For many organizations, the heavily themed conferences of yesterday are out. But as planners focus more on the main course — content — and less on the dessert, it becomes more challenging to differentiate one meeting from the next. In taking a leaner marketing approach, how are meeting organizers avoiding what one planner called “the cookie- cutter mode of planning”? Hunter R. Slaton
Features SALARY SURVEY 2012
Raises: More the Rule Than the Exception Our Annual Salary Survey is chockablock with averages, stats, and figures. Plus, our more than 400 planner respondents reveal what they like best and least about their job. Michelle Russell
BOOKINGS
Quiet Power In the first in our new series in which we ask popular nonfiction book authors to turn their lens on the meetings industry, Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, tells us how meeting organizers can make their events more comfortable for their less outgoing attendees. And how those events can benefit in return. Barbara Palmer