January 2011 Issue: Live!

The digital edition of our January issue is now up -- with a distinct and wholly different cover image, at least for us. Our cover story -- "Can Meetings Save the World?," by Barbara Palmer -- looks at "big-tent, big-idea" meetings that "bring together the world's leading thinkers to address its biggest problems," so it seemed appropriate to capture that in words. Lots and lots of words. Other highlights in this issue:

"No Small Change, Part 2": We warned you last month that we dug up too much good material for our cover story -- about meetings that have used incremental change to big effect -- to get it all in one article. So here's the rest: profiles of nine more meetings, by Michelle Russell and Barbara Palmer.

CMP Series: It's two series in one -- using "Getting Buy-In," an article written by Jennifer W. Brown, CMP, for our groundbreaking CMP Series, to launch a new series on Strategic Meetings Management (SMM). First up: how to start an SMM Program. And rounding out this month's CMP Series is "Corporate Planner Table Talk," by William F. Reed, CMP, which parses the notes from a recent Experient Breakfast conversation about SMM.

Plenary: This month's lead article looks at a new report from the Center for American Progress that puts a price tag on the meetings business that Arizona has lost because of its controversial new immigration law. You'll also find the usual mix of fun, interesting items through the rest of the section -- including a Group Shot from the Cancun Underwater Museum; a There's a Meeting for That? slideshow of the International Alchemy Conference; a Post Con on the inaugural GOVgreen Conference and Exposition; and Convene on Site reports from Florida Encounter, the Gaylord Opryland grand reopening, and Allure of the Seas -- the largest cruise ship in the world.

International Meetings: The debate endures with "Cross-Cultural Expectations, Continued" -- the fifth column in this exchange! -- in which Suzanne Schlanger, CMP, lays it on the (boardroom) table: "It is not always easy to make the client understand why the American and European properties can offer space for free and the Asian properties can't."

Meeting Management -- Social Media: Facebooked up? Twittered off? LinkedIn -- and out? David Nour, the author of Relationship Economics, ConnectAbility, and The Entrepreneur's Guide to Raising Capital, offers this glimmer of hope: "If last year was about experimenting with this shiny new toy called social networking, 2011 will be about actually getting ROI from your efforts."

Other Duties as Assigned: As always, we end with a smile -- compliments of VFW's Vanessa Kane, CMP, CMM, and her hands-on approach to frozen shrimp.

Look for the text-only version of the January issue on our homepage next week.