PLENARY NCMA World Congress Q Unconventional: Exploiting Chaos
POST CON Procuring a High-Caliber Event
MEETING: National Contract Management Association (NCMA) World Congress 2011, held at Denver’s Colorado Convention Center on July 10–13. The meeting attracted 1,500 professionals who work in the procurement industry, including government con- tracting.
CHALLENGES: In a Pre Con interview with Convene (available at http://bit.ly/ nVxULj), Director of Meet- ings Jennifer E. Coy said that NCMA was most concerned with World Congress 2011 living up to previous years, which had seen steady increases in attendance. This year, the economy was still slow, and government spend- ing on travel was coming under scrutiny. “I believe it turned out
pretty well,” Coy said. “The number of full-conference at- tendees is down compared to budget and down compared to the previous year, [but] it does compare favorably to the years prior. … And we did sell a wider range of registra- tion types than we have in the past. For example, our group- registration rate was higher.” Did the lingering climate
of austerity throughout the industry cast a pall over World Congress? “I don’t think the show was affected at all,” Coy said. “Our caliber of speaker, our level of attendees was really high. And our feedback was very favorable and very positive as far as exhibitors saying the caliber of contacts
they made was high and attendees saying the speaker content was great.”
INITIATIVES: NCMA intro- duced a virtual component this year called the World Congress Virtual Confer- ence, which offered online broadcasts of about nine hours of programming — four keynotes and three panel dis- cussions. People could log in remotely and get continuing- education credits for watch- ing. The results were mixed. “Although the technology worked very well,” Coy said, “we did not have a significant amount of members take ad- vantage of the opportunity. So we’re currently in the process of evaluating if this is some-
thing we’ll continue doing, or if we won’t continue doing it, or if maybe we need to do it in a different way.”
Another initiative — book-
ing “Gen Y Guy” Jason Dorsey as the closing keynoter — was part of an ongoing effort to reach out to younger pro- fessionals in the industry. “He was very well received,” Coy said. She added: “Our mem- bers really, really enjoyed his dynamic speech. And we were able to make a bridge between the age generations of our members. People sat in the audience and said, ‘I can totally relate to being in Gen Y,’ or ‘I’m totally a Baby Boomer,’ or ‘You’re totally right, I don’t understand text- messaging.’ It was a great end to our conference.” n — Christopher Durso