottawa Chapter held its annual charity auction and dinner in early February at the
CE Centre. The chapter was able to raise about
$26,000 for the Ottawa Network for Education. The chapter used a multitude of avenues to
raise the money, such as a silent auction, a live
auction and raffle tickets.
Prophet says that MPI members tell her
that they feel good about the projects they’re
involved with.
“[Members] want to be a part of it,”
Prophet said. “One thing that resonates is that
everybody leaves feeling really good about what
they’ve achieved and who they’ve helped.”
Prophet hopes that with the success the
ECOS program continues to have, the project
will spread stateside to other MPI chapters and
eventually create a global ECOS mission.
“We want to engage our fellow chapters
around the world to embrace ECOS and join
us in making a difference,” she said. “Canada’s
throwing out a challenge to them!”
Read more from Prophet’s blog at www.
mpiweb.org/ecos.
Get Involved and Volunteer With MPI
Online applications to serve on an MPI committee, advisory council or task force for 2012-13
open April 2. Applications for international service are due by 9 p.m. CST April 20. Members currently serving on MPI committees, advisory councils and task forces will not need to complete
new applications. Volunteer evaluation and interest forms for current volunteers will be distributed in early April, and all member appointments will be finalized by late May.
Newly appointed members will assume positions July 1. Apply at mpiweb.org. For more
information, contact Janice Parker at (972) 702-3048 or jparker@mpiweb.org.
78
one+
0 3.12
pg78-79 MPI Foundation 0312.indd 78
2/27/12 3:47 PM
>>
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Foundation Moving Forward with CSR
As more and more organizations make CSR a
business imperative, meetings and events are
being increasingly impacted by new expectations for sustainable and socially responsible
programs. The MPI Foundation is in the midst
of groundbreaking solutions to ensure meeting
and event professionals are equipped with the
right knowledge and skills to be successful.
In January, MPI released its second report
on the state of CSR. It was the second of such
h
reports following a three-year study, which is
part of the Thought Leader Initiative funded byy
IHG and the Foundation.
The second part of the study involved
in-depth interviews with policymakers and
industry leaders to establish consensus around
d
key issues.
Some of the findings: anti-corruption is an
emerging theme within the industry that will
drive CSR, care must be taken with terminology
gy
le
as sustainable and CSR are not interchangeable
and demand for CSR regulation is growing in
mainland Europe.
Along with the second “State of CSR”
report, there are two supplementary white
papers, which highlight regulation and what
drives CSR. These documents are available at
www.mpiweb.org/research.
CONTRIBUTORS The MPI Foundation thanks the following
organizations and individuals for their generous support.
THOUGHT LEADER
AIBTM
Freeman AV
Gaylord Entertainment
IHG
Jumeirah
Marriott International
Omni Hotels
PSAV
INNOVATOR
Dallas CVB
Hyatt Hotels
Las Vegas Sands Corp.
Rosen Hotels and Resorts
Wyndham Hotel Group
ADVOCATE
Abu Dhabi Tourism
Authority
AT&T Park
AVT Event Technologies
Caesars Windsor
Canadian Tourism
Commission
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
IMEX
Mediasite by Sonic Foundry
SWANK Audio Visual
Universal Orlando Resorts
GATEKEEPER
Encore Productions
HelmsBriscoe
Maxvantage
ASSOCIATE
Associated Luxury Hotels
International
KSL Resorts
Philadelphia CVB
Tourisme Montréal
CONTRIBUTOR
Cantrav Services
Chicago Convention
& Tourism Bureau
ConferenceDirect
CHAPTERS
Aloha
Arizona Sunbelt
Atlantic Canada
Chicago Area
Greater Edmonton
Indiana
Kentucky Bluegrass
Middle Pennsylvania
New England
New Jersey
Northern California
Oklahoma
Orange County California
Oregon
Philadelphia Area
South Florida
Southern California
St. Louis Area
Tampa Bay Area
Texas Hill Country
Virginia
Washington State
WestField
Wisconsin
Green Key Meetings Program
Events—from small meetings to large-scale
conventions—consume energy, produce waste and
create emissions. Hotels and planners alike are
becoming increasingly aware of the impact these
gatherings have on the environment. Which is
why the MPI Foundation Canada and Green Key
Global created the Green Key Meetings Program,
which has been adopted worldwide.
Green Key Meetings offers comprehensive
assessments designed to provide travel, meeting
and conference planners with a sense of a hotel’s
commitment level to being ‘green.’ Hoteliers can
register to find out just how sustainable they are,
and, in turn, they are provided with a Green Key
Meetings eco rating on a scale of one to five.
Meeting planners can visit the site and see how
properties perform
in six conference and
meeting areas: core
areas (carbon, energy,
waste, water and air
quality), communication (information and
training), activities
(purchasing, auditing
and community), people (health), exhibitions and
audio and visual.
