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Behind the Scenes By Michelle Russell
Ears to theGround That’s how we come up with the stories we bring you each month in Convene. L
ast month, I traveled to Kansas City, Mo., to serve on the PCMA Heartland Chapter’s annual
“State of the Industry” panel —along with Jack Horne, vice president of sales for Hyatt Hotels; James Good- man, CMP, managing vice president, division of conference and meeting services, for the American Dental Asso- ciation; and Alex Kaptzan, director of convention sales for Tampa Bay& Company (CVB). Iwas honored that theHeartland Chapter’s
president,Missy Johnson,CMP,manager ofmeeting services for theAmerican Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), askedme to be a panelist. Butwhen she introducedme as the “onewho tells uswhatwe need to knowevery month in Convene,” I protested. Because, not to overstate the obvious, I don’t
actually do what you all do for a living. The four of us who make up the Convene editorial team don’t presume to take it upon ourselves to tell you how to do your job better. So, just how can we be sure that we’re tapping into the real issues facing planners? For starters, we try to get out to as many
industry events as possible. When we’re there, we listen, sussing out ideas. Back at our desks, we talk to other meeting practitioners to learn more.We check in regularly with our Convene advisory task force, made up of professionals on both sides of the negotiating table.We rely on our columnists and contributors in the field to help us stay ahead of trends. And it goes without saying that, as the magazine of PCMA, we bene- fit from having access to a wealth of first-hand knowledge from members—and the industry’s finest educational content. One of the best ways to get a lay of the land is
6 pcmaconvene December 2010
through surveys.We invited meeting planners to participate in a half-dozen of them on different topics throughout this past year, and your responses have been telling. For this issue, we reached out to nearly 125
meeting planners who had participated in one of our recent surveys to be a part of our cover story andCMPSeries article (p. 62). Our pitch: In the December 2009 issue of Convene, we asked peo- ple inside and outside of our industry how meet- ings should change. This time around, we’re ask- ing a more practical question:Howdid your 2010 meeting(s) change?We’re looking for the big and small ideas that made your organiza- tion’s conferences, conventions, exhibits, trade shows, and events over the past year more suc- cessful—interms of attendance, goals accom- plished, buzz generated, or however else you measure positive results. We received less than 10 responses. Since those who don’t participate in our sur-
veys don’t say why, we had to make some assumptions. Are you overwhelmed by the pace of change?Doyou think the changes you’ve made to your events aren’t significant enough to share or aren’t any different from what other organizers are doing? Are you just plain too busy to spare the time? Slammed by e-mail? (For help on that front, seeWorking Smarter, p. 45.) Despite the initial lackluster response, we
were able to collect so many great examples of initiatives launched at meetings in 2010 that we’re going to run part two of our cover story in the January issue. Because the one assumption we didn’t make is that this is a topic you don’t care about. Constantly tweaking and reinventing your events to stay relevant to your stakeholders is central to what you do. But you don’t need us to tell you that.
SAVING LIVES: What do Gaylord Hotels Chairman and CEO Colin Reed and Doc Hendley, founder and president of Wine toWater, share in common? They’re both leaders who have saved lives — and their stories involve water. Learn how Reed led his guests out of danger when Nashville’s Cumberland River threatened to over- flow its banks (p. 101), and how Hendley uses wine- tasting events to help the nearly one billion people around the world who lack access to clean water (p. 95).
Michelle Russell Editor in Chief mrussell@pcma.org
MICHELLE RUSSELL PHOTOGRAPHED BY DENNIS CHALKIN