President Obama: 'I love Vegas!'

Is it time to declare victory in the war against the AIG Effect? A major battle was won on Friday when President Obama stood before the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and said:

Now, before I go any further, let me set the record straight: I love Vegas! (Applause.) There you go. Always have. Love Vegas. (Laughter.) Enjoy myself every time I've gotten an opportunity to visit. In fact, just last night, I drew a flush on the river and cut the budget deficit in half. (Laughter.) Some of you know I can play some poker. (Laughter.)

Now, I did receive a little bit of heat, I know, from maybe some in this room, when I said that folks shouldn't blow their college savings in Vegas. That doesn't mean I don't love Vegas. It wasn't meant to be a shot. I think everybody here would agree that the only place where people should spend their college savings is in college. (Applause.) There's no contradiction there.

But, look, I understand how hard things have been here. In the worst economic turmoil that we've faced in generations, Las Vegas has been at the eye of the storm. When the economy suffers, the tourism industry is deeply affected; in fact, you've seen perhaps the steepest drop in tourism in the state's history. And I know things are starting to bounce back, but it's been tough going. When folks are hurting and don't have the money to spend on a night out or a weekend getaway, that hurts the broader economy as well. So what happens in Vegas reflects what's happening across America.

Outstanding. Now we just need someone to develop a foolproof, universally accepted equation for calculating and communicating ROI for events.

Olympic Backstage Passes

Tourism Vancouver CEO Rick Antonson is giving planners a daily "mistakes and all" peek behind the scenes at the Olympic Winter Games, on a video blog created especially for planners. We talked previously to Antonson about the city's record-setting sustainability initiatives -- to receive the video blog, subscribe to http://meetingsvancouver.com/

Vancouver goes for Gold, wins Platinum

In our February issue, Convene wrote about the historic inclusion of Canada’s First Nations as hosts of the Games. The city has made history again: this week, the Vancouver Convention Centre -- site of the International Media Centre where 10,000+ media will be located during the Games -- became the first convention center in the world to earn the LEED Platinum Rating.

Sustainability will be one of the legacies of the games, said Rick Antonson, president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver “There is no pride in being part of an event that creates immense clutter and garbage when massive portions of it could be recycled or not created in the first place,” he said.

“Conferences and events have a long history of leaving this downside, and leadership in the convention and meetings businesses in more recent years has rightly taken to the task of reversing that damage. Staging something like the Olympics requires more that a philosophy of environmental responsibility; it requires action.”

In Vancouver, that includes a recycling ethos that addresses everything from home garbage pickup to every hotel room. And its new (now platinum) convention centre, where every aspect of its construction, from its living roof to its use of recycled rain water has been considered from the viewpoint of sustainability.

The city also has reduced its corporate emissions for its own operations and facilities by an impressive 33 per cent below 1990 levels – which is 13 percent more than it had targeted. The city of Vancouver aims to be carbon neutral in its own operations and facilities by 2012 and is establishing 2,010 new garden plots as a legacy of the Games.

None of the athletes gathering in Vancouver trained to win a bronze medal — and neither has the city, Antonson added. When the Games leave town “what we will have left will be our reputation,” he said. “Every aspect of what we do, every service -- from taxis to restaurants, from retail to volunteers -- needs to be of the gold standard.”

Sending Soap to Haiti

Planners and suppliers who stayed in conference hotels at PCMA's 2010 Annual Meeting in Dallas can take some comfort in knowing that they already are part of the tremendous relief effort mobilizing for Haiti.

At all five conference hotels, housekeepers like Elizabeth Cruz, from the Hyatt Regency Dallas, collected used soap and partially used shampoo during the meeting to donate to Clean the World, an Orlando-based organization which will sterilize the soap and send it to Haiti. (Along with the Hyatt Regency, The Fairmont Dallas, Hilton Anatole, Sheraton Dallas, and the Adolphus collected soap.)

Clean the World is focused on one thing: providing soap to Haiti, executive director Shawn Seipler said on Wednesday, the day after the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince. "As relief efforts begin and, undoubtedly, will last for years to come, proper hygiene and the need for soap is essential."

Studies by the World Health Organization show that hand washing with soap reduces the acute respiratory illness and diarrheal disease, both leading causes of death for children globally, Seipler told Convene last month. Even before the earthquake, many Haitian children lacked access to soap.

Hats off to Clean the World and to all the hotels for participating — even before they knew how very desperate the need in other parts of the world would become this week.

Time to Make the Donuts … Er, Coffee

What’s the best aspect of PCMA’s Annual Meeting? For this writer, it’s the chance to meet real live meeting planners and hear some of the great — and often hilarious — stories they have to tell.

My first chance encounter at PCMA 2010 was on Saturday morning, in line at the Fairmont Dallas hotel for a shuttle over to the Dallas Convention Center. There I met Carol Crossland, manager of travel & meetings for Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin’ Brands, which encompasses Dunkin’ Donuts — what America (and Convene’s editor-in-chief, it turns out) runs on — and Baskin Robbins.