Visit www.greenkeyglobal.com to find out
more about Green Key Meetings and what it has
to offer.
mpiweb.org
pg78-79 MPI Foundation 0312.indd 79
79
2/27/12 2:16 PM
>
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
In partnership with
Inside the February 2012
BUSINESS BAROMETER
Big Growth
Growth in business, employment and competition continues in an environment of limited budgets, economic uncertainty and rapidly
evolving technologies, prompting many meeting professionals to assess their business models, work methods and expectations.
Enormous confidence remains in the value of face-to-face meetings, though there is spreading acceptance of technologies that expand
virtual access to meeting content and program information.
Current business conditions compared to the previous year
How has your attendance changed, compared to a year ago?
Top Trends
Employment Trends
Short lead times ................................................................ 11% (8%)
Global economic uncertainty............................................. 9% (16%)
More/better use of technology............................................9% (7%)
Low budgets ........................................................................9% (5%)
Need to prove value ............................................................6% (2%)
—(%) December 2011
Increasing
Prices
(mainly U.S.)
6%
In the Business Barometer,
Your Peers Said:
“
The inability to prove the value of individual
meetings is rapidly coming into question. This
lack of proof is driving budgets in this segment
down, and we’re working to prove the value of
meetings.
”
80
one+
Dec 2011: 1%
Feb 2012: 6%
“
“
There is uncertainty around the
European economic situation. So, we are
aligning more resources to specialized
industry needs, as well as advancing data
management and business intelligence
capabilities.
”
Budgets are not back
to what they were before;
We’re trying to gain more
sponsorship for certain
aspects of the meeting to
cover/help meet increased
supplier costs.
”
0 3.12
pg080 MPI Research Insights 0312.indd 80
2/27/12 1:32 PM
0312_081.indd 81
2/24/12 4:38 PM
MPI STRATEGIC PARTNERS
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE
GLOBAL PARTNERS
MPI MARKETSMART BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
EUROPEAN PARTNERS
TM
ELITE PARTNERS
PREMIER PARTNERS
SIGNATURE PARTNERS
PREFERRED PARTNERS
CHOICE PARTNERS
MarketSmart Partners
MarketSmart Business Solutions is the first fully integrated program designed to heighten your reach and provide optimal visibility
among meeting and event professionals. By partnering with MPI, your business will be front and center among the industry’s largest
worldwide community of more than 23,000 members—decision makers who have $16.9 billion in buying power to purchase your
products and services. This partnership provides you with an exclusive opportunity to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with MPI
members in ways that are best suited to meet the individual needs of your business. Bottom line? Increased sales potential, higher revenue.
TM
82
one+
03.12
pg82 Sponsors 0312.indd 82
2/27/12 5:06 PM
SPECIAL SECTION
Arizona
PAGES 84-85
Visit Phoenix
PAGES 86-87
Metro Tucson CVB
Arizona Special Section.indd 83
2/27/12 9:24 AM
ARIZONA SPECIAL SECTION
Visit Phoenix
visitphoenix.com
T HE PROMISED LAND
Not so long ago, meeting planners who
visited downtown Phoenix for a site
inspection could expect to end their day
with messed-up hair and dusty shoes.
That’s because they donned a lot of hard
hats and toured a parade of construction
sites.
No more.
Where once there was a giant hole—
“Grand Canyon South” some called it—
now stands a striking convention center
inspired by the colors and textures of the
real Grand Canyon.
Where once there were two city blocks
of grit now sits an entertainment district
filled with restaurants, lounges and retail
shops.
Where once there was a snaking line of
jumbled concrete now glides the nation’s
newest light-rail transportation system.
There’s a reason more than 15 million
visitors flock to Greater Phoenix each year,
and that same reason translates to high
attendance at meetings and conventions:
Phoenix consistently delivers memorable
bang for the buck.
Now, thanks to a billion-dollar metamorphosis in Phoenix’s urban core, convening in America’s sixth-largest city packs
more value than ever.
costs only $1.75, and the sleek trains stop
at attractions such as the Phoenix Art
Museum, the Heard Museum and Chase
Field.
Where once there was
a giant hole—“Grand
Canyon South” some
called it—now stands
a striking convention
center inspired by the
colors and textures of the
real Grand Canyon.
is a dining and entertainment district
called CityScape, a two-block concentration of restaurants, bars and fashion
retailers within easy walking distance
of the Phoenix Convention Center.
CityScape is also home to Lucky Strike
Lanes and the Stand Up Live comedy
club, and it’s bordered on three sides by
Phoenix’s new light rail transit system.
LIGHT RAIL
Light rail connects downtown’s core
to Sky Harbor International Airport, a
nearby corridor of independent restauCITYSCAPE
rants and the neighboring communiThe latest addition to downtown Phoenix ties of Tempe and Mesa. A ticket to ride
84
one+
PHOENIX CONVENTION CENTER
The Phoenix Convention Center’s airy
environs include three ballrooms, 99
meeting rooms, an IACC-certified Executive Conference Center and an adjoining
performance hall. Thoughtful touches
include air-conditioned loading bays,
exhibit halls with pre-scored floors and
outdoor meeting areas that capitalize on
Phoenix’s sunny weather. The LEED-certified campus features solar panels and a
water-harvesting garden, and the catering staff can feed 360 people every eight
minutes.
