comments

April: RFP Spam The article on RFP spam in this month’s Convene (“Request for Problems”) is so timely! Thanks to PCMA for high- lighting this rampant problem in the industry. We at Zentila call it the No. 1 Productivity Killer for hotels, and ulti- mately planners, too.

April Anderson, Director of National Accounts, Zentila.com

PCMA@LinkedIn: Letter for Visa? Jenny Wanger, conference manager at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, posted this question to the PCMA LinkedIn community: “Have you ever written a letter for someone to get a visa to attend your conference? I’ve got someone asking for a letter to state that he has registered for the conference and would like a visa to attend. Are there risks to consider or a form to follow?”

Just to be clear, your association cannot provide a visa. All your association can do is provide a letter stating that the person has registered for your meet- ing. It is essentially a letter of invitation indicating the name, dates, and location of your meeting. It typically takes about three months for an attendee to obtain an interview with the embassy, which provides the visa. If applicable, you may want your letter of invitation to include the following: “This letter does not con- vey any obligation by the society for your hotel, transportation, registration, or any additional expenses associated with your attendance at the meeting. Also, this letter of invitation does not reflect any action by the (insert name of association) travel awards selection committees.” If you have a lot of international

attendees, you may want to register your meeting with the national acade- mies, nationalacademies.org/visas. You can also refer to the U.S. State Depart- ment’s website, travel.state.gov/visa.

Trina Armstrong, Director of Meetings, American Society for Cell Biology

PCMA.ORG

This is a normal process for events in Europe, because some governments want evidence that an individual is registered to attend. However, that’s not to say that anybody who registers and needs a letter gets one. You need to be careful, because some countries’ nationals will consider the registra- tion fee to be a small price to pay if it increases the chances of getting a visa, which they might (emphasize “might”) overstay. The other difficulty is that it’s not

unknown for some people to register for a conference or trade show, get the necessary letter, get the visa, and then cancel their registration. I think you might need to take a specialist’s advice

on this. Do you know a DMC that has experience in this area?

Ken Clayton, Director, RefTech

Yes, it is very common, and in most cases, this is the only way that they will be given approval — with a letter from the conference organizer indicating that the individual has paid in full with the infor- mation that Trina has suggested and, in addition, showing proof of their lodging accommodations. Any international conference that we’ve been involved in has these type of requests.

Nathalie Whitton, CEO and President, Site Solutions Worldwide

From Convene’s blog For more on the meetings industry, visit our blog at pcmaconvene.com.

He’s an “expert on Web stuff,” computer scientist and artist John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, told the DigitalNow audience in April at Walt Disney World in Orlando. A little bit of an expert: Maeda

has been so influential in the design and development of the Web, in fact, that Esquire magazine named him to its list of the 75 most important people in the 21st century. At DigitalNow, when Maeda was

asked about how best to use the Web to communicate, the designer talked about … glue. There’s Elmer’s Glue, he said, which is hard to use and takes forever to dry. And there’s spray glue, which is fast-drying and easy to use. “I like to think of Elmer’s Glue as

old-fashioned relationship-building — shaking someone’s hand, having a drink or having dinner,” Maeda said. “Spray glue is like Facebook or Twit- ter: ‘I’ve got like a thousand follow- ers! I’ve got all these friends!’ When you use spray glue to glue a piece of

Glued to Their Seats DigitalNow attend- ees talk with John Maeda after his keynote.

paper, what happens? It begins to fall off. It un-peels. Elmer’s Glue — once it dries, it’s stuck.” In the future, the advantage

will go to organizations “that are very Elmer’s Glue-y,” he said. Ones “that have mastered the art of that [personal] connection point, but augment it with a sufficient under- standing of a spray-glue world.” — Barbara Palmer

JUNE 2013 PCMA CONVENE 7