After we boarded the bus, I asked Carol — who was off to attend the day-long Executive Edge session on complex negotiation and deal-making that was being led by Professor Deepak Malhotra of Harvard Business School — whether or not they always had to have Dunkin’ Donuts coffee at their own meetings.

“It depends,” Carol said, “but the answer is usually yes. If it’s just a small internal meeting, it might not matter, but if it’s a larger franchisee or sales meeting, we always have to have Dunkin’ coffee.”

Carol told me that her team inquires with the host hotel about the exact make and model of its coffee urns. Then, she passes that information along to Dunkin’s Coffee Excellence team, which determines the exact right blend, grind, and coffee/water ratio that will ensure the coffee comes out tasting exactly like what you’d buy in a Dunkin’ Donuts shop.

She is also adamant that no Starbucks branding — including logo’ed cups, coffee urns, and Tazo Tea, a Starbucks brand — is visible at Dunkin’ meetings. This is so important to Carol that it is a prominent provision in her contracts.

But problems can arise. For one, occasionally the meeting location’s catering staff will not have properly cleaned and disinfected its urns, which can corrupt the ideal taste of Dunkin’ coffee. When that happens, it’s time for Carol to roll up her sleeves and — literally — make the coffee.

“Before one meeting,” she told me, “the hotel’s convention services manager and I were in the kitchen personally washing the urns and then brewing the coffee, so that it would taste perfect.” That’s just one of the many ways in which high-level PCMA planner members demonstrate their commitment to ideal meetings.

Soon, though, our chance encounter came to a close, as Carol had to hop off the bus to hone her negotiating skills at Executive Edge — which left me wondering whether or not their meetings required all 31 Baskin Robbins flavors, as well.

Downward Facing Dollar

The low value of the dollar against the euro and yen is forcing meeting planners to develop a new skill -- foreign currency trading, PCMA member Leigh Wintz, CAE, executive director of Soroptimist International of the Americas, told the New York Times in a story about navigating the dollar's ups and (mostly) downs when planning international meetings. And to act as hedge managers: Gregg Talley, president and CEO of Talley Management Group, Inc., advised event planners to use foreign currency contracts as a way to mitigate the dollar's fluctuations.

The story drew on the expertise of additional PCMA members, including analysis by Michael Payne, executive vice president of SmithBucklin; Phelps Hope, vice president for meetings and expositions for Kellen Meetings; Brenda Anderson, chief executive of SITE; and Brad Weaber, president of Courtesy Associates.

What Our Task Force Wants to Change

The December 2009 issue of Convene is just out, and the cover story — “Meetamorphosis” — puts (what we hope is) a new spin on a frequently inert topic: change. How? By punting the question of how to change the meetings forever to an all-star assortment of experts inside and outside the industry. That includes members of the Convene Task Force, whose insightful responses we’re featuring here, as a continuation of the discussion begun in the pages of the magazine:

SANDY BIBACK, CMP, CMM

Founder, Imagination⁺ Meeting Planners / www.imaginationmeetings.com

I’d like meetings to change to ensure that every person there gets their objectives met. How can we do that? Ask ahead, what are your objectives for coming to this meeting and how can we meet them? Then determine the agenda. I’d like to see more fun stuff that really packs a punch. Some of the stuff happening in Dallas has that experiential stuff in it. I’d like to see more world cafes, more open space, more facilitating than a lecture that is disguised as interactive when the person asks a couple of questions. I’d like to see some more input after the session. So, a report that goes to all who attended each session. I’d like to see some threads that continue for more than one conference. (Encourage people to come for part two.) I’d like, if possible, to see variety in actual venues. So, not always a convention center or a hotel meeting room. How about office space as it relates to the topic? Or how about in a hospital for medical events?

Why? Because all this leads to more input from those actually in the room as opposed to the person presenting, and they will learn more. I’m tired of PowerPoint that says not much. Let’s have “meeting rooms” with lounges in them. Think about environments that do a ton of brainstorming (PR firms?) and what their meeting rooms look like. And what do the people attending actually take with them? And how do they use it? Why not some follow-up on that information?

NIKKI DENNARD

Meeting professional, Chicago, Ill.

As a meeting professional who finished graduate school in 2008 and is finding it challenging to find a job, I would say that mentors are a wonderful thing and I have enjoyed doing internships — but, still, I wish there were a better way to break into the industry.

My ongoing job search has led me to wonder if getting a CMP is still necessary and relevant. I see a lot of jobs posted on the PCMA job board that are asking for the CMP designation. Are there still organizations that will not hire you unless you have a CMP, even though you have the work experience? I do plan to get my CMP, but as a former student, I wonder if students should be encouraged to fulfill some of the requirements for the CMP while working on their studies, attend conferences to get CEU credits, etc.