DOWNTOWN HOTELS
There are 60,000 hotel rooms in Greater
Phoenix, and nearly 3,000 of them are
within walking distance of the convention center. The 1,000-room Sheraton
Phoenix Downtown opened in fall 2008,
but it’s not the newest hotel in town;
that honor (for now) goes to the Westin
Phoenix Downtown, which features 242
super-spacious guest rooms designed to
meet the needs of the upscale business
traveler. Coming soon is the Hotel Palomar, a 250-room boutique hotel that will
debut within CityScape this summer.
ATTRACTIONS & DAYTRIPS
Exploring the Sonoran Desert’s horizons
will broaden yours. Phoenix’s museums
variously showcase Native American culture, global instruments, fine art and
children’s whims. You can stroll through
a botanical garden dedicated to the
desert plants of the world or learn racing skills at school for high-performance
driving. And remember, Phoenix is the
heart of the Grand Canyon State. The
road trip to the world’s most glorious
gorge takes only three-and-a-half hours,
and the famous red rocks of Sedona lie
in between.
03.12
Arizona Special Section.indd 84
2/27/12 9:25 AM
0312_085.indd 85
2/14/12 11:57 AM
ARIZONA SPECIAL SECTION
Metro Tucson CVB
tucsononus.org
authentic and memorable experiences.
Tucson’s history—deeply rooted in Native
American, Spanish, Mexican and Western
influences—and the region’s spectacular
and captivating scenery are the perfect
backdrop for any meeting. Tucson’s real
and rugged ranches, the natural surroundings of our luxury resorts, the real
elegance of our historic hotels and unique
venues at the city’s best-known attractions create incredible, unforgettable
meeting spaces.
From airplane hangars and working
cattle ranches to desert gardens and
vaudeville theaters, Tucson’s meeting
options reach far beyond the ballroom.
It’s these elements that keep meeting
planners coming back.
From airplane hangars and working cattle
ranches to desert gardens and vaudeville
theaters, Tucson’s meeting options reach far
beyond the ballroom.
REAL SERVICE
A commitment to genuine personal
service is the hallmark of the convention sales team at the Metropolitan
Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau
(MTCVB). Tucson’s competitive strategy
is about being exceptional; and its brand
differential is an authentic, customized
experience. The bureau’s dedicated and
experienced team of national sales managers, with a longstanding reputation
for excellence, passionately promotes
the authenticity of Tucson and southern
Arizona as the real southwest.
“Outstanding service is the product of
our people,” said Graeme Hughes, director of sales at the MTCVB. Relationship
capital is the key foundation of our brand.
This ingrained and sustainable strategy
has allowed the MTCVB to retain loyal clients, attract new customers and remain
competitive in a heavily crowded marketplace for meetings and conventions.
REAL SOUTHWEST
Tucson’s brand promise is delivering
86
one+
REAL COLLABORATION, REAL SAVINGS
Our new “Real Collaboration, Real Savings” campaign was launched this year
to inspire event planners to meet in
Tucson. Our clients are realizing real
savings—up to $15,000. Planners can
earn credits to their master accounts by
booking peak rooms with a two-night
minimum stay. Savings can be tripled by
booking multiple events.
REAL POTENTIAL
Geared to aid meeting planners who are
looking to have real choices in ensuring
a successful meeting or event, “Real Collaboration, Real Savings” has yielded
exceptional results for the bureau, its
partners and clients. Complemented by
Tucson’s “You Fly, We Buy” program,
the bureau’s convention sales team can
help you book the perfect space, reserve
rooms and make your meeting run
smoothly—at no cost to you. Discover
why eight out of 10 meeting planners
choose Tucson.
For more information or to fill out
an RFP, visit tucsononus.com, call (800)
638-8350, extension 134, or email great
meetings@visittucson.org.
03.12
Arizona Special Section.indd 86
2/27/12 9:25 AM
0312_087.indd 87
2/14/12 12:06 PM
>
>
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
“
The brain doesn’t know how to
mono-task. Multitasking is not being able to
rely on all of one’s habits to do all of the things
one needs to do at a given moment. Sometimes
it is inefficient, but distraction is your friend. If
you’re feeling distracted, there’s a reason, and
it’s time to figure out why. Maybe your habits
are no longer efficient, or maybe you’re at the
moment of a breakthrough, or it may be that
something is wrong in your working conditions or the problem you’re trying to solve. If
you’re on cruise control, mono-tasking away,
you’re not going to see the problem. Multitasking can take you off track, but it can also
avoid collision.”
To read more about Cathy Davidson and
her lessons for making the most out of
right now, turn to Page 70.
88
one+
0 3.12
pg088 Until We Meet Again.indd 88
2/23/12 5:38 PM
0312_C3.indd C3
2/13/12 3:00 PM
0312_C4.indd C4
2/15/12 3:40 PM