contents Cover Story

Convene®

5_11 TheMagazine of the Professional ConventionManagementAssociation Volume 25, Issue 5 Between a Block and a Hard Place 42

The city-based model of meetings often ties free or discounted convention-center space to a specified roomblock. Which worked fine when attendees couldn’t scour the Internet for their own cut-rate hotel bookings—usually well outside the block. Is there a different, better model? Hunter R. Slaton

53 ‘A Force of Positive Change’ J. Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan CVB and chair of

DMAI, talks about positioning meetings in a post–AIG Effect landscape, surviving Katrina and helping Japan—and under-

standing travel as “the ultimate pollinator of ideas, visions, new standards, and new ways of doing things that excite people.” Michelle Russell

CMP SERIES Brand Spanking New 57 Your meeting is a brand—and a powerful one. But how? Through its name? Its logo? Its theme? No. Your meeting’s brand is the sum total of the experience of being there. As marketing guru Seth Godin says: “The best conferences in the future are going to be branded by being worth going to.” Kim Fernandez

2 pcmaconvene May 2011 www.pcma.org

Cover illustration by Eddie Guy