Another thing I would like to change is that I would love to see more associations partner on their conferences — only when the situation fits, of course. For example, instead of just an IBM or a Dell conference, have a technology conference. That isn’t the best example, but my point is that joint conferences are a good idea for a number of reasons, including better attendance for both groups (because attendees don’t have to choose one conference over the other), economies of scale (because two organizations working together have a better chance of getting better speakers for a more economical price), and less environmental waste.

ALAN L. KLEINFELD, CMP

Chief strategist, CMM Advisors / www.cmmadvisors.com

It would be nice if hotels used the same software as most planners do. For years now, many planners would use Word or Excel to provide the hotel their meeting specifications or resume. However, hotels continue to use incompatible software so that the information a planner provides has to be re-entered into the hotel’s programming. It’s not only wasteful of time and money, but it allows for errors to occur. In addition, when it comes time for the pre-conference, the planner and the hotel staff end up either looking at different documents or having to compare two or more documents at the same time, allowing for more errors to occur.

DAWN M. MCEVOY, CMP

Program manager, American Dental Association / www.ada.org

The key to the future of our profession can be summed up in one word: education. That means educating the public, students looking to enter the profession, and our employers. The path leading to the future of meetings management depends on our ability to ensure its acceptance as a true business discipline similar to accounting and human resources. This can only be obtained through a sustained effort to create more standardized college curriculums, measurements of professional standards, and the certification of professionals in the use of standardized practices.

We already do this to some extent, but we have to work harder. In effect, this is what we must continue to change about our industry, because through these efforts, we will not only gain professional respect from our employers, we also will attract higher numbers of students looking for a rewarding professional career. These efforts will also pave the way for changing public awareness of both meetings management and the value of face-to-face meetings.

@DMAI: 'Believing Is Seeing'

And now for some self-promotion: Convene sponsored the opening keynote speaker at the DMAI 95th Annual Convention yesterday. The reason this isn't "shameless" self-promotion is because the speaker in question -- Erik Weihenmayer -- was tremendous.

Weihenmayer has been blind since he was 13, but that hasn't stopped him from climbing the Seven Summits (the highest mountains on each of the seven continents), including Mt. Everest -- which he's the only blind person to have scaled. During his talk yesterday, Weihenmayer was funny, thought-provoking, and -- yes, we have to say it -- inspirational. He admitted that "blind mountain climber" isn't a term that makes a whole lot of sense; related a climbing buddy's philosophy of "positive pessimism" (example: "Sure is cold out here. But at least it's windy."); and explained why you need to look beyond your individual goals: "A vision is like an internal compass. It guides us through good weather, but more importantly through bad weather; and tells us where we're going."

And Weihenmayer talked about how you can't have growth or innovation without adversity. Look no further than some of his climbing buddies, who include a paraplegic who invented a pull-up device that's allowed him to continue climbing, and a double-leg amputee who's developed prosthetic legs that have made him an even better climber. Weihenmayer calls these types of people "alchemists," because "they're able to take all the lead life piles onto them and turn it into gold."

Leaders in any field must do the same. "There will always be people who believe in your vision and people who don't," Weihenmayer said, but you can't worry about that. He said: "They say seeing is believing. I think they're dead wrong. Believing is seeing."

History Repeating

The Continuing Education column in this month's issue of Convene is about the history of trade shows -- a subject that seems to pop up even when you're not looking for it. Even when you're minding your own business, reading an interesting new book called Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, which is about the double life of Clarence King, the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey. More or less apropos of nothing, author Martha A. Sandweiss drops in this nugget:

"On July 12, 1893, a young historian from the University of Wisconsin named Frederick Jackson Turner delivered an after-dinner talk on 'The Significance of the Frontier in American History' to the scholars gathered in Chicago for the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Across town at the great Columbian Exposition, Buffalo Bill Cody staged his own version of American frontier history to considerably larger crowds."

It's not that the history of the trade show (or meeting, or convention) is the history of America. But sometimes it sure seems that way.

The Spy Who Friended Us

And to think that I fretted that a colleague might see the Thanksgiving video my niece posted on Facebook -- the one with me in the kitchen, loudly singing along with my boisterous extended family.  

It recently came to light that Sir John Sawers, chief of the British intelligence agency M16, was outed by his wife on Facebook. Sawers' wife enabled zero privacy settings on her account, giving 200 million Facebook viewers access to Sawers' secret code name, along with other sensitive information, including photos of the agent cavorting in a brief bathing suit.

It's hard not to commiserate. On July 1, Facebook announced that it was changing its privacy controls, which Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly admitted are currently way too complex.  The controls, which are now scattered across in multiple pages, will be simplified and consolidated into one page in the future.

So far, I've been fairly scrupulous about keeping my professional and personal lives corralled in separate social networking sites -- Facebook for friends, LinkedIn for work. I think that's common for all but the youngest generations of users. 

But if  keeping my professional and personal life separate on one Web site were to get a lot easier, that could change the game.